Confusion Over What iPad Is
So, apple just came out with a new toy and a lot of people have been asking me my opinion of it. In particular, they have been citing a number of reviews that claim to know what it is all about. Many reviews are complaining about what it isn’t rather than focusing on what it is. People are complaining about the fact that it doesn’t have all the bells and whistles and that it is missing features you need to work.
Basically the main complaints I have heard are “it’s not an iPhone” and “it’s not a laptop”. Yes, that is true. If you want to work at the corner coffee shop, you still need a laptop. If you want the internet anywhere, you still need an iPhone. However, if you want the internet in your living room, then this is for you. This is the real way to surf. You don’t need a keyboard to surf. You don’t need 3G access in your living room. You don’t need a camera or multi tasking or any of those things. You do need a pretty powerful CPU, which is provided. And if you are really spending some time on the net, instead of just looking something up, you need a big screen. Which the iPad has. This is the internet on your coffee table.
Will it kill the kindle? Perhaps, but that is not the point. Will it replace laptops? No, it is not a device to get work done on, though you can do a little if you need to. (The one exception to that might be giving slide presentations, but I really think that a laptop is still a better platform for that.) And finally, the iPhone is the perfect form factor for a phone, so I have no idea why people think that this would even try to replace that. The best review I saw called it the beginning of “casual computing”. That seems correct to me.
Long term, probably the most interesting sign of the future is actually the chip inside it. An independent retailer designing their own chip? I have no idea where that is going to lead.
I’m not sure why it’s a confusion to be sad that it’s not a real laptop. I get the idea of something that’s just enough computer to dick around with but not enough to work with. And it’s an idea that’s useless to me. I have to have a laptop to work anyway, and it enables the dicking around in addition. An extra device just for that is a waste of resources. I want a real laptop that can look and feel and act like a great big iPhone/iPod Touch when I want it to, but that I can also stick on a stand, plug a keyboard into and treat it like a desktop when I get to the desk. I’m not confused, just a princess. I also want it to weigh less than a pound and to dispense bourbon from a side port.
(Also, your Captcha has a dirty mind.)
My MacBook Pro dispenses Gin and Tonic. Also, hey! Kcat reads this!
I was just surfing the web on my iPhone in the living room and thinking how much nicer it would be on a big screen, but I was too lazy to open up my laptop and plug it in. Clearly I need an iPad. On the other hand, my wife just informed me that, actually, I can just go open up my laptop thankyouverymuch.
(It’s my reCaptcha, of course it has a dirty mind.)