Looking at the Apple iPad with your Android glasses on

Today, Apple finally unveiled their new tablet device, the iPad. Every new site, tech blog, and fanboy is praising Apple and their new product calling it a “magical device.” Yes, Apple has once again delivered a gadget that is sleek and sexy (or void of any character) which is meant to revolutionize the industry and could create a new category of devices. The only problem is that the iPad is not new and the category was invented years ago. The same thing happened when Apple introduced the iPhone. Apparently no one had heard of a touch screen phone with media capabilities before that. Makes me wonder how my Windows Mobile handsets worked at all for the three years before Apple invented the touch screen phone. Anyways… back to the iPad.

The Apple iPad is Apple’s attempt to capitalize on the tablet and eReader market. People are looking for an intermediate device that will give them the internet on the go without having to lug around their laptop. There are dozens of quality eReaders on the market, but they simply don’t offer enough functionality to justify the cost. The iPad offers everything you need (internet, music, eReader, apps, games, email, calendar, and more) into a small tablet device. I can assure you that the iPad will work just as promised, but is it really revolutionary or magical? No! I’m sure Apple will hate me for this, but the iPad is simply a glorified iPod Touch, nothing more.

The fact is, I was at CES a few weeks back and had the chance to play with quite a few different tablet devices from other manufacturers. Most of them were prototype devices, meant simply to show off what was possible in the new form factor, but guess which OS they were all running on… Android! The only difference between the iPad and an Android powered tablet is the amount of first party app support. Apple has gone out of their way to make sure that their native apps on the iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch give users the best experience possible on the devices. Music, pictures, web, contacts, and calendars are simply gorgeous. But Google has gone the opposite direction, seemingly creating basic apps that are meant to simply get the job done, hoping the development community would pick up the slack. Fortunately for us, Google appears to be shifting their priorities a little. The latest version of Android included a brand new media gallery which looks very similar to what Apple launched on the iPad. The hope is that Google continues to beautify Android’s stock applications so that manufacturers can focus on what they are good at (hardware) instead of spending most of their time trying to make the software look pretty.

Today belongs to Apple and the iPad. Apple will probably sell millions of them before the end of the year. Just remember though that the iPad isn’t much more than an iPod Touch, just like an Android tablet wouldn’t be much more than the Nexus One.