D. Keith Robinson

While at first I was pretty underwhelmed by iPad, loving the form factor but not all that impressed with the software. As the announcement went on though, I got more and more excited. About the prospect for game designers and content publishers primarily.

If this takes off, and at a $499 introductory price point, there is no reason why it shouldn’t, it could be a huge first step and a really big deal in the long run.

A few notes:

• The form factor is awesome (can’t wait to touch it!) and it seems pretty damn speedy.
• The name is pretty weak, but who really cares?
• The inclusion of a iPad-specific SDK and the ability to create apps that fit the form-factor will be huge. Games, magazines, newspapers, etc. are going to take advantage of this and it could very well be amazing.
• I’m really interested to see how the eReader works. If it reads well and I can get the books I want on it, I’d be all over that.
• The inclusion of a dockable keyboard replaces the need for the touch keyboard to be awesome and I can see many, many people out there using this as their primary machine. My mom, for example, should be all over this. Still, I’m really interested in checking out the keyboard.
• Love what they did with iWork. Keynote specifically, seems really smart.
• Really excited about the prospect of games on this thing.
• Where is the camera? Seems like it’s something that really should be part of this thing.

A few apps I want to see:

• Magazine and newspaper apps. I’d love to replace the paper. This will largely a design problem to do this right (and one, as a designer, I’d love to see solved, the mind boggles with the possibilities here) it could be really cool to have magazine subscriptions with high quality content, layouts, video, etc.
• Board game ports and supplements. The form factor means it could be really cool for multi-player games, either in-person and over the air. I could see a stand, sitting on a table keeping score, etc.
• A dashboard. I want to prop this up on my night stand and have it stream news, weather, time, etc.
• A fantasy football app. The iPhone apps work ok, but something with a richer interface could be really awesome.

Bottom-line: it’s exciting to think about the possibilities here and as a first gen device it’s looks to be pretty awesome.

UPDATE:

A few more things to think about:

• Why no USB? Could it be they don’t want to allow for external storage, thus dampening one of their up-sells? Seems like USB is a no-brainer.
• This could be great for learning. Saw this today: http://getinkling.com/. Not much there, but it got me thinking of how this could be used in a classroom.
• Multi-user support would be cool. I want to play something like scrabble, or battleship (imagine flipping the tablet over and it switching users) and have it keep all the scores, etc.
• What about a midi-controller app? I think of those midi-controllers with all the pads on them and think this could recreate that pretty well.
• For games: lots of thoughts about multi-touch interfaces that make more sense on this form factor than they did on the iPhone. RTS, Roleplaying and board-type games seem like a perfect fit.