Notwithstanding all of the pre-announcement hype it’s now clear that the iPad 2.0 update would be appropriately described as incremental.
A quicker processor, further streamlined design and the inclusion of cameras that really should have been there in the first place make for more of an evolutionary release than the revolutionary one Apple would like to claim.
When the iPad landed earlier this year many photographers were immediately intrigued by the idea of using a tablet computer to present their portfolios to clients and editors. The hardware appeared to be uniquely fit for that purpose but it took a very long time for similarly qualified software to arrive on the market. While there was no shortage of apps able to display pictures as a slideshow, none of them quite made the grade as a professional portfolio presentation tool for reasons I’ll go into later.
The top search engine query bringing people to this blog has for months now been “iPad as portfolio?” or similar. So presumably there is plenty of demand and where there is demand there is money to be made. Even with that lure, for months we waited.
The pace of iPad App releases by newspaper and magazine publishers has ratcheted-up of late with most major publications now boasting a product in the App Store or at least one at a mature stage of development.
While that may give hundreds of mastheads an iPad presence, I don’t think many have thoughtfully embraced the new platform at all well. For an industry that desperately needs a circuit-breaker — something that adds value to the online reader experience and thereby to balance-sheets as well — none so far would appear to have game changer potential.
What a difference a decade makes for Apple. During the late nineties the computer company (that’s all they built back then) nearly went broke. But then came the iMac which changed the company’s fortunes, followed by the iPod, which changed the world.
For most of its thirty years in business Apple has held underdog status, a David in the context of a Microsoft Goliath. The Apple brand brought connotations of a fringe-dwelling cult and its followers were personal computer outcasts with just a two or three-percent market share. But you need to strain hard to remember those days now given what Apple has become: today it’s a globally dominant force in half a dozen markets.
Here’s a quick note to alert you to a handy new app that I think is worth investigating if you’re a photographer with an iPad.
If anything it would have been the incessant marketing and manipulative PR antics of Apple that might have diluted my interest in the iPad. But knowing this brand as I do and relying on the company’s equipment for years as I have, I was able to put aside my inclination towards cynicism long enough to have a proper look at the iPad. It’s also wise to pay attention when a company like Apple says it’s going to create an entirely new computer platform completely afresh.
The iPad sounds like it caters more for the photography audience than photographers themselves but I’ll speculate that it will be quite useful to us nonetheless. We know that it’s not going to be a primary computer any time soon, and it’s a consumer oriented device for sure, but priced at well under a grand I think it’s easy enough to justify, especially when you consider a few of these possibilities.
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