“The iPad is the beginning of a new category‚ one that is hyper-convergent and humanistic.” (via designmind)
I am definitely impressed with some things (and less impressed with others), though I personally wouldn’t buy one until perhaps the 2nd or 3rd generation. That seems to be the trend for my purchasing of Apple products, anyway.
Regarding the possibilities for the iPad as a gaming device… it seems there is major potential, although it may not be as attractive to developers as Apple would like. Gamasutra had a good summary.
“…although Apple’s official specs page simply lists “accelerometer,” an Apple representative at the event told me the device’s accelerometer will be able to detect tilting on both the X and Y axes, unlike the iPhone, unlocking true 3D control as a possibility, but this capability was not demonstrated.”
True 3D control? Old school arcade turret games come to mind…
“The iPad will be as big a crap shoot for developers as the iPhone is. Forstall promised “another goldrush” when the iPad launches. But that promise, rather than exciting them, might make most developers a little queasy.”
A bigger crapshoot, I’d say. Especially within the first generation.
Also … still no Flash(!) – but Unreal Engine 3 on the other hand… the combination of low cost SDK/developer access and Unreal’s free UE3 licensing plan is an explosion of UE3 content waiting to happen, provided it sees support for non-PC dev.
Having spent some time designing for user interaction and interface on the Civilization Revolution iPhone/iPod Touch port here, I’m pretty excited to see the beta SDK for iPad roll out… I want to see the capacity for multitouch recognition. Two players simultaneously? Four?