Ipad at the Gates

01Apr10

Are iPads going to invade college campuses this fall?  That’s a question that popped into my mind as I contemplated the immanent arrival of my own iPad.  With a rumored initial order of over 500,000 iPads, Apple likely already knows the demographics of its early adopters.  The rest of us are left to guess how the 2010-11 freshman class is going to meet its computing needs.

Apple Adoption

Last year our IT office reported 49% Mac use among the incoming freshman class.  I’m sure among those entering with laptops the percentage was even higher.  Apple has seen huge growth year-over-year within Furman’s freshman class, and I’m certain we are the rule and not the exception.

iPad versus the Macbook

Macbook and Macbook Pros have been the favorites among our students.  Would this crowd consider ditching these stalwarts for an iPad?  There are two ways to think about this.  On one hand, parents have made a huge investment in sending their child to college, and they want to make sure the child has the right equipment to give them the best chance of success (this thought pattern often includes a new car).  So what’s another $1500 on a laptop for the peace of mind in knowing they’ve provided the best computer possible?  This kind of thinking will likely reduce the number of students entering with iPads.  Let’s be honest, though — iPads really can do everything the typical college student needs to do on a computer.  iWork, along with the keyboard doc, takes care of the term papers and presentations.  Email and web browsing (minus Flash) are no sweat.  Even video and photo editing are now taken care of with third-party apps. And at $500 for the entry-level model, you could buy the newest model each year for the next 3 years and still break even with the cost of MB pro.  However, kids these days have likely already used a laptop for high school work.  Are they going to be ready to give that up to take an iPad to college?  Not likely.  In the end, I think we will see huge numbers of kids show up with iPads, but they’ll be used as very expensive mobile accessories to the more typical laptop computing experience.

The Big Boom

I think some folks who would have stretched to afford a Macbook will instead choose the iPad.  But the real explosion will happen when the baby boomers wake up and realize they don’t have to be chained to a slow, buggy, virus-riddled, confusing Windows PC camouflaged as a money pit.  The day after Apple’s iPad keynote I called my mother and mother-in-law to tell them the computer that “just works” has finally arrived.  Is that the market that Apple is aiming for?  I think so.  They’ve obviously missed the mark with the “tech elite,” who I think have missed the point.  Is it a closed system?  Mostly.  But that’s just what the average computer user is dying to have right now, even if they don’t know it yet.  Is this what the average college student will want?  Probably not as their primary computer, but as a lust-worthy accessory the answer is a definite yes.

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