This is where the revolution of an entire industry begins.. again. As it did with the global music industry, and the desktop publishing industry, the smart phone industry…  this time it’s the hardest one to crack of all – the school text book industry (dramatic music). Whilst this might seem a dramatic statement – surely transforming the entire global music industry would be the hardest gig in town – the reality is (in the USA and Australia at least) that the entrenched intra-familial relationship between publishers, retailers, education departments and schools is VERY strong. So strong in fact, that it will take the most mighty Herculean effort on behalf of Apple to crack this particular nut.

We here at ipadaustralia.net allege (allege mind you, this is all very IMHO) that what Apple confronts here is actually an industry within an industry. The target appears to be Books or Text Books, but it is actually a level deeper – the historic and matrix like web of supply that is overseen by school boards and districts (in the US), and education departments, publishers and retailers in Australia. Whilst no particular person or group could be accused of maintaining this ‘union-lock-out’ type of behaviour entrenched in the school book industry, we allege that some kind of system of discounts and subsidies exist that maintain a system where students routinely visit chiropractors, and parents pay the equivalent of a months salary for items that must be ‘updated’ the following year. Surely we are not the only people who observe an almost 1950′s style approach to schooling watching our kids walk to school under the weight of a 1 tonne kerbweight school bag, where everything else they consume is in their ‘smartphone’ hand or on their 2 kg laptop?

Apple have their work cut out here, but the iBook2 app and the free iBooks Author Mac app herald the way forward to bring 21st century thinking and applications to 1950′s style schooling.

What are your thoughts? Do you think we are being too harsh, or do you think that Apple is the best company to work with the education sector in modernising the way it supplies and uses text books?

Please watch the following video for more information.

No matter how slick Toshiba, Asus and the others made their tablets, the look on the faces of the businessmen I demo’d these machines to said it all – after scribbling some text onto the screen with a bulky stylus, they would furrow their brow and mutter..’yeah, but what can I use it for?’. That said it all – tens of millions of dollars poured into so called ‘tablets’ by the biggest computer companies in the world and the outcome … total c%#p. Not to put too fine a point on it… complete and utter c@%p. The majors demonstrated again that they have (had) absolutely NO IDEA how to make a tablet computer and how it could be used effectively.

So here is my premise – the big computer/IT companies had many years to try the create and market (and sell) ‘tablet’ computers and they failed miserably – so they can HAVE the label ‘tablet’, along with the unadulterated failure that this implies. They can own it and have it.

The iPad is not a tablet. The iPad works – it is not a ‘technical’ item, nor does it require a computer degree to operate. It just works. It provides the kind of natural experience that digital media companies have been trying to perfect for years, and only Apple has been able to do it. The years of failure to get people to video call, configure their browsers, set up voice control, the myriad of other shockingly bad interfaces of the past.. this is the legacy of the tablet makers.. not of Apple.

So, to define a product as being within a category you must look at how much that product dominates or competes within that category, what the competition is, the future sales outlook, and finally whether the product will remain viable within the category. The iPad is the category.

Within 12 months 95% of the computer/consumer device buying population will be saying ‘yeah, I’m thinking of buying an iPad’, not ‘yeah, I’m thinking of buying a tablet.’

The iPad is an iPad – it is not a tablet.

Like a brand new gramophone at the turn of the 20th Century, the iPad elicits the same comments such as ‘Wow’ and ‘Amazing’. This is due not only to the simplicity and power of the iPad hardware, but also to the breadth and quality of the Apps developed by Apple and thousands of talented developers across the world.

Here are some of our favourite Apps, with more to come.

iBooks2

Garageband for iPad

iMovie for iPad

Facetime for iPad

Mail for iPad

The base model WiFi iPad 2 with 16GB storage is down to $579.00, down 8% from the original iPad. At this sub-$600 price point, many consumers who have held off buying an iPad will probably take the plunge on March 25. Across all models, the price drop is just shy of 9% – a remarkable achievement by Apple. The top of the line 64GB WiFi+3G model has broken the $1,000 psychological barrier at $949.00.

The main talking point amongst Apple detractors in various IT publications and websites has always been the difference between the US and Australian pricing. Each time Apple releases a product, the usual suspects jump on the supposed pricing disparity whilst completely ignoring the pricing of other computer and IT hardware also available. The iPad 2 pricing shows that Apple can do what no other international IT or software company has ever done – slashed the pricing on a new product to comparative levels lower than US pricing.

New Apple iPad 2 pricing – available March 25

These prices are effective immediately through Apple Online Store, but we would imagine that stock levels in retail stores are going to drop very quickly. So our advice is to go and secure one of these iPad’s as soon as you can.

iPad New Pricing

Most things that were expected have come to pass such as the fact that the iPad 2 is thinner and lighter – as far as Apple goes the raw figures are 33 percent thinner and up to 15 percent lighter. By completely redesigning the iPad 2 case with even better industrial design and manufacturing. Apple have been able to bring the width down from 13.4 mm to 8.8 mm, and the weight down to 590 rams – basically you can almost say half a kilo. These figures are amazing – it is thinner than the iPhone 2!

As far as performance goes this is where the industrial design guys at Apple have surpassed themselves: a dual core A5 processor that will make the iPad 2 much, much faster than the iPad ‘Primo’, which will allow for better performance across the range of Apple Apps, as well as faster switching Apps, starting up and saving documents. Graphics performance is also increased for better gaming performance and general graphics coolness when watching movies or playing guitar in Garageband.

Not only has Apple brought a camera into the equation, it has taken the brilliant FaceTime technology from the iPhone 4 and implemented it into the iPad in a way that works beautifully – a very small front facing camera just like those on the Mac Book and Mac Book Pro’s, and a small camera in the back in the top corner. In other words this is not about the technology – has Apple done what everyone said they should do – it is about the functionality and user friendliness of their Apps- in this case FaceTime. If FaceTime hadn’t been invented by Apple, there probably wouldn’t be two cameras on the iPad 2.

We will have a lot more to say about the new iPad 2 in the coming days. For now the important facts are that it will be released in Australia on March 25 at the same pricing as the current iPad.