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Today’s Ypulse Youth Advisory Board post comes from Bryan Spencer who offers up his first impression of the iPad as a college student. Remember, you can communicate directly with any member of the Ypulse Youth Advisory Board by emailing them at youthadvisoryboard at ypulse.com…or just leave a comment below!

The Hidden Appeal [For Students] of Apple’s Latest Toy

On January 26th, 2010, Apple introduced the world to the iPad, the latest gadget to make me ask: why pay a premium for an Apple product when there are alternatives that cost less? Or, in other words, the new addition to Steve Jobs’ line up of “IDon’tNeedThisButTheirMarketingWillConvinceMeIDo” products. Like other critics, my peers are describing the iPad as an “oversized iPod Touch that they would never buy.” And with its 9.7 inch screen, 16gb – 64gb of flash memory, the capability to browse the web, listen to music and use apps but NOT make phone calls all matched up with an oversized price tag starting at $499, it’s no stretch of the imagination to see why.

While the mass public might consider the $499 price to be relatively reasonable, no college student I talked to had any intent of purchasing it at that price point. In fact, I recently sat in on an accounting class where students were giving presentations on new technology. The group that focused on the iPad concluded that it was “a few generations and updates away from being prominent, and for now it was just [you guessed it] a larger version of the iPod touch.”

After asking around, it seems most my age feel that the iPad has no appeal as a gaming device because it lacks the power of a full computer, and the portability of something like a DS or PSP. They did however, mention that some kind of physical keyboard would help ease their apprehensions about gaming on the iPad.

Beyond the lack of interest in buying it, there also seemed to be little to no buzz on campus around the cool factor. Personally, I didn’t know about it until my dad brought it up, and he even seemed to know more about the HP Slate, one of its competitors, than he knew about the iPad. Out of the 20 college students I spoke to about the iPad, 8 knew what it was, and a resounding 0 out of 20 said they would ever purchase it. Furthermore, out of those 8, most had only a vague outlines of its capabilities, referring it as a “phone-computer thing.” So With Gen Y uninterested, and other generations not entirely on Apple’s bandwagon, just how is the iPad going to reach its audience?

Again, the key here is in the marketing — Apple is everywhere. iTunes is as universal to music as Michael Jordan is to basketball. Even though iPhones haven’t reached mass adoption, the phrase “There’s an app for that” doesn’t leave you thinking about an Android or Palm app. That’s the reason my friends will go out and spend $50 on a glorified USB drive (iPod shuffle), when the music aisle of Best Buy has an assortment of other branded mp3 players that offer many more features than a permanent “random” mode for half the price.

Then there’s the other market Apple can potentially take over with the iPad: Amazon territory. As I type this, the Kindle team is probably scrambling trying to figure out how their $489, 9.7 inch Kindle will compete with the similarly priced, much better featured, better branded iPad in classrooms across the country. Apple has already announced agreements with major publishers including Hachette, Simon & Schuster, Macmillan, Penguin, and HarperCollins and deals with Random House are also underway with McGraw Hill (once it gets out of the dog house after its CEO’s slip up) likely underway.

Just another way Apple and that darn iPad might make its way into the laps and hearts of college students. And with leading schools like Princeton already using student guinea pigs to experiment with the Kindle DX, all signs point to  eTextbooks coming sooner than later. More fodder for the competition? The Princeton student’s unethused reviews that the Kindle was occasionally too slow performing being met by Steve Jobs’ emphasis on the speed of the iPad with its in-house built 1GHZ processor. Think Apple was listening to the students when they mentioned that? For a college student committed to an e-reader purchase, deciding between a gray scale, slower, Kindle DX, or the speedy do-it-all Apple eReader might seem like less of a choice than a foregone conclusion… especially when mom and dad are paying for it.

Personally, I wouldn’t buy an iPad for its gaming/movie/music appeal, since my laptop and iPhone can cover that. However, using it as an e-reader does strike a chord, especially the convenience of having all my textbooks consolidated into a tidy electronic format. Then again while my primary draw to the iPad over the Kindle might be for scholastic purposes… its great extra features do raise one more issue for educators: more tech distractions in the classroom.

About Bryan

Bryan is a lost soul. Not in a bad way, as it keeps things interesting in life. When he is not studying Marketing at the University of Kansas, Bryan is busy maneuvering his recently started fraternity, mentoring high school student’s from his alma mater, and too often texting. While he tends to spread his talents to many fields, his forte may be in his ability to hold a conversation with just about anyone about the finer aspects of cuisine, both cooking and consuming. He does not hold quite as much writing experience as others on the board, having never taken an English class at the collegiate level. However, he still finds himself too opinionated to not express his thoughts on paper.

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Categorized under: Collegians, Web, Youth Advisory Board

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