Apple announcement: the iPad and you

27 January 2010
12:00 pm

Unless you're living under a rock, you should know that today Apple announced their newest piece of hardware, the iPad. Resembling an oversided, ten-inch iPhone with a modified UI, Apple was quick to tout the device's functionality as a gaming platform, bringing both EA and Gameloft on stage at their keynote to show off modified versions of their existing iPhone games.

While the biggest feature was that iPhone apps on the App Store, including the games, will be playable as-is on the iPad, this announcement wasn't quite as exciting as I was hoping it would be. It's great that existing games can be upscaled to the device's larger resolution, but knowing the device runs the same crippled OS as the iPhone took away a lot of my interest.

Although the new device will support an optional keyboard dock, the point of it is very much to be used as a "slate," resting in your lap while being operated with one hand. That this works with most games on the iPhone at all is due to the device's hand-held size, and I have a hard time picturing games like Eliminate Pro running that well at all if they were moved to a larger device.

However, it's priced surprisingly competitively, with the cost of the base unit at $500.00. But for the hand-held gamer in particular I think you're probably better off sticking to what you have already, whether a DSi, PSP or the actual iPhone.

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Where Joshua buys an iPad
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Review: Eliminate Pro brings multiplayer FPS action to the iPhone
Review: Earth Dragon for iPhone

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