Should You Buy the Apple iPad or Wait?

March 15, 2010 By Rob Enderle

Rob Enderle figures out whether to wade into the great unknown that is Apple’s iPad by buying, or wait for others to test the waters.

With Apple’s April 3 launch date for the iPad just around the corner, and preorders quickly piling up, consumers who have been eying Steve Jobs’ latest wonder device since February are quickly needing to choose: Should I buy now, or wait to see how it pans out?

The vast majority of you will wait, a large number will buy, and a significant percentage of buyers will be sorry they did. For those on the fence, I’ve got some thoughts.

Those Who Clearly Shouldn’t Wait

There are a few of us, and I include myself, that get a big kick out of having something no one else has. I’m one of the few that has the large Kindle, and people regularly ask me if it is an iPad, and then want to know more about the Kindle. The attention is kind of fun, and I’m perfectly happy to chat with strangers on technology.

If you really love to have something that no one else has, then you are likely on the short list of folks that should preorder an iPad, or anything else that is hot in the technology segment.

Those Who Should Wait A Bit

If it really upsets you to pay too much for something, then you likely should wait, because Apple is likely to reduce the price of the iPad (we won’t know for a few weeks after launch). Realize that you can actually get a 46-inch, brand new LCD TV for the price of one of these. I just got a Scepter myself from Wal-Mart and, for me that was a better value. If a lot of folks come to the same conclusion, much like they did with the initial iPhone, Apple will have to lower the price a lot, and you’ll be glad you waited.

Typically, first-generation products suffer from initial problems. Other than price, the iPhone had issues with AT&T to turning on the service for the first generation, battery issues with the second, and some initial (I think livable) issues with the third generation. If you don’t like dealing with long wait times for service and generally need to make service calls, you’ll want to wait until after the first wave. On high-demand products like this, any problems can overwhelm service organizations, and it may take a couple of weeks for them to get ahead of the problem.

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Showing 17 comments

Sarah Elizabeth at 8:49am 19th June 2010 No flash??? What are they thinking??? Or not. Sheesh Sarah Liz
Ian Bell at 5:49pm 17th March 2010 You are just as bad by discrediting everything he said. In the process of doing that, you look like a total Apple fanatic.

I know a lot of people that regret buying the first iPhone because it lacked features that were common in the next refresh. What would you say to those people?
David C. at 4:55pm 17th March 2010 As with most ramblings from the mind of Rob Enderle, his logic breaks down pretty quickly. He advises that we go slow with the iPad lest we be amongst a "significant percentage of buyers <that> will be sorry they did." Given that Apple has sold 75 million iPhone OS devices, with the highest approval ratings in the industry, Mr. Enderle's fanciful prognostication is without basis in fact. The iPad is the sixth Apple device using the proven and highly popular iPhone OS. If anything, it's boringly safe and familiar.

Meanwhile, Enderle suggests that we consider Dell's first smartphone instead, or perhaps an e-reader from Notion Ink, a company yet to ship it's first product. Oh, and the Amazon Kindle 3, that'll be an iPad killer for sure!

Typical Enderle baloney. Illogical, unsubstantiated, rot.
ooohnie at 7:47pm 16th March 2010 Yes, I have pre-ordered the iPad for two reasons. 1) I, like you, love new gadgets. 2) After playing with it for a week or two and determining if this device has an excellent word processor, I will give it to my 77 year old mom who is writing a book and is currently having issues with MS Windows and Word (too many pop-up updates for her and too much of her time spent getting frustrated). If this product is as easy to use as the iPhone, she should be a lot more productive. If it doesn't work for her, I'll use it for ebooks, net-surfing and games.
Lesley at 6:09pm 16th March 2010 In a word - convergence. I'm one of those people who does want one device that does everything. I too have a gen 1 Kindle, a Blackberry that's hooked into my company email and calendar, an iPod Touch (which I am typing this post on), and a wireless laptop, and I want to retire them all. Obviously the iPad won't let me do that, but it's a step in the right direction. See my post titled Convergence: A Wish List on the General Discussion forum.
dang at 10:38am 16th March 2010 I'm waiting. I'm not concerned too much about the hardware except battery life. What i'm more worried about is it being just a glorified iPod Touch, and requiring another data plan (since I do have the iPhone.) I wouldn't pay for two data plans.

That's why I like the Kindle, etc. No monthly costs.
williamiPad at 9:04am 16th March 2010 Personally, I am going to buy one -- but first I will need to see some Youtube vids of it in action. bookmarked
Free Apple IPad at 4:09am 16th March 2010 Buy it right now, trust me you won't regret it.
warren at 10:56pm 15th March 2010 Now we're speaking the same language. :-D
Ian Bell at 10:33pm 15th March 2010 Argh, now you are making me want to get one....must resist the lure haha.

I am going to still wait for the reviews though...and my hope is that with the latest iPhone update adding multi-tasking, perhaps Apple will add it to the iPad as well. Sure would be nice to stream Pandora while reading.
warren at 9:02pm 15th March 2010 Agreed, the pictures are definitely a bit deceiving. Like you I primarily want something for books and magazines. I use the Zinio reader on my mac for magazines which is great. Cuts down on the clutter of magazines around the house and its a LOT cheaper to get magazines through zinio than magazine shops. Finally, Zinio also has recently launched and iPhone app that I am sure will be available on the iPad as well.

However, I can think of a bunch of times that I am reading a magazine or book where I'd also like to dig deeper in a topic I just read and I need a browser to do that. Add to that the flexibility of all the apps available at the app store and the iPad seems to be a winner for me as its starting price is the same as a Kindle DX.
Ian Bell at 8:49pm 15th March 2010 I didn't know that - thanks. It definitely looks large in the pictures. I would still prefer that it be smaller, but your point about magazines needing more space is definitely true, especially the new interactive magazines that will be coming out (like the Wired demo I saw).
warren at 8:29pm 15th March 2010 Actually, the iPad is virtually identical in size to the Kindle DX. It's about .1 inch thicker and 1 inch shorter than the Kindle DX.

The smaller 6inch Kindle is very small indeed, which is fine for books, but much less ideal for Magazines which are really not designed to be consumed in such a small form factor. Additionally, robbing a magazine of its color is certainly less than ideal.
doublel at 7:52pm 15th March 2010 The only thing keeping me from buying an iPad is wondering what is coming next with the next generation iPhone and their data plans. So far, everything appears to be a separate plan (iPad data is separate from iPhone data), and even family plans that share voice minutes require each iPhone to pay for data. If AT&T or some other provider would sell a a $69-99 data plan that includes all 3G/wifi devices in the family, then I'll jump all over that.

As it stands today, one wild I've had was to downgrade from my 1G iPhone to a regular cell phone (it will probably make me miserable at first) then add an iPad with unlimited data. Sure it's a larger device to carry around, but the iPad is more usable than an iPhone due to screen real estate and it's much lighter/smaller than my laptop.
Ian Bell at 7:43pm 15th March 2010 Its quite large compared to other eReaders like the Kindle or Nook
warren at 6:01pm 15th March 2010 Too big? It's half an inch thick and weighs a pound and a half... I guess to each his own, but they said the same thing about phones at one point. "I don't want a phone that could do other things, I just want to be able to talk to people and have an mp3 player, a PDA, and a GPS device." This to me is a backwards thinking argument. Fortunately, companies watch the trends of the demand for convergence and convenience.
Ian Bell at 4:29pm 15th March 2010 As an eReader the iPad is still pretty big to me. I don't need an eReader that tries to be all things, a phone, laptop, etc. I just want a small, think screen that is in color. Simple: Replaces a book or magazine - nothing more.