The Latin verb “to introduce a new tablet product” is rarely seen in classical Latin writings. However, its conjugation is well known and will probably be chanted by schools kids in years to come. It runs as follows:

iPad, iPod, iPhone,
iTunes, iBooks, iWork

And if you like, you can follow that with iGetIt. That’s probably what will happen with Apple’s new iPad. You will get one. It’s a much better netbook at the price of a relatively expensive netbook and it has a much bigger screen.

The Instant Reactions

If you spent January 27th switching between real-time Twitter and blogger reactions to the iPad presentation, you can pretty much split them up between the Apple fan boys and Apple jackals.

You’d go from “Steve has just come out on stage, be still my beating heart.” to “Huh, just a damn iPod Touch with a big screen. Give me a break.” All very entertaining, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

The Business Imperatives

The iPad has been designed under the influence of a number of significant business and engineering constraints. Let’s deal with the business constraints first.

• Apple is not a stupid company by any stretch. It was never going to release a device that impacted Apple laptop sales. The iPad was going to be as distant from a laptop-by-other-means as possible.
• Nevertheless a tablet is going to be a more appropriate device for some consumers who might otherwise have bought a laptop. That’s inevitable.
• So, just to drive a wedge between Mac laptops and the iPad, Mac apps will not run on the iPad, unless they get rewritten. But your iPhone apps can be put on the iPad for no fee.
• Also there’s no multitasking. That’s a design decision which will probably be changed some time, but it ensures further differentiation between laptop and iPad.
• There were immediate complaints from some commentators about the lack of a camera, but truth to tell, Apple had good reason to avoid a camera. First you already have one in your iPhone or iPod Touch. And second, the camera is an expensive component.
• Not having a USB port also generated some groans of complaint, but I think this makes real sense. This is the era of Bluetooth, WiFi, WiMax, 3G, 4G and xG. The lack of a USB port is a defining feature. Also you really don’t want people draining the iPad battery to charge their iPhones.
• Apple generally surprised everyone with the price (and price range). Apple is clearly going after the netbook market, but redefining the netbook to be a wholly new kind of device – not to be a poor man’s laptop or a child’s laptop.

The Engineering Imperatives

It’s quite clear that the iPad is not a hastily assembled device brought to market faster than the speed of thought. Apple has had a tablet project going since at least 2002 and possibly earlier. However it has also been almost forced to market by the emergence of the net book. Apple had to have a product in the $500 price range. It also had to have a migration path for the iPod Touch user. There were engineering considerations which have clearly shaped the product that finally emerged.

• It’s about weight and battery life, more than anything else. Sadly batteries are quite heavy, so more battery means more weight. Increasing the battery life therefore has to involve reducing power consumption. Apple’s achievement here is as yet unsung, but a big part of what makes the iPad special — the A4 chip within.
• The A4 chip is derivative of ARM design in that it embodies the Cortex-A9 MPCore and an ARM Mali 50-series GPU. Additionally the chip includes a memory controller and it runs at 1Ghz.
• Compare this to a netbook and you see immediately that netbooks use 8-14 watts of power and the iPad uses only a quarter of that, (about 2-4 watts, if the specs are accurate).
• The most common screen resolution on netbooks is 1024 x 600. The iPad has 1024-by-768 pixels and you can turn the screen to either portrait or landscape.
• Apart from the connectivity components for Bluetooth, WiFi and (optionally) 3G, the iPad is a chip plus memory plus a one-size-is-all-you-get touch screen. A USB connection would be a potential battery drain, so there isn’t one.
• It’s not clear (to me) why Apple imposes a  one-application-at-a-time limit, except that there are very few situations with the iPad where you need multi-tasking. However the one that may have Apple thinking again is that quite a few people like to listen to music while they work.

Doubtless Apple will sell a large number of iPads and doubtless other vendors will try to compete. It will be interesting to see what compromises they make in their designs.

It’s clear that Apple’s new A4 chip has a much wider destiny that just to power iPads. It, or one of its relatives, will surely be in the next version of the iPhone. It may even acquire a big brother for Apple’s laptop products. Battery life and weight is what it’s all about.

It’s clear to me that Apple is going after the netbook market. The iPad is clearly no netbook, but it has a netbook-like price and it can run the kind of apps that a net book can run. Netbook manufacturers will doubtless have iPad-lookalikes out as soon as they can. In particular, we can expect a few Android-based netbook tablets.