Re-evaluating the Tablet
What is it about the iPad that has people so riled up? Both the media frenzy building up to Wednesday’s announcement and the almost equally frenzied denouncement of the device by most media outlets have been pretty irrational, even given the intense debate that normally crops up between the Microsoft and Apple camps (for my attempt at a level-headed look at the device, see my other site).
I think in both cases, it has to do with Apple’s failure to “get the tablet right.” The tablet PC has been around since the early 2000s, and while many people are drawn to the idea of a PC they can write on and interact with as they would a pad of paper, the concept has never really gone mainstream. This is in part due to the higher cost of tablets versus normal PCs and laptops, but it has more to do with the fact that the concept has never lived up to its promise.
The media circus leading up to the iPad’s announcement was generated largely by the hopes that Apple, seemingly infallible when it comes to mass-market gadgets, would finally make a tablet that fulfilled the concept’s supposed promise, and that those must-have features would trickle down to their competitors’ products as they often do.
Think what you will about the company and its products, but would the smartphone market be so competitive right now if not for the iPhone? Would Dell and Sony be making such attractive laptops without the example of the MacBook to show them that people will pay a little more for something with style? Maybe the company that pioneered and popularized the MP3 player and so many other fixtures of our lives could make a tablet that worked.
Hence, the extreme disappointment when Steve Jobs hopped on stage Wednesday with what is essentially a giant iPod Touch. People who had been so hopeful that the iPad would change the tablet for the better had their hopes dashed, and lashed out all the more because of it.
Apple has its adherents, which guarantees the iPad an audience. Maybe the device will even have enough time to grow and become the product that people wanted. What I find more likely, though, is that people have no idea what they wanted the iPad to be. And now, with most PC manufacturers releasing tablets to counter what they thought would be another must-have product from Apple, we’re about to get hit with a wave of devices that are just slightly updated versions of tablet PCs that we already haven’t wanted for years now.
In fact, maybe we don’t want tablet PCs at all.
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Disruption and change are two different things. I could start a riot in the bank, but that's wayy different than robbing the bank. What I'm trying to say is, the iPad is a great product, BUT it's not what people need right now, it's not what people were asking for and it's definitely overpriced compared to a faster laptop.
Apple can cause all the disruption they can in technology, but that doesn't matter if their product does not get the attention intended for it.
@ians55, correct, and if i wanted to do calculations, chances are i'd use a calculator, instead of a mainframe to achieve the same result. As far as battery….as an end user, the lighter/smaller the battery and the longer the life, the better.
So if i wanted to surf the web, listen to music, watch movies, view photos, check email, read a book (basically consume content, which is what this device is primarily meant to do), why would i buy a buy a more complicated, bigger/heavier, uglier, less secure, jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none machine ? that requires a beefier system, is slow to-boot, requires more ram and HDD for the underlying system, etc ?
Now dont get me wrong, im sure that there are few people out there who would love computers that did everything computers have done over the past 30-40 years, serial ports, floppy discs, DOS, wordperfect..and even the features to make toast, microwave, brew beer, and drive their car for them, but that doesnt mean such a machine should ever be built at the expense of simplicity and user-friendlynes.
@Admin_RobertCity
Well dude, you better get on the phone to Microsoft, cause if history is any indication they have already started working on their “version(*cough*copy*cough*).
What i find surprising is that Apple has managed to combine all the functionality thats actually *NEEDED* from this class of product (not a netbook and not a smartphone), executed it well(system design including all benefits and limitations) and managed to undercut the competitors in price.
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