Apple have introduced the iPad. Now people have been claiming for a long time that the people who buy iThings will pay whatever apple wants and will be happy with getting a rock, singing its praises, as long as its called an iRock. Here is a nice comparison done between the iPad and a Rock (I'm sorry, I don't remember the long tail of the origin of this image as it has been making the rounds and I saw it a while ago on one of those tech sites):
This pretty much sums up what the iPad has to offer.
It is not a bad machine per-say, it is simply a bigger screened iPhone, not much stronger, and it's not clear if this is at all useful. Ah, but here comes the Apple publicity machine. They obviously have an impressive machine. So now articles are coming out who is this for. A business school professor suggests it is befitting to old people whose hands can't use mice. Another that it's a casual way to surf the net and read digital books - why not a netbook which apple ridiculed as useless? And then my favorite, an article saying that women are the key. Why? Well, because clearly women are stupid. Or, the way tech people say it, women are not "tech-savvy." Ah, and because: "She won't buy any technology unless it's from
Apple." (Is the name, a Pad, supposed to make women feel they need it, or will it turn off women from buying it?)
The major claim of Apple is that it is competing with the
kindle. But wait, there is only one problem. The kindle's difference from a pc is not its screen size but a new kind of technology which makes reading its screen like reading regular paper, and much easier on the eyes. It's not only long battery life, but a completely different screen technology, that sadly doesn't yet exist (commercially) in color, but will in a year or two. It's also not able to do videos. There is development on a mixed screen which will combine the two technologies, but I don't know in what state that's in.
Ah, but it doesn't end there. We are talking about Apple so obviously any book you'll buy there you will be committing yourself into their programs and won't be able to use it otherwise. This is also true for the Kindle, though not for Barnes and Nobles Nook if I'm not mistaken. This attempt at a closed format which will force you to stay with their machine for years will hopefully fail for all of these companies, though the apple crowd as we
know are happy to be mistreated, and Amazon is also a very strong force.
As a sidenote, the fact that articles with claims as how the iPad is for women still get written is astonishing,
post, but Apple has a strong publicity machine and fan-base which needs to explain why this is a magnificent product.
I'm saying fiasco, but it will sell. Even the Macbook air sold, so this will sell too, even if only because as people said, the mac fanboy will be happy to expensively buy a rock as long as it has an i in front of it.
