Having been a technology rebel all this time, I finally entered an apple istore yesterday to checkout the new ipad2 which is a fantastic new piece of mobile technology released by the company which introduced the "pad" to the world. Being the hater of apple as I am and the fan of open source affordable technologies, why I decided to go see the ipad2 would seem a bit daft especially when there are at least two new android 3.1 honeycomb powered tablets hitting the market. The reason for this act of lunacy was that after reading countless reviews, watching numerous unboxings and paying keen attention to the comparisons on YouTube on the very same throw away piece of technology I'm writing this post on, I have come to realise that technology wise there is not much difference between the proprietary ios powered ipad2 and the open source android 3.1 powered Galaxy Tab 10.1 or the Lenovo IdeaPad K1. The unique selling propositions (USPs) of the android 10.1 powered tablets are (i) the ability to run flash animations and (ii) the ability to use widgets which are not featured in the ipad2 and most probably never will be. I was extremely happy to see these features of android which outshine the ipad until I realised that the pieces of technology which are running an open source operating system have taken a page out of the apple book and have started charging premium for what they offer. In comparison, the original premium brand has reduced the price of their ipad2 and is planning to launch much cheaper pieces of technology such as the cheaper iphone4 in the very near future. This came as quite a shock to me!
As an advocate of affordable technologies, I now had to advocate the use of the premium apple brand which always catered to a niche market. However, as it has become the more affordable piece of technology I had to ask myself some tough questions. The first question was "will I miss not having flash enriched browsing?" and the answer was no. The second question was "are there any apps on android which I will not find substitutes for in ios?" and surprisingly enough the answer was still no. Then I thought I might have to pay a lot of money for the smart cover which was designed as a part of the ipad2 itself and still the answer was no as a "not very smart" cover for one of the android powered devices would set me back much more. So considering all of these facts, there is not much keeping me away from an ipad2 and the ios which I have never used before and thought I would never will. However, as a savvy consumer I had to identify the best piece of technology for my hard earned money and at present I would have to say that it is the ipad2. This new revelation has made me see the technology landscape from a whole new perspective where premium brands like apple are looking at the throwaway aspect of technology. Gone those days when open source was the power of the techno hippies who wanted to change the world. The way things are going in the technology market today, a whole new price war will soon breakout when all the players fight for that niche where users look for affordable pieces of technology rather than premium pieces.
