Apple's new 'Life on iPad' minisite shows off the tablet's more unusual uses

With the holiday season just around the corner, Apple has launched a microsite singing the praises of the iPad in an attempt to mark it out as no ordinary tablet thereby making it more attractive to gift-hunting consumers.

We're already aware that the iPad can be used as a games machine, Web browser, image viewer, movie player, e-reader, and chopping board, but the tech giant also wants us to know that companies and organizations around the world are using it for a lot more besides.

At the top of its new minisite is the Life on iPad video (below) that it rolled out with the launch of the iPad Air last month, a video in which we got a flavor of some of the more unusual ways in which its tablets, both big and small, are used.

In the video we get to see a man on a massive wind turbine working diligently with his iPad, a scuba diver swiping while swimming, surgeons viewing innards - it's all there - at the end there's even a guy stuck on the side of a mountain in a tent, with an iPad. It's worth watching the video to the very end just to get an eyeful of this hugely spectacular shot (or just skip).

All kinds of people

Heading past the video, Apple invites us to explore the stories of six different users of its tablet, from wind service technicians to Broadway show choreographers to Japanese liver surgeons.

'Wind service technicians work in tight spaces at great heights, in windy conditions and extreme temperatures,' Jennifer Dillon of Siemens Energy Wind Service says, before hitting us with a darn good reason for why they now use tablets: 'They used to contend with thousands of pages of paper, too.' All that paper next to those fast-turning fan-like blades really is asking for trouble.

Broadway director Jeff Whiting explains how he, too, can now work paper-free.

'I was, lugging around three giant 3-ring binders everywhere I went,' Whiting says, adding, 'Before iPad, we had to document all the choreography and staging manually, by drawing on pieces of paper.'

As for the surgeons, they've developed an app for the tablet to help minimize risks involved with liver surgery. The app, which provides access to detailed 3D surgical data and uses AR to show complex vascular systems during operations, helps 'reduce complications and shorten the length of surgeries,' according to Yokohama-based surgeon Dr. Itaru Endo.

Whether Apple's new Life on iPad site can really help to boost sales of its tablet this holiday season is anyone's guess, but what it does show us are the myriad of uses people around the world are finding for its popular slate.