The iPad Doesn’t Suck and It’s Not Going to Fail
There’s a whole lot of iPad hate going on at the moment on Twitter, MetaFilter and various blogs. The Jesus Tablet (Moses Tablet?) is bound to fail miserably because it lacks feature X or compatibility with Y.
I don’t think that’s going to happen. In fact, I’m pretty sure the iPad is going to be a massive success, that it’s going to help change the way we think of computers (more on that in another post when I can be bothered) and that it will leave competitors trying to play catch-up the same way the iPhone has.
Here’s a couple of reasons some people think the iPad will fail along with my arguments why it probably won’t.
There’s no USB port!
There’s a camera connection kit which looks like it’s just a USB converter, but sure, the iPad doesn’t have a separate USB port and the USB dongle almost certainly won’t allow it to act as a master for anything but your camera. That means you can’t connect a printer via USB and you can’t use it with your old wired keyboard (it does have Bluetooth, though, so you could just get a new keyboard). It also means no backup on a local external hard drive.
When the first iMac came out it was the first computer to ship without a floppy drive. This freaked a lot of people out because what where they supposed to do with their data now? Turns out everyone managed. Today, people keep their data in the cloud, on USB sticks and on physical media like DVDs.
If a traditional computer was to come out without a USB port it most definitely would fail. But this is not a traditional computer and it’s not supposed to replace them—not yet at least.
For a lot of people it won’t matter that the iPad doesn’t have a USB port because they wouldn’t know what to stick in there. The people for which it matters will probably find a way to cope, be it printers on the networks or storage in the cloud.
It doesn’t have a camera!
The first iPhone didn’t have 3G or GPS. In fact, I wonder what the hell people were actually using them for back then. Before the keynote I was sure the tablet was going to have a camera. I don’t know why there’s no camera in the first version. Price? Availability?
There will probably be a version of the iPad with a camera at some point. Until then, we’ll just have to settle for skyping each other without the video.
There’s no Flash support!
The lack of Flash in Mobile Safari seems to be a deal-breaker for some people as indicated by the slew of mentions I got when I spoke out against Flash on the iPad on Twitter recently. Apparently some people like blinking ads with sound better than blue Legos. (Alright, I know that’s not a completely fair representation of the argument for Flash on the iPad but I can’t be bothered to type all the points and counterpoints from the Twitter discussion here.)
Here are my main reasons for being against Flash on the iPad:
- Flash has a tendency to crash and drain the battery
- Most Flash games are made with a keyboard and mouse in mind. They would suck with a touchscreen
- HTML5 and Javascript can do everything Flash does
Anyway, I’m pretty sure the iPad isn’t going to fail because of the lack of Flash. The iPhone certainly didn’t so it seems a whole lot of users either agree with me or simply don’t care.
There’s no Silverlight support!
Okay, no-one actually said that anywhere but I think it will be as big of a problem in a couple years time as the lack of Flash support is. Silverlight will drink a bit of Flashs milkshake but eventually they will both be reduced to marginal technologies, mostly replaced by HTML5.
It’s too expensive!
Most people agree that $499 for the entry model is pretty reasonable but $100 for an extra 16 GB of memory on the flash drive is pretty damn steep. (Of the incremental price increases that one is by far the worst in my opinion. The other ones aren’s as bad.) I don’t think it’s going to matter much, though. The price is likely to decrease over time and the early adopter set has shown itself willing to pay a premium for the newest technology. I don’t think they will sell a lot of 32 GB iPads but the 32 GB version makes the other ones seem more reasonably priced.
People will just get a netbook instead!
My experience with netbooks is that they suck. Sure, they are small and portable, but their keyboards are awkward and they feel underpowered for a lot of tasks. Plus I still can’t get my 3G modem to work with Jolicloud.
But most importantly I just couldn’t imagine myself lying in my couch, browsing the web and checking Twitter on my netbook. I wouldn’t want to read extensively on my netbook. I wouldn’t say “hey, check out this article” and slide my netbook over the breakfast table to my girlfriend. I wouldn’t play a game like MiniSquadron against my friends on my netbook.
People will just get a Kindle instead!
Seriously, are you high? If people want a dedicated ebook reader with an e-ink display they’ll probably get a Kindle. But for casual readers (i.e. most people) the iPad is a much, much better device. It has a color display. It plays video. It does a whole lot of other stuff the Kindle doesn’t.
DRM is evil and bad and the device is defective by design!
Yes, DRM sucks. The iPad will have as much DRM on books, video and music as the big content providers insist on and as little as Apple can get away with. It will be a hit regardless.
It’s just an overgrown iPod Touch!
You know, some people actually like their iPod Touch. I think an overgrown iPod Touch is much better than an underdeveloped Macbook.
No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame.
Riiiight. ;)
