The
Apple iPad, goes on sale this weekend. Tons of buzz surrounds Apple's tablet, but one has to wonder how it stacks up against the similar but smaller,
iPhone and
iPod touch. Each device is multitalented, but which will best fit your needs? We've come up with five personas to help guide you when making the tough choice between an iPad, an iPhone, and an iPod touch.
The Commuter
If you spend a lot of time sitting on trains or planes, you probably want to kick back with a movie, book, or a magazine. The iPad is the best media device of Apple's three gadgets, and it has two other bonuses for the traveling businessperson: the iBooks e-reader app and iWork for editing documents.
The iPhone is smaller and easier to carry, but the iPad offers much more to help pass the time. Its benefits outweigh the fact that it can't fit in your pocket. After all, it is only 1.5 pounds and is lighter and thinner than a netbook.
Perhaps the two biggest reasons the scale is tipped in the iPad's favor are its 9.7-inch, capacitive multitouch display and iBooks. If you are in for a long commute, the larger screen will help
save your eyes when watching movies rented from iTunes. Apple's iBooks is an impressive-looking e-book reader that displays titles in full color, has impressive page turning graphics, and allows readers to quickly flip through pages.
Add those to an already built-in iPod (and all its functionalities) with a
long battery life, and the iPad has this category licked.
Best Bet: iPad
The Social Networker
The iPhone is the premier mobile social networking tool, and nothing has changed there. The iPhone makes clear 3G phone calls, sends and receives text messages, and sports a camera—all social-network-friendly features that the iPad doesn't quite match.
The iPhone offers just as fluid a computing experience as the iPad, but fits in your pocket, so you can take it everywhere you go. Its pocketability and always-on, 3G connectivity make it by far the best device for checking in on FourSquare or Tweeting your dinner menu, while folks with mere iPods hunt for Wi-Fi hotspots. And we probably won't be seeing too many people whipping out iPads at a sporting event or restaurant for a quick status update.
Best Bet: iPhone
The Casual Gamer
The iPad takes the existing iPod Touch gaming experience and makes it more cinematic. There will already be plenty of existing iPhone apps that you can purchase that will be scaled up to fit the iPad's screen as well as iPad-specific games. As Apple and third-party developers start to create platform-specific features for their games, the iPad's gaming experience should tower over the iPhone's.
Game creators have a larger canvas to work with on the iPad; the tablet has a screen resolution of 1024-by-768, while the iPhone/iPod is 480-by-320. The faster A4 processor, meanwhile, should boost action games to a new level.
Best Bet: iPad
The Businessperson
This one's tough, with the iPhone and iPad running a close race. Initially, the iPhone's go-anywhere Internet connectivity helps it become useful in a wide range of business scenarios. However, after its release, the iPad could pull away.
Both devices offer over-the-air push e-mail, calendar, and contacts from your
Microsoft Exchange server or other standard-based servers. But the iPad is faster, with its 1-GHz Apple A4 processor, and its larger screen offers more room for Safari Web browsing or for vertical business apps. An Apple keyboard dock turns the iPad into a quasi-laptop; Apple's other handhelds don't have physical keyboard options.
The iWork suite for the iPad offers touch-enabled word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation software for business users. With this feature the iPad becomes more of a portable workstation than Apple's other options. Add on the keyboard, and you might be able to do without a
laptop.
Best Bet: iPad
The Budget-Conscious Buyer
We didn't forget about those of you on a budget. The iPod Touch provides the total Apple experience for less cash than either of its siblings. You give up the iPhone's 3G and the iPad's size, but you get to keep hundreds of dollars in unspent monthly fees. You can buy an 8GB iPod touch for $199; the 32GB and 64GB devices will cost you $299 and $399 respectively. You can connect to the Web with Wi-Fi, and can add Skype to your iPod touch for phone calls.
iPad pricing goes like this: $499 (16GB Wi-Fi); $599 (32GB Wi-Fi); $629; $699 (64GB Wi-Fi); (16GB Wi-Fi + 3G); $729 (32GB Wi-Fi + 3G); and $829 (64GB Wi-Fi + 3G). And you need to pay for monthly AT&T service on the 3G-enabled models.
The iPhone 3G is just $99, and the 3GS costs $199 for 16GB and $299 for 32GB, but then you have to tack on your monthly voice and data fees.
Best Bet: iPod touch
It is expected that Jobs would make the key note address at Apple's annual Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco ( WWDC 2010) , where Apple has unveiled several of its products in the past.
