Here’s the reason that the iPad has been getting such bad press: the reporters and bloggers who have written about it like computers. The iPad isn’t a computer. It’s a coffee-table book that lights up. It’s a Christmas gift for your parents and others who don’t want and/or don’t understand computers.
Such a person doesn’t have room for a desktop or hates the look of one. He doesn’t like laptops because they’re only small computers and who wants to have left a small computer on the coffee table when company comes over. He doesn’t want to learn computers. He doesn’t want to install a WiFi router. The iPad he can leave sitting there. It’s easy to use. It’s kind of attractive, like a coffee table book. You can leave it between the Rembrandt anthology and the L.L.Bean catalog. And when company comes over and if they notice it at all and ask what it is, you can push a button and bingo, there’s the pictures of the grandchildren. Or the movie listings. Or a map and directions to Starbucks. Or a book.
Or even the email. Everyone understands email. Even people who don’t like computers.
So that’s what the iPad is — a coffee table book that lights up. What’s the market for that? Probably very small and the iPad will fail. Which is why Apple introduced it a few hours before the State of the Union Address. Hoping that the flaws won’t be commented on before Obama occupies the news for a couple of days. And before the stock market has the chance to absorb the bad news.
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The iPad is a coffee table book that lights up
4 Responses to The iPad is a coffee table book that lights up
I think you’re wrong, Mike. It’s a user friendly laptop for people who don’t use their laptops for work (like my kids). It’ll email and surf and play video much better than whatever awful Toshiba /Dell/ Whatever running windows that the teens use… previously the price point for a mac doing those things was double the windows one. Now it isn’t… it’s the same…
It will be brilliant in hospitals (where docs will be able to pull up notes and X-Rays just like that), American football teams will run tactical simulations on them (replacing the iPod Touches that they give to players now (a real game-changer, then…) and people will dream up all sorts of other creative collaborative uses…
How do you get data in and out conveniently? There are no USB ports, I believe. (None are mentioned in the specs.) And no CD drive. You can download lots of data from the Web but not all. Wouldn’t this be a special problem in the hospital setting? The general practitioner I go to uses a notebook that he carries around. I’ve never seen him pull up an xray or sonogram on it, but then the situation hasn’t arise.
I’m not against the iPad. I was thinking of getting one. I have some money coming in and was going to pick up a MacBook Pro (15 inch) for $1700. Then I thought maybe I’d get a standard MacBook ($1000) plus an iPad. But I’m not sure how much I would use the latter, especially if there are no USB ports.
I agree with you the price is right on the iPad. I’d certainly one instead another awful Dell like the one I use now.
How do you get data in and out conveniently? There are no USB ports, I believe. (None are mentioned in the specs.) And no CD drive. You can download lots of data from the Web but not all. Wouldn\’t this be a special problem in the hospital setting? The general practitioner I go to uses a notebook that he carries around. I\’ve never seen him pull up an xray or sonogram on it, but then the situation hasn\’t arise.
I\’m not against the iPad. I was thinking of getting one. I have some money coming in and was going to pick up a MacBook Pro (15 inch) for $1700. Then I thought maybe I\’d get a standard MacBook ($1000) plus an iPad. But I\’m not sure how much I would use the latter, especially if there are no USB ports.
I agree with you the price is right on the iPad. I\’d certainly one instead another awful Dell like the one I use now.
Not sure about the data question. Certainly in hospitals a web based browser would allow you to pull up anything (I proof aa couple of magazines online through a webbrowser using hires pdfs, so I know that works.
Showing someone something like video or websites on an iPhone is no fun, but would work beautifully on an iPad…