iTampon
An Apple user is typically a computer user who has to be at the ready to defend himself at the drop of a hat at any given point in time. Imagine being both an Apple and Opera user. Imagine having to defend yourself not just on your platform of choice but also for your web browser of choice. That’s me. I’m unsure what constitutes an Apple user, but I do know for sure what constitutes myself. Neither I nor people I know personally or online are the stereotypical user exclaiming that the sun shines out of Steve Jobs’ every orifice and waiting for long lines at launch while blindly buying everything Apple makes regardless of whether they perceive a necessity or not. I and many others like myself despise those people as much as the Apple haters do as they are usually our public face, making idiotic gestures at the camera while they foolishly stand out in the elements to get some unnecessary object. A purchase regardless of price should be considered thoroughly and have a particular purpose before the money is spent. Many different products can be bought for multitudes of reasons, but electronic devices typically need to be purchased only if they have a purpose to fulfill. Putting all of its hardware and software problems aside for a bit, from what I saw this past Wednesday the iPad isn’t something I can yet see a use for. In fact that is my main beef with the product as a whole as I can’t get to its other problems without first observing the main one.
Usefulness
Apple has had multitudes of successes in the past. The Macintosh, iPod, and iPhone are all successes any company wishes it had, and Apple is hailing the iPad as yet another innovation to be among the ranks of those three. I just don’t see that yet, but just because I don’t doesn’t mean it won’t be a success in the marketplace like its predecessors have been, and my not seeing a use for the device doesn’t equal a belief in its being abominable. It just looks like a large iPod Touch with an even more ridiculous and easily ridiculed name.1 Unlike many in the country I was born and reside in, I have to see a purpose for a device before I’d even consider buying it. What’s the use for an iPad? I have to reach deep into my head to come up with anything that can even resemble reasoning to purchase such an object. The absolute only thing I can think of is to own one to test websites on as its form factor opens another can of worms for website development. Even with that thin logic it never would constitute in my forking over $500+ for it as it doesn’t change things enough in that category to warrant such a price. I’m not the only one who has difficulty describing just what the product is for, and I’m not the only one wondering what the answer to the question is. Even people who are in ecstasy over it have difficulty describing its usefulness.
John Gruber is an example of someone who’s about ready to kill someone because he’s so ready to get one for his own. He describes people like me as “not getting it”. “Getting it” to my mind means first actually seeing a use for it. He cannot even explain just what that is. He can only exclaim how you need to use it first to know. His entire argument for the device revolves around the fact that it is fast. He repeats the word numerous times over the course of a few separate articles on his website, but one paragraph in his article entitled The iPad Big Picture contains three mentions of the word in a row as a form of emphasis on the subject:
It is fast, fast, fast. The hardware really does feel like a big iPhone — and a big original iPhone at that, with the aluminum back. (I have never liked the plastic 3G/S iPhones as much as the original in terms of how it feels in my hand.) I expected the screen size to be the biggest differentiating factor in how the iPad feels compared to an iPhone, but I think the speed difference is just as big a factor. Web pages render so fast it was hard to believe. After using the iPhone so much for two and a half years, I’ve become accustomed to web pages rendering (relative to the Mac) slowly. On the iPad, they seem to render nearly instantly. (802.11n Wi-Fi helps too.)
The speed of the product is probably exhilarating, but driving a Camaro at 290 km/h must be exhilarating and fast. I’m not going to buy one of those simply because it’s fast. Buying a product for that reason alone is impulse purchasing by someone with more money than he knows what to do with as five hundred dollars or more is quite a chunk of change to just be throwing around for something that can’t be justified with a viable use. This is true especially when devices he already owns fulfills the tasks it can perform. Even as a “couch computer” it still is a desultory purchase because dispensing with that much cash for the sole purpose of being able to browse while lounging on a couch is just absolutely silly to me. In an article for Ars Technica John Timmer describes the complete void of usefulness the iPad exhibits:
When I leave the apartment for anything beyond local errands, I’m almost invariably carrying both a cell phone for communicating and a laptop for getting work done. A truly useful device would be one that could let me leave one of those devices and its added bulk, cables, and worries about charge status at home. The iPhone went a little way towards that dream—it was a phone, but its ability to handle a bit of web browsing and some light e-mail meant that leaving the laptop at home was possible in a few additional circumstances—but, for the most part, I’m still stuck lugging two devices.
The iPad doesn’t fix that. It’s clearly not a phone, so my phone would still have to come with me. It would do a better job of e-mail and Web browsing than the iPhone, but if I’m carrying one of those anyway, that’s not a huge help. On the other side of its category divide, the iPad might add a few more cases where a laptop is unnecessary, but very few. I’m a touch typist; I take notes on presentations while watching the speaker, and I am often writing in one application while looking over a document in a second. With no physical keyboard and no multitasking, the iPad simply wouldn’t work for me. It’s just too limited to mean I could leave my laptop home any more often than I already do.
