iPadReviews.com

AllThingsD has a post on a BNET interview about the iPad with Bill Gates. AllThingsD points out that Gates has long been an evangelist for tablet PCs, but that he’s not impressed by Apple’s new variation on the device. Referencing the BNET interview, AllThingsD says: Gates–who evidently finds the iPad neither magical nor revolutionary–diplomatically dismissed it.“You know, I’m a big believer in touch and digital reading, but I still think that some mixture of voice, the pen and a real keyboard–in other words a netbook–will be the mainstream on that,” Gates said. “So, it’s not like I sit there and feel the same way I did with iPhone where I say, ‘Oh my God, Microsoft didn’t aim high enough.’ It’s a nice reader, but there’s nothing on the iPad I look at and say, ‘Oh, I wish Microsoft had done it.’”

How could Bill Gates (and so many others) not understand that the iPad is, first and foremost, a media consumption device? The iPad will only be as good as the media that can be consumed on it and the user experience associated with consuming that media (ease of use, cost, etc). Much of this will be driven by Apple's unmatched iTunes, which offers a near flawless experience for accessing music, movies, TV, audio podcats/books, and soon "physical" books with the launch of iBooks, and, of course, apps/gaming. This is what seperates Apple's products from any other "media gadget." It is also why the iPad cannot be compared with previous incarnations of a tablet device. Those were all focus on offering a PC-like experience, not a media consumption experience (partially due to the fact that digital media simply was not available to be consumed the way it is today).

Read the full AllThingsD post here: http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/20100210/bill-gates-on-ipad/