The Apple iPad – My Personal Questions

March is just around the corner. And we are at about the halfway point between product announcement and availability. The iPad is coming.

From the very day of the product announcement, we have all been filled with questions, enthusiasm and doubt about this next product from Apple – the veritable king of all things marketing.

People want to know what will be changed from the announcement to the shipping product. Will a camera be added? Will multi-tasking be enabled? (or will people need to ‘jailbreak’ their iPads in order to achieve this).  Will they really be able to do ‘work’ on this new device? Will Apple open up the entertainment applications on the iPad to better support personal content, and other forms besides just content purchased from Apple iTunes? The list of questions is endless.

Being in the storage business, I have a question of my own – will a 16GB iPad with the USB Camera adapter be able to read and play from a USB attached external hard drive?

I mean, imagine if you could carry around an iPad… Do your email on it. Surf the web on it. And have the coolest personal media player around! Now 16GB isn’t a lot of space for those of us who have created vast media libraries. Even the top of the line 64GB model isn’t enough (and the price point is beyond rational for a media player). So… I would like to have that USB adapter on the 30 pin connector, and have my 500GB external drive plugged into that, giving me access to ALL my movies, music, pictures and more.

Now I would really be able to carry an excellent experience with me – share pictures on a gorgeous large screen, support more than a single viewer when watching a movie, and more.

So yeah… I want to connect my Seagate FreeAgent Go to my (soon to be coming) iPad, and have access to all my favorite content. I won’t need that in my home – it’s all on the network. But when I’m on that cross country airplane trip, and the entertainment system on the plane consists of a ceiling mounted cathode ray tube monitor (you know the ones)? I want my own stuff, and much better quality.

Anyone know if this will work? Or do I have to wait for the product to ship to find out?

Let me know!