For the first time ever, I'm excited about the launch of an Apple product.
That's not usually the case. Anyone who's read this column even occasionally will know that I'm not Apple's biggest fan. I don't own an iPhone, and while I recognise that Macs are well built computers, I've never bought into the ‘I-must-be-uber-creative-because-I-own-a-Mac' mentality that many of the [Steve] Jobs fanboys around the world seem to relish. If you bought a Macintosh because you like using it, hey, that's cool. If you bought it because you thought being seen with one would be cool, you're just annoying.
Despite that, the strangest part of this isn't that I'm excited about the iPad — it's that I'm one of the few people who are. Following Apple's announcement that the device would be released this March, a surprising number of people I talked to were voicing disappointment. Most seemed think the iPad was going to be something that could replace their laptops.
That was never going to happen, and it all comes down to the operating system. There was a snowball's chance in hell in that the iPad would be a popular success if it ran OS X, the Macintosh operating system.
Apple's recent success comes from its mobile devices. Its computers, despite a range of sizes and designs, have still failed to gain mass appeal. Apple would have been shooting itself in the foot if they had tried to cram OS X down people's throats by installing it on the iPad.
It makes more sense for Apple to expand the number of devices with the iPhone OS, which comes ready made for touch-screen and media playback, not to mention 130,000-plus applications just waiting to be sold to a new market. An over-sized iPhone was always the logical choice for Apple.
However, the iPad concept seems lost on many people here in Dubai. Let's face it, in Dubai we like our movies on large screens, our games on consoles, and when we read, it's usually on paper. The iPad offers none of these things. Consumer electronics companies know it, which partially explains why, despite Dubai's love for high-tech gadgets, not one manufacturer has yet released an e-reader in the country.
Amazon's dilemma
However, outside the UAE, the impact the iPad has is very different. Amazon is, of course, sweating bullets. Even though they hold a commanding lead in the e-book market, the company is now the owner of an obsolete piece of technology. The Kindle might have been first on the market, but now it's an unpleasant looking piece of plastic that doesn't play movies, music and games. It can't even display text in colour.
Amazon also failed to take advantage of being the first to market, and its decision to use Whisper Net — the 3G connection that allows the Kindle to connect to the internet — now looks like a ball-and-chain that will make it difficult to move into foreign markets.
The book industry is also worried, and it should be. Book publishers are already in a battle with Amazon and Apple over pricing, and they seem less than happy that the slim margins they see on books might be slashed further as competition heats up.
Of course, that will be a battle that isn't likely to reach the UAE for a while. I hope to never actually have to buy a paperback again, but Apple's success in finally getting someone like me to buy their products isn't much of a victory if I'm the only one interested.
