Some random thoughts on the iPad
Apple are notoriously tight lipped prior to product announcements so tight in fact that when a publisher who had signed up to provide content to the iPad leaked details on CNBC he was removed from the official launch, oh dear… Full story here:
http://venturebeat.com/2010/01/27/mcgraw-ipad/
The biggest surprise at the launch was the price $499 for the base model as compared to $259 for the cheapest Kindle. So why should we care? The ipad is so much more that an e-reader, but as such will I believe drive an explosion of demand for content, photographers will just have to make sure they charge for providing content:
“ she’d recently talked with a Sports Illustrated photo editor who told her she was not expecting to commission specifically for new platforms like the iPad, though imagery will play a vital role in the magazine’s use of those platforms. Stella noted that at the beginning of the tech revolution, when Web usage was the only concern, most contracts were written to include Web rights in the fee—as well as any usage for technologies that might be developed at any point in the future. A big yikes.”
Stephen Fry is very impressed with the iPad, he writes:
“You may or may not be in the queue for an iPad in March, April, May or June. Or you may decide to stay your hand for version 2.0 or 3.0. But believe me the iPad is here to stay and nothing will be quite the same again”
Read more here: http://www.stephenfry.com/2010/01/28/ipad-about/
One area where I see the iPad being very useful for photographers is as a portfolio. Here’s what Scott Bourne has to say:
“If Apple opens up the iBook store to self-publishers, all the photographers who think their book should be published will have a chance to go out there and build an audience and sell a book. Imagine the pictures we might see that wouldn’t be profitable for a big book publishing company to publish, but may be very realistically self-published via the iBook store!”
Read more from Scott here:
http://photofocus.com/2010/01/28/more-on-the-apple-ipad-as-a-photographers-tool/
The main reason I will be getting one is so that I can hand it to Art Directors when I am shooting tethered and have Phocus auto export previews to it, what would be truly fantastic would be a module for an H4D that wirelessly transmitted the previews (to an iPad or anywhere else).
Some commentators have been surprised at the iPad’s lack of support for Flash (much like the iphone, Adobe themselves are understandably rather unhappy:
“But I want to be very clear. My concern isn’t just about Flash on the iPad. It’s about a disturbing trend where Apple is starting to inhibit broad categories of innovation on their platforms.”
You can read more on the Adobe flash blog here: http://blogs.adobe.com/flashplatform/
And Steve Jobs says:
“About Adobe: They are lazy, Jobs says. They have all this potential to do interesting things but they just refuse to do it. They don’t do anything with the approaches that Apple is taking, like Carbon. Apple does not support Flash because it is so buggy, he says. Whenever a Mac crashes more often than not it’s because of Flash. No one will be using Flash, he says. The world is moving to HTML5″
Does this signal the end for flash? : http://tinyurl.com/yda7t5w