I could go on with annoyances. There is no tethering between the iPad and the iPhone. The battery life is simply not sufficient (if they say ten hours, they probably mean six or eight with a bright screen and heavy use). There are so few input and output possibilities. I will stop there. No I won’t. How hard would it have been to smack an SD card slot in there? Seriously! It’s great to show a pretty photo application, but why not allow us to quickly and easily get the photos on there in the first place.
I guess it comes to this. If they are to maintain their share price, Apple needs you to continue buying an iPhone and a MacBook (or iMac). Thus they cannot allow the iPad to replace either one of them. And so it is a device between. It’s a device lots of people want, but nobody needs. What Apple should have done is to create a device that is spectacularly good at one thing—one thing that neither of the other devices does particularly well (like reading!). Instead, they went with the kitchen sink approach, trying to make it passably good at everything—things that the iPhone and MacBook do just fine.
I’m disappointed because the iPad could have been so much more. There are areas of my life it could have jumped into and done well, justifying its cost. As it is, I don’t see that happening. I’ll grant that ultimately I’ll need to use it and experience it to really know for sure. Maybe the experience of it will show me how and where it can find its place in my life (as happened with the iPhone). I would not be half surprised if, in the end, I end up with one (at least for R&D purposes). But it is going to take a very compelling argument for it to change my mind and find its place.
Josh Harris writes:
My friend Tim Challies has written a very negative post about Apple's new iPad. In fact he's calling it "the greatest disappointment in human history." Tim, where has your discernment gone? Go read your own book!
Admittedly, I am a mindless Apple fan so what I say here doesn't have much merit. But I'm putting my money on Apple and betting that the iPad will be another success. I remember people freaking out because the first iMac didn't have a floppy drive and only used USB ports. The naysayers had similar complaints about the iPod's battery life and the limitations of iTunes. Now, 250 million iPods later, I guess we could say the naysayers were wrong.
Now my brother Tim is upset that the iPad doesn't have a camera and more input options. But that's the genius of Apple. They know what to leave out. Before we even know ourselves, they figure out what we'll actually use and how we'll use it. Sure, the iPad will get better. We'll look back on this first version like we do the clunky first-edition iPod. But I think this will be a game changer for how people interact with media and the internet. Seeing my kids interact with the iPhone has convinced me of that. We want a computer we can touch.
My prediction: look for a blog post by Challies in the next year sharing how he bought an iPad just to review it, really mostly for his kids, and how it's not so bad as he initially thought. He'll gripe about several features just to save face, but will also be driven by integrity to mention that he uses his iPad constantly and his Kindle is in the dustbin. Of course I could be wrong. And if I am I'll do a blog post with the title "Challies Was Right About the iPad." But don't hold your breathe!
3 comments:
Josh makes sense here. The iPad is a win if only it does the same things as a Kindle. But in color. With more memory and it does not look the ereader version of Pong.
It costs as much as the original Kindle and does way more. The only people who should be upset about the iPad are those who already purchased the now outdated Kindle.
I will buy the iPad and use it for the glory of God.
What company doesn’t add on features to their subsequent product releases? Every other manufacture does this and its part of the business cycle. Ever buy a camera? It’s updated a year later. Even you Kindle users know that Amazon has updated their gear and will continue to do so.
I do believe this product can help the church. It’s much cheaper than a laptop and more useful than a Kindle. People will be able to buy their books online in a minute, email their friends, check your blog, write their papers (with the added dock), and have access to 140,000 applications to help their life and ministry every day. The software is constantly upgraded, stable, and has no viruses. It’s $499 and isn’t handicapped, just made for a specific price point.
I look forward to reading the ESV Study Bible in full color on mine.
First generation iPad gets a huge two thumbs down from me. It is an over-grown iPod Touch. It does the exact same things (plus a reader which I doubt many people care about) and you can't stick it in your pocket. So, other than having a larger screen, what is the point? If you want something that's less than an inch thick and about the size of a sheet of paper then get a MacBook Air. Yes it's more expensive and a little larger, but it's cheaper than buying both an iPad AND any of Apple's laptops. The one thing that will save the iPad is its price point (quite a bit more reasonable that I thought it would be actually). But unless this thing evolves quite a bit, there's no way it sells 250 million as the iPod has.
Now, what does excite me are the possibilities. Eventually, I can see all computers using nothing but flash memory because of its limited space requirements, its speed, and its drastically declining price. I am waiting for the day when this iPad is a complete replacement for a laptop. I envision 250 gb of flash storage and the ability to do just about anything you can already do on a laptop. If this can be achieved without a huge jump in price (still about $800 or less), this will be the day I consider buying it and the day it really makes an impact. But, in it's current form, it's a complete dud.
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