You may have heard about this already: Apple announced its latest wonderdevice, the iPad (which is a lame name). Put simply, it's not a notebook, it's not an iPod Touch. It's designed for simpler tasks than the former and more complex tasks than the latter.
Or, it's pretty much what I've been wanting for a couple of years now. As a guy who tires of having piles of newspapers in his recycling bin -- and who used to work for a company that, inexplicably, trucked newspapers across Nebraska every day for decades -- digital delivery is my ideal.
No trucking costs being passed down to me, no paper being wasted, no energy being used to run presses. Basically, I want to download a newspaper at 6 a.m. every morning. And when the magazines I read are ready to be delivered, I want that to download automatically, too. Just like the mail, but without the costs and waste.
Can iPad do that? Probably. Will companies -- especially newspaper dinosaurs -- do that? I sure hope so. If they do, I'll gladly fork over $500 or $600 for the device and continue subscribing.
Like most new technology products, it takes about an hour for the dissenting viewpoint to come out. The "oh, wow, neato!" factor gives way to "yeah, but it doesn't ... " and "until is has this, I'm not ... ."
To those who are pissed that it takes extra connectors to link with other devices, or that it doesn't have a camera, or that it doesn't multitask ... come on. It's designed to step between a smartphone and a full-on laptop.
Or, think of it like this: The family computer is downstairs, but you want to, say, be on Facebook in the living room. You don't want to blow $600 or $700 on a laptop that has too much. You want simplicity. Hey, like the iPod Touch -- a simple device that's easy to understand.
Oh, but you want it to be bigger. iPad. $500. It's for people who want to get online, read a book or play a game. The only thing lacking from that standpoint is Flash support. No Flash leaves bare spots in a lot of web pages.
But you know what, I've been without Flash on my iPod Touch for a year-plus. I've turned out OK.
It's not for power users. If you were expecting a miracle wonderdevice for $300 that cures cancer on the side, you're going to be disappointed forever.
Me, I really just want to read my print media subscriptions without a pile of paper, shipping costs and waste getting in the way. And if I can get online, play a game or two or watch a TV show along the way, that's even better.
8 comments:
You could download your newspaper at 6am with Kindle ($189); a $150 netbook will get you to facebook in your living room.
It's not sexy. But it's cheap. And cheap is good these days.
Have you played with a Kindle, dude? Yuck. Tiny screen, no other functionality.
And $150 netbooks will act like $150 netbooks. I despise having to add software to my computer to make it function safely (as in virus blockers).
I'll pay a little more to be able to read, watch TV/movies, play games and surf the internet. Considering that feature set -- and form, of course -- $500 is cheap enough.
why not have a laptop that can do all that and then some for the same price?
+1 on the netbook. I love mine.
marc - at $500 for a laptop, it's a Windows laptop. And that puts us back at the "installing extra software just to make it work right" phase. So it's more like $550, minimum.
sydney - But I already have a netbook, essentially. It's an iPod Touch.
This thing just makes sense to me. My issue with a netbooks functionality is that it's too small. The screen may not be too small, but the keyboard and pointing device is. If the website or picture you're looking at on a netbook is bigger than the screen, you have to scroll all around to see it. Doing that with arrows or a dinky touchpad is just annoying. Sure, an iPhone or iTouch lets you scroll around with the touch screen, but the screen is too small. All you do is scroll around and resize.
If Windows had the same design - a touch screen desktop that's nearly laptop sized, I'd be game for it. I just think this is well thought out design and I really wish I could afford one.
mike -- the bonus on this device, as opposed to netbooks or other windows touchscreens is the OS. Shrinking Windows 7 down to that size sucks. It's a full-featured OS running on a tiny device.
The iPad/iPhone OS is designed for uses like this - that's why they've sold a bazillion iPod Touch and iPhone models. People who aren't "computer people" can pick up those devices and just "get it."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnZKIk1Krp8
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