Apple iPad
==========

Friday 29 January 2010 06:32

To avoid filling up my twitter timeline with random
rants about Apple's iPad I'll try to be more
concise in this full blown blog post.

I have an Apple iBook G4. I've never been such a
big fan of Apple that I wanted an Apple in the
first place, but about five years ago there weren't
any netbooks around and what I wanted was a small
laptop and the only options less than 15" at the
time were very expensive Sony Vaios and less
expensive iBooks. So that is how I got to own a
Mac. For about EUR 1000 a portable 12" that is
really nice when you don't need to do on it what
should be done on a workstation with a 30" cinema
display. A bit of browsing, mail, a couple of
xterms with SSH sessions, watching movies, web
programming and playing around with OS X all works
very nice. In a pinch it can also do Office and
Adobe CS things and movie editing and work with a
second monitor, but then we enter the non-standard
use. I replaced the original 40GB disk with a 250GB
disk, expanded the RAM to 1.5GB, hacked the
graphics so it isn't limited to mirroring on the
second screen and I heavily use Desktop Manager.
Which makes it all still very usable, so I've about
five years experience with a 12" Apple device that
runs a 1024x768 resolution.

No way in hell that the iPad convinces me it is
better than my iBook G4, and I doubt any netbook
user will see the lack of a keyboard as an
improvement. It's not the typing on the keyboard
that's essential, it's the way you can rest the
base on your lap and have the screen stand up at a
flexible angle. With a cup of tea in one hand and
the remote of the TV in the other you can still
read some text or watch a video on your laptop. Or
if you need some more freedom put it next to you on
the couch and the screen is still pointing in the
right direction. The iPad requires you to hold it
to point it at your face all the time and I don't
see how you would be able to hold it, type and look
at the screen at the same time. And even while just
watching it, are you expected to hold it for about
20 minutes while watching an episode or something?
All the comparisons that should make the iPad look
good is compared to the iPhone, not a netbook. The
touchpad on the iBook is already great, but the key
to comfortably use a device without a real mouse is
learning the keyboard shortcuts. But if the device
also doesn't have a real keyboard that is a
problem. And how intuitive is a touch screen
interface when you watch a movie full-screen?

The other thing I don't get is the use case of the
iPad. I can only imagine it as an e-reader or a
digital photo frame (which you can't place in
landscape mode). It's not a device you quickly whip
out while riding your bike or set up on a desk to
use as a workstation. While it's a portable device
it's not mobile in the way a phone is. It seems to
be aimed at using it while sitting down at a place
where you can also put it away on a table. And when
you go out you leave it there and only take your
phone and maybe your laptop with you. The iPad can
stay where the remote control stays. It doesn't
need 3G because you won't use it on the road.

Even companies that have no problem providing all
their staff with an iPhone and a MacBook Pro would
have a hard time trying to come up with a reason
why they would need an iPad for anyone. And even if
they would, will it be worth it to carry all three
around, or deciding which of the three to pick in
what situation? So there will probably be no
massive sales to provide every employee with one,
but at $499 it would be a nice gadget to have a
couple of them lying around the reception area so
visitors can browse company info while waiting for
their appointment. The place where there is
currently probably a 50" screen showing the same
stuff. Any tablet could do that, but Apple still
manages to create the device in a way that people
will pick it up and try it, which is essential in
that situation. But who needs apps in such a
digital magazine situation? It will just run the
companies intranet in some kiosk mode on the
company's WiFi. That's what the $499 thing is for.

On the consumer side you'd have to be a fanboi with
$500 to throw away to pick the iPad over a more
versatile generic netbook. And if you can throw
away $500 you'll probably also have an iPod video
and a MacBook already, and I don't see at what
point you would switch to the iPad to actually use
it. For music and video Apple has better devices,
so the only use would be to take advantage of the
oblong screen and use it as an e-reader. But there
is more to an e-reader than just the oblong screen,
and the iPad lacks those features the e-reader
power users need. And if you're not a power user,
you probably won't get seriously annoyed any time
you'd have to read something on the 16:9 screen of
a MacBook Pro, so why use the iPad?

As a regular device it could be OK, and the price
is not rediculously high. But coming from Apple in
the way they choose to present it it's totally
crap. They present it like they have just now
invented the portable 1024x768 color screen and the
web browser, and that makes the whole thing
rediculous and anyone buying that arrogant crap
from Apple is a retard, or has never used a
netbook. Steve should have apologized for not
having something Apple worthy to present this year
and saved the fanbois from humiliating themselves
by trying to defend this failure.

But if the iPad gets popular anyway, that would
mean I can just keep using the web with my 1024x768
iBook G4 with Flash disabled as I have been doing
for years.

by Roland van Ipenburg
http://www.xs4all.nl/~ipenburg/blog/posts/dull/2010/01/29/apple-ipad/