What’s the deal with the iPad?
Clever readers will notice the Seinfeld reference. Anyway, on to the topic.
Everyone is writing about the iPad, so as not to arouse suspicion, so will I. The iPad was released a while (a week? two?) back by Apple. Using the standard hypewords “awesome”, “fantastic”, “amazing”, “fabulous” etc. Jobs hailed the device as a whole new class of devices (which it is, more on this later), and quote: “The best web browsing experience you’ve ever had!”.
Let’s first look at the specs. The device has an Apple designed A4 processor (though rumors are, they bought the silicon from some other company), 9.7″ multi touch screen (with IPS panel), 16 -> 64 gigs SSD storage. What it does not have is:
- Exchangeable battery
- No expandable memory (no sd slot, no usb slot, no nothing)
- No usb ports (use apples propietary 30 pin cable, with adapters)
- No multitasking in the OS
- No phone functionality
- No 3g in the standard version (pay $130 extra for that in any size class)
- No camera
- No flash!
That seems like a long list. Which is probably because it is. There are a number of shortcomings in the iPad, and with a 499 pricetag, that’s pretty unacceptable. To my eyes, this is a total fucking rip-off product, with no real killer app or usage scenarios. I’m thinking this could be used by say, medical institutions or perhaps, as a device for visitors to a museum or something. But multitasking becomes an issue here as well.
Who is going to use an office suite, without multitasking? Enjoy writing your diary, without surfing or doing anything else at the same time. Enjoy not being able to surf the web while taking notes.
This is a deliberately defective product. According to sources, the parts in the iPad cost apple 300 dollars. Which means, for the cheapest shit-ass model, they are raking in a huge 200 dollar profit. Even if they just sell one for each apple fanatic, they’ll still make enough money to be happy.
Again, this isn’t that they couldn’t have included all of those things, they did so because they decided. This way, they can make the 2nd generation iPad, which has all of the clearly missing features, and everyone will go fucking apeshit about their genious device. But let’s get real here. A device with more features existed 7 years ago, in the form of an HP tablet computer. This is just highway robbery on Apple’s part, and i don’t like it.
Why did Jobs call this the best web browsing experience you’ve ever had? I wonder why their product pages had blatant lies on them at the time of the release? They showed video and images of iPads visiting Flash based websites, until some keen-eyed humans found the lie, and Apple had to quietly take it down. The fact of the matter is, it does not run flash, and probably never will. Jobs says it’s because “Adobe could be making an awesome product, but they choose not to.”
Why not stop lying and tell them the real reason, huh? The real reason is: through flash, people could be watching online video and skipping quicktime. Through flash, people could start creating and distributing games and applications that would circumvent the Apple store, which they want to keep strictly controlled. We all remember the dictionary app that wasn’t allowed because it allowed translation of naughty words. Sure, flash is not perfect, but devices since Symbian S60 have had flash. This is the year 2010 and Apple comes out with a product without Flash? Get with the program! Through process separation, flash could be made perfectly safe, so i’m not seeing the problem. Jobs keeps talking about HTML5 which brings video support (can be tried out on youtube, with certain browsers), but let’s get real. 70% of all online video and most modern sites and portals use Flash. Without it, you’ll get a lesser experience, or miss out on some content altogether.
What is the use for this thing, seriously? What could you possibly want to do with this iPhone XL? Give me some suggestions. Meanwhile, i’ll keep thinking, and i’d rather spend my money on the 58 tons of sand i could buy with the 499 i saved by not getting the maxiPad.
Don’t buy the iPad. It’s a complete fucking ripoff, and you’ll regret it in a year when they come out with a revolutionary product that has a camera *and* 3G built in!!!1one.