Life after my iPad.

I broke my iPad. I'm sad. Whilst I save up for a new one, here are the reasons why I love it. blog.mindrocketnow.com

I broke my iPad. I dropped it right at its weakest point, right under the home button. The screen shattered, and the connector socket bent so I couldn’t get any power into it. And my AppleCare didn’t cover this malady; apparently it was missing a +, so didn't cover cackhandedness. So now I’m without an iPad. There, you know the whole gory story now.

What’s interesting to me, is that its enforced absence gives me a refreshed perspective on the niche the tablet occupies. I find that I can do everything I used to do on my iPad, on a different iDevice. My MacBook has the size of screen and software functionality that I need in order to browse. My iPhone has the connectivity that I need in order to entertain myself during my commute. And my Nook is a far better device to hold in one hand and immerse in a book. But the iPad does all of these in one device. My personal use case of this is reading comics: it needs a great screen, connectivity to download, portability because I like reading on the move.

However, the reverse isn’t true. The iPad can’t run all the productivity software, nor does it have the storage, so it can't replace my MacBook as my work device. I look silly holding it up to my ear, so I’d never replace my iPhone to make calls with my iPad. And you can’t hold it with one hand, nor read it in sunlight, so it won’t replace my Nook for holiday reading.

So my conclusion is that the iPad doesn’t fulfil a hitherto unknown and therefore untapped market class. Instead, the iPad skilfully combines market classes in and extraordinarily user-friendly way. That is its genius.