I'm not standing in line for an iPad 2. In fact, I've never stood in line for any new technology.
It's not that I don't want the shiny new things. I do. Believe me, I do! But one aspect of the American psyche that I haven't been too great at embracing is the correlation with want and need.
I'm a content producer. On a weekly basis, I produce at least one podcast, sometimes two or three. I might lay down a story narration or voiceover ad as a favor for a podcasting friend. I lay down, edit and convert voice prompts for IVRs. I might create and edit a video using native and imported footage. Between the Spoken blog and this one, I compose two or three blog posts a week. In the office, I create a Keynote or PowerPoint presentation, usually entailing a finely edited screen capture video. It's likely during the week that I'll also whip up some marketing copy in Word and then use OmniGraffle to design the pages and covert to customer-friendly PDF.
And while I drool over the iPad2 just as heavily as any self-respecting Apple geek girl, I realize that its beauty lies in content consumption, not creation. I would love to have an iPad for the following specialized uses:
- More easily running HootSuite to document live events
- More easily taking notes at live events
- More easily giving Keynote presentations
- More easily accessing RSS feeds and reading newspapers and magazines
Notice a theme? An iPad would be nifty, but I can already do all of the tasks I would ask of an iPad; it's simply that this device would reportedly make each of those tasks a bit easier. And the lightweight format would be a nice choice for the occasions when I want to leave my laptop at home.
But... Want. Don't need.
My next pilgrimage to the Apple store will be for a MacBook or MacBook Pro, an upgrade to my current system that can do the heavy lifting of content creation.
Don't get me wrong, though. If Jobs wanted to, say, throw in a free iPad with a MacBook Pro sale, I wouldn't kick it outta my laptop bag.