Jett Wells, my 21 year-old son who’s much more attuned and perceptive about digital technology than myself, is calling Apple’s iPad — officially unveiled just a few hours ago — a “slightly depressing” disappointment. He’s listed five reasons why. I’ve posted them after the YouTube clip.
1. Magazines Completely Ignored in Steve Job’s Presentation
“Of course this could just mean publishing companies haven’t developed to the new platform yet, but it’s still troubling. Jobs didn’t mention magazines once during his shpiel even though publishing geeks and journalists alike had been calling the Tablet the savior of journalism. And there’s still no progress between Adobe Flash and Apple, preventing high quality multi-touch animation— paramount to the advancement of digital magazines. (PC World’s Nick Mediati has discussed this aspect in greater depth.)
2. No Multi-tasking
“The Droid and Google Nexus smart phones have set the bar for multi-tasking features, allowing the user to access multiple apps at the same time, including music. The iPhone 3GS cannot do this, which means Apple needs to catch up, and the iPad was a perfect opportunity to do this…and yet, FLOP! The iPad uses a fairly similar OS as the iTouch. Without multi-tasking features, the iPad doesn’t have an identity in between laptops and smart phones.”
3.No Webcam
“There were rumors the iPad was going to have a built-in webcam so you could Skype chat in high definition while out in a park somewhere. That’s bullshit too. Just having the webcam could’ve helped the iPad separate more from the iTouch.”
4. The Name
Only a few hours since the announcement and the Apple iPad already has a humiliating pun throughout social networks. It’s now coined the iTampon. In fact, #iTampon is the top Twitter trend right now. This MAD TV video explains it.”
5. No Glare Resistance
“Forget about taking your iPad to the beach because you still can’t see the screen with the glare. How big of a fundamental detail can you screw up, Apple? One of the biggest focuses of the iPad was it’s portability, and it can’t even light up with in sunlight.”
Conclusion: The iPad will develop over time and improve like the iPod and iPhone, etc. I’ll start changing my mind about this thing after you can start using serious software programs on it like FinalCut or InDesign. You can import audio and video directly into it, which is cool. But it’s still hard not to say that today’s presentation was a fairly major letdown.
