To our surprise Apple’s iPad delivers most of the features on our touch tablet ‘wish list’. It’s light, thin, has a 9.7” screen, offers 10 hours of battery life and comes with WiFi as standard. The pricing is equally impressive, as a £310/ $499 entry point for a device that brings together personal, mobile and games computing sets a benchmark for other manufacturers.
There are weaknesses, including the cost of adding 3G, the limited functionality of the iPhone operating system and the underpowered ARM processor. The cost of 3G is not such a major problem, as many forms of shared and family gameplay don’t need an active connection or access beyond the home. The inclusion of the iPhone’s OS and poor processing compared to a laptop rules out Mac OS games, but the success of the iStore suggests there’ll soon be plenty of games to play.
The iPad’s screen is going to be 3x the size of the iTouch’s screen
For gamers the obvious ‘hands on’ benefits of an iPad, or similar device, at a £250/ $400 price point, (that cannot be far away), include better graphics, intuitive interfaces, and easily passing gameplay and content around tablets and rooms. Linking multiple tablets to projector displays and co-operative games where players aren’t locked into sharing a single screen will add to the options.
There is likely to be no shortage of games and software for these devices, because of the lower development costs involved in supporting 10” screens. Porting RTS games and shooters to these screens may be problematic but games like Sims 3 seem likely to do well on tablets, largely as a result of the ease of sharing content and experiences through such devices.
The outcomes for education and learning games appear particularly significant due to the price point. At about $300/ student it starts to make a lot of sense to distribute and share electronic content instead of carrying around diaries, library books, magazines, lesson plans, students’ work, etc . . . Particularly when tablets can reduce infrastructure costs by forming ad-hoc local networks and cut software costs by using free software like Google Wave.
The University of Nottingham’s Second Life Open Content Portal
The widespread availability of touch tablets in education also seems suited to exploiting on-going developments in learning and gaming through virtual learning environments, open content schemes and serious gaming. At present students typically visit a lab and, perhaps, do some research or studying on a home PC. With tablets everyone can have moderated access to everything, everywhere.
Overall, the iPad sets a standard which others will have to follow. It may not be the touch tablet that appears in every home and school, but the promise of shared, portable gaming that it delivers is a major step in the right direction. Microsoft and Google seem likely to produce cheaper touch tablets with full operating systems and faster processors in the near future.
The links below concern touch tablets, virtual learning in Second Life and what to expect in learning and education over the next few years:
http://www.nmc.org/publications/2010-horizon-report
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