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January 31, 2011
Why the iPad is dumber than "will.i.am joins Intel as "director of creative innovation.""
Apple is successful not because their products are "insanely great."No matter how good they are, their products are obnoxious and way overpriced. $499 for an device with a 1024x768 screen, no ports, no accessible filesystem, graphics from the first Bush Administration, and a 1GHz CPU? That's not overpriced? Yes, yes, we all enjoy the pinching and zooming on the iPad, that multi-touch return-of-the repressed masturbatory ritual that only crudely and temporarily substitutes for real satisfaction. But the thing is so crippled by design you can do nothing with it but consume. Oh, look streaming episodes of Glee. Wicked. -- The Last Psychiatrist: Tech Sunday: Will.I.Am Gets A Job At Intel
Posted by Vanderleun at January 31, 2011 9:26 AM. This is an entry on the sideblog of American Digest: Check it out.
Your Say
Anyone who says "you can only consume" with an iPad disqualifies himself from having anything useful to say about the matter. It's like saying you can only take a right turn with an automobile - those who make left turns all the time scratch their heads and think, well, he's not looked into this much, has he?
Posted by: Lileks at January 31, 2011 10:41 AM
The main reason to get an iPad is the month by month 3G contract for less money than any other comparable one.
And it's not just a tool for consumption. I have no movies or games to speak of on mine. If you work away from home, and want to blog, or surf, or edit your work, or research a topic, or quickly view photos you have just taken, or send email in privacy (only a moron would use an employer's computer for anything but work these days, given monitoring software)an iPad is small, light and less expensive to replace if you break it than a laptop with an equally nice screen.
Sure, it's crippled by the lack of SD slot, mini USB, (curses on Apple) but for mobile people who would rather look at a 10 inch screen than squint at a smartphone, it's great. It's about mobility. If you work at home, you don't need it.
But if you trudge to a cubicle every day, or travel a lot, it's useful. We have no landline phone and no internet access at our family place up north, but we can at least have email and internet access this way, cheaply. Or when travelling. Have you priced wireless broadband cards and the contracts recently?
As to the consumption: I have my Kindle books (Amzon's inventory is obviously better than Apple's) sent to my iPad and it's much easier to read because backlit.
People love being able to see the pictures you have just taken of them on something bigger than the 3 inch LCD on the camera. And it makes a great GPS and Google maps are far easier to read on 10 inches than 3.5 iPhone screens.
A dream for any writer or student: if you have a chapter or article you are working on, you can edit on the fly.
And if you are using a ton of reference works to write a research paper, it is pricey but extremely convenient to have them all on the iPad. 1 small thing to carry around instead of 60 pounds of textbooks and hardbacks.
The most useful thing lately? My public library has free access to JStor, so I was able to upload hundreds of articles on a topic I had to write a chapter about to the iPad, then refer to them at leisure. It would have been a Godsend when I was a student. No more fighting for reserve readings, or spending a fortune on xeroxing. Able to electronically highlight and cut and paste...
The touchscreen is a pain. Like those on smartphones, one reason so many of us make appalling typos and abbreviations that so get your goat.
And an iPhone is still better if you are checking email while walking to catch your plane, or at the office.
You should try one for a couple of days, you might like it better than you think...
Posted by: retriever at January 31, 2011 9:29 PM