The iPad: Ready for the masses

When the iPhone launched in 2007, it was celebrated as a vision but derided as a luxury. Two years later, everybody and their mom had one. When the iPad launched, buyers -- softened by the love they had for their smartphone -- were more eager to accept the pitch, but it was expensive and its point was questionable. With Apple's Wednesday press announcement, the iPad is closer to the "everybody and their mom" phase than ever before. With the "new iPad," Apple makes a dual proposition that consumers will find harder than ever to resist. First, you get, yes, a new iPad. Its screen makes it easier to enjoy both plain old black-and-white text and thrilling 1080p video action. It has a 5-megapixel camera, a dramatic increase in quality over the previous model. It also gets a quad-core processor and 4G LTE connectivity. While many (most?) people won't take advantage of those last two, they round out the complete list of advantages that makers of competing Android tablets can no longer claim to have over the iPad. Related story: The iPad at 2: "Huge impact" on our lives I played with the new iPad, and could write all the reviews of it right now: "The best iPad yet. If you were holding out, now's the time to buy it." That's because the only criticism of past iPads that doesn't go away with the new model is that its super shiny screen still can't be seen easily in sunlight -- and this doesn't seem to concern Apple's designers. But that's not all. No, for people who value saving money over scoring the latest and greatest toys, the amazingly competent iPad 2 is still available, in its baseline Wi-Fi and 3G configurations, for $100 less than before. In other words, $200 may get you a Kindle Fire, but $400 will get you an iPad. That $100 price drop could go a long way, according to my friend Ross Rubin, principal analyst at NPD Connected Intelligence, who was also at the Apple launch event. "Mainstream acceptance tends to be driven more by price," he says.Still, Rubin explained to me, the evolution of the new iPad helps fill in the bigger picture. It strengthens the argument that these tablets really are capable of replacing computers. "The increase in horsepower and the examples of sophistication in the new [iWork and iLife] apps show the iPad is becoming a stronger contender to being a primary computing device for more customers." While there are plenty of people who want -- and can afford -- a tablet just for gaming, viewing, browsing and reading, the larger market has to weigh purchasing this or a real live "computer," such as a laptop. Microsoft is launching Windows 8 this fall with the iPad in its crosshairs: Windows is for real computing, goes the thinking, while iPads are for media consumption. "This sets the stage for Apple to compete against Windows on tablets. Productivity is Microsoft's core legacy and strength," says Rubin. (Msnbc.com is a joint venture of Microsoft and NBC Universal, but that doesn't grant us privileged access to Microsoft products, nor does it influence our opinion of them.) What is at stake isn't just the fledgling tablet business but the next phase of personal computing itself. In terms of market share (but not necessarily profits), Apple lost the first personal computing war to Microsoft, and is losing the smartphone war to Google's Android platform. The new product lineup represents Apple's moves against those enemies, while the company still has the upper hand. In fact, "with its new model and lower pricing on the popular iPad 2 model, Apple Inc. is poised to retake some of the media tablet market share lost to Android competitors in the fourth quarter of 2011," research firm IHS said Wednesday. Apple's global media tablet shipments for this year 2012 will be 61 percent, up from 57 percent in the fourth quarter of 2011. "Microsoft is attacking Apple from above and Android is attacking from below, and Apple has pushed back against both with today's announcements," says Rubin.