by Toby O'Brien

I've been nurturing a void in my life for a few months now to make space for the long anticipated iTablet/iSlate/iPad from Apple. On the 27th January Steve Jobs put an end to all the rumours and speculation - the iPad was launched.

In the keynote presentation Steve Jobs presented the need for a 3rd mobile device, somewhere between a laptop and a smartphone. He dismissed netbooks, as cheap badly made laptops, and finally came round to launching the iPad.

To be honest, I can't help but feel slightly disappointed. Watching the keynote, I got the impression that even Steve Jobs was slightly underwhelmed by it. I lost count of the number of times that he said 'Isn't it wonderful' in a slightly questioning tone.

From what I can work out it's basically a big iPhone,  It will run any native iPhone app (of which there are now 140,000+), although they're also bringing out a new SDK for iPad only apps.

Here's a run down of some of the things that you can do with it, with a somewhat prejudiced evaluation of how it compares to what's out there already. (Clearly I need to get my hands on one to really do a review justice)

Read books

If you really want something for serious reading you'd be better off using a dedicated eBook reader such as a Kindle. The battery life on the Kindle is up to 2 weeks (compared to 10 hours on the iPad),  there are more books available and the e-ink display means that you won't get so much eye strain. If you just want something to keep you occupied whilst you're killing time on your commute, I've found that iPhone book readers like the free to use Stanza are more than adequate. Or you could just read a book.

Watch TV/films

I'm slightly dubious about whether the iPad is sufficiently portable that you'd whip it out on a train or tube to watch a film, it's probably a bit too big. Although my main concern would be getting it nicked. Which leaves watching films at home - where you're likely to have a HD TV, or desktop PC.

Listen to music

I've got an iPhone

Email

If I'm on the go I'd be checking this on my iPhone, if I'm not on the move I've got access to a desktop or laptop.

Photos

I can imagine this would be a lot more fun to go through photos this way - but with limited input options you'd probably first have to download photos to another computer anyway. Also there's no in-built camera.

Web browsing

This seemed to be the main emphasis of Steve Jobs presentation, describing it as the best browsing experience in the world. The idea being that this would be the ideal platform for reading your daily newspaper. To be fair this did look quite appealing. The flip side is that Apple refuse to support flash as it will endanger their App store revenue. Which is a shame - as the sort of interactivity offered by flash sites would be ideal for this environment.

Work

From a work point of view - I was trying to think where I might use it - maybe for demoing new prototypes of websites. It's the sort of thing that lends itself to being passed round a room to get people to interact with the site to get an idea of how it would look and work. Also it's possible to get the iWork suite of apps for it - so its going to be more useful than an iPhone. I suspect given the choice, that a laptop's going to be a lot easier and efficient to get things done though.

So you can read books, watch films, listen to music, email, look at photos, browse the web. Basically all the things that I can do on my iPhone but without the convenience of being able to put it in your pocket or make phone calls on it (..actually you may be able to make calls on it  - but you would look slightly ridiculous).

In terms of the mainstream apps, I don't know that it really does anything any better than what's out there already. Where I think it might come into it's own is when they start making dedicated creative music and painting applications for it. There's a couple of music making apps that I use for the iPhone that already make good use of the touch screen interface. I could see the advantage of scaling that up and taking more advantage of the larger screen. Or even using it as a controller for synths, mixers or music generators that are hosted on another computer system. Equally if it were possible to run Photoshop or a decent painting application on it, I'm sure lots of creatives would be interested to get their hands on it.

I'm a big fan of Apple hardware but I think the iPad is still a bit too niche - I don't think it really fulfils the 3rd mobile device gap that Steve Jobs is pitching it at. Where the iPad fails is that it's not really any more mobile than a laptop (and does less) and not hugely more useful than an iPhone (and it won't fit in your pocket)

I'd be interested to revisit it when they've bought out a 2nd or 3rd generation iPad with a better specification and some custom killer apps. For the time being though,  I've no longer got an iPad sized hole to fill in my life.