The Taste Test Results

The thing which struck us the most about the iPad was the ease of which we stumbled upon one.

For the record, London hasn’t sold out. PC World has plenty.

Yes, that’s right, we forwent the Apple Store experience in favour of walking straight in, pointing and paying – all tied up in under 5 minutes.

Back at The Dubs HQ, a crowd gathered as the iPad was de-robed and brought to life.

Binging on apps, video and a stack of our favourite websites we then, perhaps predictably  loaded it up with Skype and made it into a giant phone, which made us laugh A LOT (at the time, ahem):

Whilst we obviously wanted to get our hands on one and see what the fuss was all about, we had also already decided that the iPad could help us achieve ‘paper free’ status as an agency and so far this is working well, clients are really responsive to seeing their creative on the iPad and being able to interact with it to a greater degree than boards or a laptop permit.

So, what’s the verdict?

Well, Apple has a great marketing strategy in our opinion and it involves never quite telling the consumer the benefits of its products, that’s for the consumer to figure out.

And with this in mind, we believe that the iPad can never be labelled a jack of all trades, master of none. The iPad does a few things exceptionally well and it is indeed a master of those things, it makes watching, listening and reading an absolute pleasure for iPad owners.

But it doesn’t do everything you’d expect, which leaves us pondering how far Apple will go in developing the iPad?

Commercially, it makes little sense for the iPad to fully replace the ‘laptop’ or the iPhone per se but it really does need to be a little less selfish and open itself up further if The Dubs is going to award anything higher than a  7 out of 10.

USB ports would be a start, viewing documents (without buying and app to do so), yep that would be great, and of course – making use of that beautiful screen by adding camera or the ability to shoot and edit video seems an obvious addition.

Now, whilst we joked about our iPad phone frolics, why wouldn’t you want to make a call via an iPad? Obviously  a suitably designed and subtle headset add-on would be needed here - we couldn’t afford the health and safety training needed to ensure all staff are safely and appropriately lifting the iPad to their ears at all times.

So, whilst we conclude that as a product and based purely on look and feel it is quite beautiful and as a master of a ‘few’ things it is awesome, we enthusiastically await future releases and add-ons and will continue to hack away and attempt to unlock what hasn’t yet been 'switched on' by Apple...