Is the iPad also Apple's New iGaming Platform?
 Apple's top brass unfurled all the banners and fired off all the fireworks for the January 27th announcement of their much-hyped iPad tablet device, which seemed to be all things to all people, at least before the public announcement. Once the thick fog of hype and rumors was dispelled, the iPad has turned out to be, in a nutshell, the bigger brother of the iPod Touch. With it, the iPad inherits many of the inherent software-related benefits and also the hardware-related faults that has nagged at people in search of the perfect gadget.
When it launched at the end of March the iPad will come outfitted with 1 GHz proprietary Apple processor, a 1024x768 9.7" LCD standard definition screen with multi-touch capabilities, integrated Bluetooth and 802.11abgn wireless, with Wi-Fi and 3G models. The iPad will also come in 16, 32, and 64 GB storage flavors, much like the hierarchy of iPhone and iTouch models. The baseline weight for the iPad is about one and a half pounds. Not so lightweight is the price, which starts at $499 and takes off from there depending on the configuration.
What's missing from the iPad will depend on your point of view. If you're going to compare the iPad to a netbook, it's going to come up short in a few key ways. No video camera, no multitasking, no keyboard, no ability to import files outside the App Store, no Flash support, and more expensive than your average netbook. By the way, a netbook can play plenty of basic online client- or browser-based games at least reasonably well. Of course, a netbook is designed to be a Swiss Army Knife, while the iPhone is the Ginsu knife set for multimedia, e-book reading and apps -- including games.
Ah yes, apps. It would be so easy to write the iPad off as another foray into Newton territory for Apple. What is keeping the iPad from being the badly named, socially awkward kid at the dance is the iTunes and the App Store channel, which the Newton didn't have at the time. Looking specifically at the App Store, any Apple device that connects to the App Store, which has driven over 3 billion downloads of well over 100,000 apps, has already got a huge advantage in seducing developers and the buying public. Thanks to the iPad sharing in common the iPhone's operating system, the iPad will also be backwards compatible with every iPhone/iTouch application made so far, so there will be consumer access to a huge library of useful, entertaining and interactive content from the start.
What should iPad game developers keep in mind before seriously considering chasing after a dev kit?
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Paul Philleo
Contributing Editor
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