Picture yourself using an Apple iPad

Can you picture yourself using an Apple iPad? Where? When? What will you be doing on it? Are you at home sitting on the sofa viewing your photos? Are you on a train commuting to work and browsing the web? Are you in a coffee shop catching up with your email? Yes, of course you can picture yourself doing all these things, but before you pitch your tent outside the nearest Apple store to be the first in the queue for the iPad, you also have to consider the alternative ways of performing these common activities.

If you are at home you will have your smartphone with you, a desktop computer, and possibly a laptop computer too. You could browse the web on the iPad, but you could also sit at your desktop PC (I don't just mean Windows PCs, but all personal computers including Mac and Linux) with its much larger monitor - and Flash. You can also do much more with the content available on the web too, such as save files, clip text or images and save them for later. You could view your photos on the iPad, but you could also hook your camera up to the big LCD/plasma TV in the lounge, or use your laptop/desktop PC and then tweak the photos in a photo editor, organise them into albums, turn them into videos and so on using a desktop or laptop.

You could play games on the iPad, but you've probably got an Xbox, Playstation or Wii that's much better. You also have the PC too, which is a good gaming platform. The joysticks, game pads and other controllers make consoles and PCs much more fun for playing games. You could watch streaming TV or video on the iPad, but wouldn't it be better on your desktop PC with its large screen, or even a laptop with a 15in screen? You can also easily hook up a PC to your LCD or plasma and watch streaming TV/video in high definition on a 40in screen or whatever you have. You can picture yourself listening to music, but if you get up and walk around then it's awkward to carry and an iPod will fit your pocket. If you want to look up recipes on the web in the kitchen you could use the iPad, but you could easily plonk your laptop on the worktop  and use that instead. An iPad would be marginally more convenient, but not greatly so.

Yes, I can picture myself using an iPad at home, but whatever I do, there is an alternative and that alternative is often better.

Can you picture yourself on the train commuting to work using an iPad? Can you picture yourself in a coffee shop using an iPad? No doubt you can, but when you leave the house you either need to work or you don't. If you don't need to work then a smartphone has everything you need, particularly the iPhone, which is also a great music and video player, and has email, contacts, web browsing and more. Sometimes you want to travel light and a smartphone is perfect. You can keep in touch with friends and work colleagues, tweet, post to Facebook and more. It would not be convenient to carry around a large iPad. It won't fit your pocket and you'd need a bag or carry case.

Sometimes when you are out you need to work on on the go - work on a presentation, a document, a spreadsheet, DTPed brochure, or whatever. If you need to work you need a laptop and nothing else will do. An iPad isn't really suitable in these situations because it is much less functional than a laptop. It's lighter and thinner, but that doesn't make up for the inability to do useful work.

I couldn't leave my phone at home because the iPad doesn't make calls, and I couldn't leave my laptop at home because then I wouldn't be able to do any work.

Whether I'm at home or out, I can't really see how an iPad would be superior to either my smartphone or my laptop. In a small number of circumstances it might be more convenient because of its portability compared to a laptop, but those circumstances are rare. With two computers, a laptop, an iPod, a smartphone, and an LCD TV at home, why would I need an iPad? And when I'm out, an iPad is less portable than my smartphone and less functional than my laptop.

I'm not anti iPad and I think Apple has produced the best tablet computer ever. No-one has come up with a design that is anywhere near as good as it. However, I just don't think that there is a gap between the smartphone, netbook, laptop and desktop PC markets.

The iPad will definitely be a success and Apple will make loads of money from it. Apple fans and gadget lovers will ensure that. The only question is how much of a success it will be. Will it sell like the iPod (do you know anyone that doesn't have an iPod - or iPhone which is also an iPod?), or will it sell like the Apple TV (ask your friends about the Apple TV and most won't have heard of it)? I suspect it will sell more like the Apple TV, at least in its current form.