Yesterday, I was walking in Antwerp and several shops such as Fnac and MediaMarkt had big displays that the iPad had arrived. I had already “played” with a device a few months back, so no need to take another look at it now.
What I did do, was watching from a distance to the people looking at device: mostly kids were playing some game on the machine. I wonder if that’s were Apple is going with the device: a gaming-device at an incredible (high) price. It’s a consumer device, and I see little potential for it in the enterprise world. I can be wrong, but that’s how I see it at this moment.
Yes, I know they have sold quite a lot of them (Steve B. mentioned it also just last week), but do keep in mind that Apple is doing *everything* to make people think: “I need one of those to be part of it again”.
I’m convinced that a Windows device in the same form factor has a lot more potential. It has the usual things you’d expect from a PC: it runs Flash/Silverlight, you can run your applications on it, you’ll be able to upgrade to Windows 8 some day… I got a reaction from someone on Twitter, saying that Windows 7 is not touch-friendly and that it’s focused on mouse/keyboard. While that is true, keep in mind that Windows 7 has touch built-in to the platform.
What really will make these machines capable, is a UI shell. Everyone knows HTC Sense probably: it’s a graphical layer HTC puts on top of Windows Mobile to give it a more capable touch experience, easy access to applications and the like. When Windows 7 tablets will be coming out and they will have some shell running on it, they can offer an experience similar to iOS. On top of that, you can actually use the device for doing useful things as well, because all your software, mouse-enabled or touch-enabled will work on it. Or, of course, develop your own software for it!
One of these shells was shown today (via Engadget): UICentric, and it will appear on a Windows tablet coming out this year. You can see it running here.
(Btw, before someone asks/says: Yes, I have an iPhone since my Sony XPeria WinMobile 6.1 is broken. While I find it rather good, it crashes a few times a week and gets quite hot after long calls. It'll be out of the door when I have a Windows Phone 7 though :) )