On comments about the iPad

[chipotle]

What was the famous Slashdot quote about the first iPod? “No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame.”

While I’m not going to predict the iPad will match the success of the previous iP* product lines, there’s a definite party line among the geek crowd that only fashion-conscious fanboys would ever actually buy Apple products and that whenever they introduce a new gadget it’s the Stupidest Thing Ever. If the majority of commenters on Slashdot and TechCrunch did not piss all over a new Apple product, that’s the product I’d expect was in trouble. Given how much pissing is going on around such sites over the iPad, I'm betting the thing is going to sell like crack-infused hotcakes.

Never make the mistake of assuming either of the following:

1. That you really know what a product you've only seen demo videos of is going to be good at. Some things look much better in demos than they really are, and some things have to actually be used to be properly evaluated.
2. That because ultimately a product is not good for you means that it's not good for anyone else. You are not necessarily in the median of the product's target market segment.

(N.B.: I'm not sure I'm in the iPad's target market segment. It's not designed to be a laptop replacement and I'm not sure I need another gadget about. I might rather have it than a dedicated e-book reader, all the arguments for the superiority of e-ink not withstanding, but I haven't been sold on e-book readers yet, either. So.)

Comments

[tugrik.livejournal.com]

You know why I want it? Not for all the things that the keynote says it can do, or the things the nay-sayers scream it can't do.

I want it because, like with many new tech products Apple has put out, I can't wait to try out what it might do in the future.

*makes grabby-hands at the Apple store*

[chipotle.livejournal.com]

That's certainly true. Apple has a pretty good track record of pushing out improvements with successive OS releases.

The only things I'd really like to see are some level of multitasking and a way to do installations outside of the App Store process. I'm not holding my breath for either one, especially the latter -- I suspect the former will make its way to the iPad, but I also think they're going to put a lot of thought into how to handle the UI of application switching on a device like that.

[barberio.livejournal.com]

I don't think that multitasking is that important on a portable device.

No one ever complained about the lack of multitasking on Palm Pilots. The programs were simply set up to run when you needed them, and would default to where ever you left off where appropriate. You don't *need* to have a spreadsheet/web browser/e-book app actively running in the background to use them fully on a portable.

The list of apps where running in the background is useful to the user, rather than easier for the programmer, is actually really small. It's just about Direct instant messaging, and Internet Radio that people say they'd want. Instant Messaging could be done by push-notification. And Internet Radio just isn't a big enough thing to work out a way to support multitasking for.