Opinion: Why iPad isn't the worth the cash, but you'll buy one anyway

According to Steve Jobs, it's thin, beautiful, crazy powerful - all-in-all a magical device. A lot of people seem to agree with him, too, as well over a million of the $499+ iPads have been sold.

But while there are plenty of early adopters with money to burn, the more pertinent question for us normal people is: will iPad really change your life in the way zenmaster Jobs seems to think?

Having used it daily for over a month, I understand the appeal, (although for the sake of honesty, I should point out, I didn't shell out my own cash to gain my iPad).

In terms of its design and ergonomics, it's a Goldilocks device: it feels just right. So while everyone says it's smaller than they expected, it's actually just the right size. Jonathan Ives and his design team don't get things like that wrong.

It's heavy enough to demonstrate its value, but light enough to be held one handed. In landscape mode - which I like so much I lock the aspect ratio to this with the neat physical switch on the side - picking it up in both hands is very natural, as is resting it on your lap (which is what I'm doing as I type this).

The aluminium case also provides excellent rigidity, while the screen is well graded in terms of its colour tone, if much too shiny in direct sunlight.

The physical aspects of the iPad, though perhaps important in terms of justifying price, aren't crucial. Clearly, what you can do with the iPad is the measure of its worth.

Of course, we're still in the very early stage of its lifespan in terms of the dedicated software that will be released. For example, there have been some nice games - mainly reworked versions of iPhone releases - but nothing that can truly take the title 'killer app'.

That's not a problem for most people, though. Few will buy an iPad with gaming as their primary function. And while there are plenty of productivity apps, few have the immediacy of those on iPhone.

To a degree this is due to the iPad's lack of mobility. It has a bigger screen, but for that reason you're unlikely to be carrying it around as you would your phone.

Equally, voice calls aside, one of the other key replacement features of an iPhone is its use as a camera. This may come in time to iPad, but for the moment its lack is an definite issue, particularly for all the photo apps that are so popular on iPhone.

Indeed, perhaps the biggest discussion point for iPad is the level of creativity it enables.

Sure, you can do creative things on it. It's good for people who want to draw for example. I've been using Adobe Idea (below), and while it's not quite as flexible as pen and paper, it's infinitely more accessible.

There will be people who make beautiful art with their iPads, perhaps even edit movies and write plays, but these will be in the minority, and it's at this level that I think the iPad fails.

The fixed nature of the hardware - no indirect control peripherals or easily accessed I/O connections - will always be a limitation that app developers will have to work very hard to overcome.

Quite a looker

What iPad does best is be a beautiful screen for consuming pre-created media. To that extent, it's more like a TV screen than a computer screen. This has been demonstrated by the popularity of apps such as Netflix and ABC.

Reading is another solid iPad feature. Personally speaking, my favourite app is the free New York Times, which brings a daily dose of the newspaper's news, features, and opinions. The iBooks is a nice extra, too, although the iPad is slightly too heavy to match the flexibility, let alone the tactile nature, of real books.

All in all however, these are leisure not creative activities.

It handles some prosaic tasks very well - email, web browsing (non Flash so no BBC iPlayer at present), YouTube etc.

Its best quality in this respect is its immediacy. No one is going to switch on their computer to check webpages or email with an iPad. But then again you can already do that sort of thing on your smartphone/iPhone, and that's always on and always with you too.

Yet, despite what I said earlier in the article, the bottom line when it comes to iPad's value isn't what it can do.

Its value is much more subtle than that, no matter what Apple says about it being a netbook replacement. Actually, size apart, you couldn't imagine something that's less of a netbook replacement than an iPad.

Instead, it is its own unique thing and its value is purely that you want to own one.

It sits at apex of the dominant form of existential consumerism that exploded in the early 21st Century, and now - in the west at least - seems to be on the way out as we drown in individual and national debt.

So you want an iPad? No problem, go get one.

But don't try to convince yourself that it will provide you with $500 of productive value. And even if the enjoyment value you gain is more than $500, know you'll be continuously dipping into your wallet, spending to consume more media on it, because that's what an iPad does best.