That just about sums it up, and so far I’ve come to a conclusion that at present it has really no practical use. It’s a device for impulse purchasers like John Gruber to snag up. There’s a market for it to be used like Amazon’s Kindle, and I’m sure people who have wasted their money on a Kindle and people who have been considering purchasing one are giving the iPad a consideration. My perceived usefulness for this product perhaps might change in the future say if developers were pushing out many games with the same caliber as the Nintendo DS or Sony’s PSP. Its larger screen and resolution that comes with it along with its capability to still be portable would make it a device for gamers to enjoy. The rest of its functions would be only an added benefit when the device has a use as a gaming machine. Even then less than $500 could buy you a non portable console capable of high definition and incredible capabilities infinitely beyond anything the iPad can exhibit.
With all that said I would sure as hell purchase an iPad before I even gave any netbook, eBook reader, or tablet computer on the market any sort of consideration despite the caveats the iPad has after acquisition.
Caveats
The iPad is clearly shown to be in a category between a mobile phone and a notebook computer, and in being so it causes problems as people will tend to want to see it more like the latter. In my opinion it can only fit that bill if it is indeed more like the latter except with a multitouch interface and software which caters to the device’s distinct method of human interaction. It’s a personal computer no matter how you look at it. It has the premise of being that, yet it isn’t today.
Throngs of people have made up their lists of missing features and have checked them twice. The majority of the lists will most likely contain the following:
- It doesn’t have either a front-facing or rear-facing camera.
- The iPad doesn’t support Adobe Flash.
- The aspect ratio of the device’s screen is ill suited for widescreen movie viewing.
- There’s no CDMA support, so Verizon and Sprint are locked out of the party.
- No 1700 MHz support for GSM UMTS/HSDPA, preventing T-Mobile in the US and WIND Mobile in Canada from utilizing the device.
All of these are what I would deem as nitpicks. The second complaint isn’t even viable in my book. My theory on Flash’s exclusion on the iPhone, iPod Touch, and now the iPad isn’t that it will invariably deplete the batteries of the devices and cause stability issues but because it has the same effect on the Macintosh. The Flash plugin for the Macintosh is comparable a pile of shit allowed to ferment for several hours from a horse who’s eaten too much limburger cheese. It’s neither stable nor efficient, so why in hell would Apple even attempt to let that smelly pile of manure be anywhere near its consumer electronics? Flash’s problems on the Macintosh are self-imposed and not created because of Apple; it started long before Adobe acquired Flash itself. Adobe’s just allowed it to remain a problem for the four years it’s maintained the plugin. If Adobe were to finally accept the mess their Flash plugin is on the Macintosh (all of this applies actually more so to Linux) and rework it Apple probably would be glad to work with them to get Flash on Apple’s consumer electronics like Adobe so badly desires. The rest aren’t even worth going into further detail about and should be obvious to anyone with a lick of common sense.
The device actually has some real problems. From first glance its first problem would be its name. Legal battles over the name aside, did anyone at Apple speak up about its similarity to the the maxi pad in name? Have they even seen this video prior to the iPad’s release? Does anyone from Boston with a thick accent work there? Bostonians have long said “iPad” to mean “iPod” because of the accent. Apple should have given the name a wider consideration internally before releasing the product; the legal battles over the name are the least of its problems.
Its largest problem software-wise by far is its lack of third party (and a lot of first party) multitasking. There’s some logic behind it when it comes to the iPhone and iPod Touch because it can severely drain the battery.2 If battery issues are the purpose for excluding multitasking in the iPad then why does the lowest end MacBook get a reputed 7 hours of battery life when it can effectively multitask? It’s just absolutely beyond retardation to release a product which has a 1 GHz processor in it without allowing it to multitask. This isn’t a feature request; it’s an absolute necessity. Hell, even the shittiest netbook is capable of some multitasking.
Perhaps its worst problems are the policies surrounding the App Store. Now the App Store has so far been the reason for the iPhone and iPod Touch’s success. There’s no denying that, but its policies have done nothing but the opposite. The App Store’s stringent, imperfect, and demeaning approval process has given it quite a bit of bad press. The approval process combined with the monopoly Apple places on application distribution is the main problem. On top of that Apple doesn’t like to approve applications which compete with their own. It’s a volatile development situation to be in as a developer, and many have refused to develop for Apple’s consumer electronics because of this. It is absolutely necessary for Apple to have an approval process for their store, but it doesn’t and shouldn’t be the only game in town for application distribution. The Mac works fine with multiple places for application distribution. There’s no reason why the iPhone, iPod Touch, and now the iPad couldn’t do the same.
I’m not going to make any predictions about the success of the iPad. I just think it is useless and misguided in its present state. People will probably buy them regardless. I just don’t see myself at this point purchasing one unless someone is able to explain to me a proper use for the thing. One good thing I can see to come out of this is Apple’s processor. It’ll be quite nice when there’s one in the iPhone.