Category: Gadgets

In an impressive presentation Steve Jobs introduced the world to the IPad.

What influence will it have on travel? Some preliminary thoughts:

In the preamble Steve explained that Apple is by now bigger than Nokia, Samsung and Sony profitability wise in mobile devices…It may be assumed that it will be rolled out big 60 or 90 days from now.

1. My main question is: Will you be able to leave your laptop (or eee netbook) home for an Ipad? If so, it is a must have. You can e-mail, write, calculate and make key note presentations with it, browse the web, watch photos and videos with it and listen to your music library. It will depend on its touch screen typing capabilities, but even if that is substandard Apple has thought about a docking station with type pad.
2. It seems that by its sheer browsing capability it will enable the travel community to forget about the hassle of adapting their websites to mobile devices with various operating systems.
3. One aspect is that -as Steve Jobs puts it “standing on the shoulders of Amazone’s entry into reading e-books with its Kindle – It incorporates e-book reading. On the basis of the well known Itunes shop model, Apple has lined up 5 major book publishers to sell books through a new IBook shop. As of yesterday it will be start negotiating with many other book publishers. Hurray, back to downloading the good old travel guides onto your Ipad before you go. When I go on holiday, I usually take a couple of good books with me. Now I can carry those in my IPad, which will spare me a couple of kilos weight in my luggage: Poor Airlines who are just trying to get us used to surcharges for our luggage.
4. Apparently Apple is also trying making a dent into the augmented reality scene. With a built in GPS and leaning on Google Maps, it will be amazing how fast you will get a bearing and will be able to collect tidbits in an efficient manner about the location where you are.
5. First I published this photo on my significant other blog because it shows clearly you don’t have to sit at a desk to play/work with your computer properly anymore. I see it as the same sort of liberation the mobile phone brought us. No more desk sitting to await a telephone call. Now you can pute in the park – provided the park has WiFi off course:-)
6. And you know what? No more need for a paper photo album anymore…you’ll now have a wedding album/slideshow/video on your IPad..and can carry it around the world with you.
7. Less travel by it’s undoubted future video conferencing capabilities?…no more sitting in studios for those…
8. No more need for hotels to provide papers to their guests…

Interesting times.

Added:

• Excellent tool for on the road board games! Via Rembuco
• Would it influence the way News is spread? See Nieman Lab

Last edited by Happy Hotelier on January 30, 2010 at 12:15 pm