Oh Tablets...

Nope.. I really meant Tablet PC's like Apple's iPad.

The iPad is spreading like wildfire around me. First a colleague had to get one from the US as soon as it is launched. Then, another colleague pre-ordered it in the UK for him to collect during his holiday. A third got his at the Singapore launch, and the forth colleague got his through an IT initiative in our company.

5 months after it is available availability, I am still figuring out a place for such a device. The iPad fits exactly between a really smart phone (4+" display) and a really light laptop (10" display). In form, it is too large to fit into the pocket and a measly 300g separates it from the lightest netbook available today. In function, it is a lot closer to the mobile phone except it will not make any phone calls.

If the iPad is representation of tablets, the features it chose to sacrifie seems unreasonable.

Yet, the entire segment is thriving as if this is the future of computing. Microsoft reacted almost immediately, hardware makers are announcing Android based tablets. Ignoring the operating environment for a while (be it IOS4, Android, ChromeOS or Windows Mobile), what exactly does this segment entail?

Most of the iPad owners use it as an electronic magazine. I am very impressed by the interactive contents and the brilliant display. Rotate the iPad and the content will rearrange itself around a more pleasant format. So carrying along thousands of magazines and books in a single device sounds like reasonable application, but I rarely do. Even in this arena that appears to favour the iPad, I find my mobile phone more suitable in most cases. It has superior mobility and allows single handed operation.

The owners also use it for browsing the web. This is something I find puzzling. I too do quite a bit of browsing but I prefer a much bigger screen and a physical keyboard. Nevermind that the iPad needs to start supporting flash and java contents. As it stands today, the iPad will only be more suitable than the other devices at home and away from the PC. In this domain, the laptop will be a little less wieldy, and the Nexus one is a little too small. In both counts, they are just tiny annoyances. Personally, I'll pick the laptop anytime (but my iPad owner fan complains about the heat from the laptop...).

Email is the next most important application after the web browser. Users of web-based email services like gmail may disagree but there are folks who still relies conventional email clients. I still do and have it setup on both my Mac and my phone. A friend prefers iPad's soft keyboard to his black berry. I prefer to swype. Either way, the Nexus One is already a very capable email platform and only gets annoying when I need to write very complex email messages. I do not see iPad being excellent at that, perhaps a tiny bit more tolerable.

The problem listed is not unique to the iPad or its software but rather the hardware form factor. The bit of use cases it fills does not justify my carrying around an extra device. It is not going to replace either my mobile phone nor my laptop. In fact, it is not even designed to. I only occasionally carry my laptop home and do not miss any intermediate device along the way. The iPad would only be additional weight for those days. When I do bring along my laptop, the iPad will not serve any purpose.

From its inception, the iPad (and tablets) seems like a solution in search of a problem. Silver bullet for all of IT's woes or placebo tablets, the device is borderline useless to me. Obviously I am not in the target segment for such a device. But between the mobility of a smart phone and the functionality of a netbook, is there really such a huge market?