Tag Archives | Apple iPad

Two smart people have written stirring pieces arguing against buying an iPad. And the fascinating thing is, the two arguments have almost nothing in common.

Over at Fast Company, Gina Trapani says you shouldn’t buy an iPad because they’re too pricey and aren’t fully baked yet. Hold off until they go more completely mainstream, she advises.

Meanwhile, Boing Boing’s Cory Doctorow thinks you shouldn’t buy an iPad because they’re already too bland and commercial: He wants an iPad you can crack open and hack, and one without any DRM and the App Store’s limitations on what you can install on the gizmo.

And me? Well, I agree with points in both pieces without buying either argument. Like Trapani, I think lots of intelligent folks won’t even consider buying an iPad until the second-generation version comes along. (I said so in a piece I wrote for FoxNews.com, and have never regretted holding off on the iPhone until the 3G model arrived.) And like Doctorow, I’m unhappy with both the idea of Apple being the only distributor of iPhone/iPad software and many, many things about how it’s performed in that role.

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The debate about Apple products never ends, but it always involves distinct phases. Consider the iPad. People began expressing heated opinions about it before anyone knew anything. Then they continue to do so once they know something but not everything.

For the iPad, the best phase begins on Saturday, when all of us who weren’t among the first reviewers to get their hands on the thing get the opportunity to express opinions based on extended real-world use. The “Why the iPad Will Fail” stories will dwindle away, because it’s pointless to speculate once the darn thing is in the market. It’ll be a huge hit or a modest success or a flop, and nobody’s take will matter except the aggregate opinion of people who buy gadgets.

But I wanna get something off my chest during the remaining time we have to talk about the iPad without much in the way of cold, hard facts. Here’s something I don’t get: The single most common argument made by folks who think the iPad will fail is that people don’t want a “third device” to supplement their PC and their phone. One more device, the theory goes, is clearly one too many.

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The iPad doesn’t arrive in stores until Saturday, and most tech reviewers, like civilians, will need to wait until then to get their hands on one. As usual, though, Apple provided early review units to journalists from a few major newspapers and other media outlets.

The big surprise in these reviews is…well, there aren’t any big surprises. Everyone’s impressed. Everybody brings up both pros (the interface, the form factor, the general level of polish) and cons (lack of Flash, no camera, inability to replace a laptop in every circumstance) that we already knew about. The most significant new positive factoid: Apple’s battery-life claim of ten hours seems to be conservative. And there are a few new quibbles (did we know that the iPod app doesn’t do Cover Flow)? Bottom line: It’s the extremely slick first-generation device we thought it was.

After the jump, summaries of the reviews that have hit the Web so far. You might want to read ’em all, but if you can only read one, see Tim Gideon’s piece at PCMag.com–it’s by far the most detailed look at the gizmo. And come back here on Saturday: I’ll be up bright and early to report on the insanity (if any) at my local Apple Store, pick up my iPad, and start the conversation here. (Looks like plenty of you will have iPads on Saturday–and I look forward to hearing what you think of ’em.)

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