01.28
See what I did there? Clever, eh?
Truth time: Apple missed the mark. They’ve made a mistake. They fucked up. They’re fallible after all. The iPad is not, in anyway, under any circumstances a good product. It has no purpose, it has nothing new. It is not the future of computing, or media consumption or anything. It’s pointless and dumb. It’s a big iPod Touch.
For starters, it runs a prettied up version of the iPhone OS, as opposed to a stripped down version of their full OS, OSX. This means that you’re immediately limited to what the iPhone is capable of doing. This means no running multiple applications (like a web browser and a Twitter client), no flash support (so until HTML5 becomes the web standard, you can forget about watching streaming video), no installing application outside of Apple’s App Store walled garden. Now, while this is all OK when you’re talking about a phone, it’s utterly pathetic to place those sort of restrictions on a computer. And that’s what the iPad is. It’s a computer.
But here’s the problem. It’s a unnecessary computer. The limitations of the iPhone OS basically rule it out for anyone that actually wants to use it for serious computing. This means that you’re going to have to stick to your laptop. But if you’re carrying a laptop around (and probably a smart phone), what do you need the iPad for? Answer: you don’t. It’s needless. If I want to work, I’ll use the laptop. If I want to listen to music/watch a video I’ll use my smart phone. There’s absolutely no conceivable reason why I’d want to carry around a third device, whose entire portfolio of functions are already performed as good, if not better, by the two devices I already have.
“But it’s not a computer!” I hear you saying, “It’s a multimedia device.” Well, no. If it was a multimedia device I’d be able to play all my videos on it. Videos that are not in iPod friendly format, videos I didn’t buy off iTunes and videos that I don’t want to spent days converting. The point of a multimedia device is that it plays my multimedia files. This simply won’t “just work” at doing that. Everything is going to have to be brought into iTunes, and I don’t think anyone with a decent video collection is going to be bothered doing that.
“You can use it around the house”, is another argument. But for video I have a TV, for music I have a stereo, for the internet I have a computer. It’s just crap.
Apple has designed a device around having something “pretty” – which the iPad is no argument there. But just because something is pretty, and the marketing message is slick and you’re so willing to fellate Steve Jobs it doesn’t mean it’s good. It doesn’t mean it’s “revolutionising digital everything” or “assassinating laptops” or some of the other sheer self-indulgent wankery that’s being spouted about this things. It’s shit. Admit it.
This isn’t even mentioning that our wireless carriers are going to also rape you for a decent 3G data plan, or that Apple won’t charge the direct currency conversion rate for it when pricing is finally announced for the international markets.