Some purely practical thoughts on the Apple’s new tablet cloud-client

So people are jabbering about this new iPad from Apple Computers. I can’t help feel totally underwhelmed by it. It’s a netbook (whatever Apple may claim – it even has a pathetic 1Ghz processor). A touch netbook without a keyboard and without a proper operating system. It’s a crippled, DRM infested, misfire.

Some practical thoughts with regard to reading comics on it.

• The standard preview images that DC releases are 700×1000 pixels – a third of the print resolution. This is also the approximate resolution of the Apple tablet.
• The average US comic book is 12 inches diagonally. The tablet’s screen size is 9.7 inches, two inches smaller than a standard comic book.
• I just tried printing out a page at the tablet’s 132 dpi resolution and it wasn’t too bad. A full-page should be okay. The speech was readable, however, it is about the limit of what I’d want to read.
• The graphics (size, dpi) are broadly equivalent to a Kindle DX. Of course the Apple tablet is in colour and has better screen update, but the experience in terms of static reading on the screen will be equivalent. A downside of the tablet is that it constantly requires power to display the image whereas the Kindle and equivalent devices only use power when changing the image.
• The Apple-tablet will probably, just about, be okay for reading a standard comic a single page at a time, but in no way whatsoever is it a game changer.
• The screen needs to be at least twice the resolution it currently is to even begin to do justice to comic book art or to even display text at anything approaching a pitch equivalent to the normal printed page.

Nice try Apple, but no cigar. These devices are okay for reading the equivalent of a newspaper, but they just aren’t good enough to replicate the comic book print experience. The technology just isn’t here yet.