Apple's subtle changes to its iPad and iMac lines have been made with the intent of world domination, says Matt Warman
It was hardly a month ago that Tim Cook took to the stage to announce the iPhone 6, a device that has already become the fastest-selling iPhone ever. This week the Apple chief executive was back again, announcing upgrades to the world’s most successful tablet, the iPad - it’s become an annual routine that asserts Apple’s dominance of consumer electronics just as users are wondering what to buy for Christmas. Now millions have the answer they were after.
And while the announcements of this week were not on the scale of the iPhone 6 upgrade, they nudged the iPad further into the territory of the fully fledged computer, able to play games and manipulate the videos and photos that more and more users are now taking. Apple is eager to set them, too, in the context of its other devices: from the Watch it will release next year through to the professional-grade iMac, it has every family and business covered better than ever before. As Geoff Blaber, an analyst at CCS Insight, observed, the real opportunity for iPad growth will come from businesses increasingly adopting them in the workplace.
And there was an announcement not mentioned on stage, too, that was an attempt by Apple to leverage its global power: iPads will now be available with a SIM card that can switch networks pre-installed. For now that will simply make international roaming between the UK and America a lot cheaper, but in due course one can envisage firing up an iPad or iPhone and being presented immediately with a host of competing tariffs, allowing users to choose the best for them. Only Apple has the scale to get networks to agree to such an idea.
That scale, too, will be what means Apple will shape the first mainstream generation of smartwatches: it announced the first chances for developers to start producing their own software for its Watch, and although Google has already made strides in this area, Apple’s power with people who write great software will inevitably drive them to the iPhone maker.
With that in mind, new, only slightly upgraded iPads look like the glue holding a new era of technology together.
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