So, what are you going to use it for?

After an awkwardly long pause (switching my brain from french to English), I babble something along the lines of “surfing the web and checking emails from my couch”. “And what’s the added value compared to the iPhone?”, the Japanese journalist asks me. Alright, I have to admit that besides a faster processor and a bigger display, the iPad doesn’t do ANYTHING new. It even does significantly less, actually. But as every single review I’ve read so far, they say that you have to try it to understand it (and of course like it, hehe). So that’s probably why I’m standing in line at 7:30 in the morning, in front of Geneva’s Apple Store, on the iPad’s launch day (May 28th 2010). I wish I could have told it so nicely to the Japanese guy and his Swiss German interpreter, but I suck at conversations. For the sake of completeness he wrote down my name and age, but I doubt it’s going to be published. And I don’t know in which magazine anyway.

I guess I must have been in the first 30 people in line, out of at least a hundred. So, pretty confident I would get an iPad. I had my day off “thanks” to my annoying ankle injury (been lasting for almost 2 months now!). An Apple Store employee even brought me a chair so I wouldn’t have to stand on one foot with my crutches. Then Starbucks employees handed out free coffee. Am I in the USA or what? TV cameras were there too. Overall, it’s a funny experience, especially with the occasional passersby boo-ing us and calling us sheeps.

Most of the people who criticize the iPad claim that tablet PC have been out for years already (in fact I was at a presentation at CMU where HP/Microsoft presented their first models in 2002) and that it is less capable than a netbook. Well, these people are right. BUT in my opinion, the iPad is in fact a whole new type of device. It is not supposed to replace a laptop or a netbook. A majority of people won’t be able to use exclusively an iPad for ALL their needs, but most of them.

You can see my crutches at 01min 01sec ;)