It wasn’t until I saw this video of what Penguin Publishing is thinking of creating for the iPad that I realized how awesome of a device this will be.
Seriously, watch the video before reading any more of this entry. Alright…you done? Let’s chat.
I will admit that I probably wouldn’t even use any of the books that they advertised…kids books, anatomy books, star books…but it’s the concept of what they can do with a book that amazes me. Look at what a kid can do with this device (although I had a great laugh at someone’s comment about they would LOVE to let their kid play with their $500 device!)! Look at how you can click to see inside a human body.
Imagine what it would be like reading a book on this device if it was implemented properly. I can envision the following….imagine you are reading The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown and they mention a painting. You could click and see the painting, or perhaps the specific section they are speaking about. They do that now with the Illustrated Version of the book. Imagine if you come to a word that you just don’t understand. You could highlight it and run a Dictionary search to find out what it means.
Imagine if you were online and enable comments on a page of a book. Perhaps you could tap into what people say about a particular passage of a book…imagine if you are doing a book report and someone has already commented on specific themes in the book and highlights where they appear. Or if you wanted to find the Top Ten phrases uttered by someone in the novel. Voila, they are there!
Until today, I was on the fence about the iPad. I figured it wasn’t impressive as a piece of hardware. But much like the iPod Touch, the magic is in the applications that people build for it. Kind of like how your computer isn’t something to be impressed with, but the software you install *is* what is impressive. I think I’ll be taking the plunge for the iPad solely on the excitement of what people will develop for it in the future.