Google Groups is a pile of fail and hasn’t posted my message in reply to a thread on Geekup so I’m blogging it instead.

On 27 Jan 2010, at 19:53, Steve Richardson wrote:
Thoughts?

I’ve been searching for a device to fit between my Macbook Pro and iPhone. I work all day on the MBP, and moving it to then watch video in another room or read twitter/news/mail whilst watching telly, etc is a pain.

The iPhone is a great little device on the move, but for trying to multitask at home it’s a bit.. tedious. Even jailbroken and running multiple apps at once it’s still limiting.

I’d been looking around at netbooks, but what put me off actually getting one was my previous experience with one. I know I’d want it to run OS X to keep in sync (easily) with my other Apple devices, but hackintoshing one was a bit too much hassle, plus the fact ones to hackintosh cost more than I really wanted to pay for something that wasn’t quite what I thought I needed.

And then.. the iPad. I’ve been sort of keeping up with the rumours (mainly through Daring Fireball) and whilst I didn’t get excited about it too much ahead of announcement1, having seen the official video of it it’s pretty much guaranteed that I’m going to get one.

Yes, it’s limited (App Store, closed device), but.. I don’t care. Take the iPhone, it’s good enough for doing things on it, even if someone else is in charge of the ecosystem and has a big finger saying yes or no. I (willingly) use iTunes, Mobile Me, all the things that are so wonderfully integrated in the world of Apple, so another device that consumes my media using channels I already know and use is just a massive win for me.

All I’m hoping now is that $499 doesn’t equal £499. Hopefully it’ll be £399, still a good £80 above direct exchange rate, but low enough that it’s a no-brainer for me to get one.

…And I think this is the first Apple product that I’ve seen announced and actually known from the start why I’m going to get one, instead of just a knee-jerk “SHINY!!!! WANT!!!” reaction. Uh oh, does that make me an adult?

1 I miss getting really excited about apple announcements :(

Update

It just got even better. Was lamenting to a friend on IM that it’d be so much nicer once you can directly suck photos off a camera/SD card into it. Turns out there’s an adapter for that. See “iPad Camera Connection Kit” at the bottom of http://www.apple.com/ipad/specs/ for details.