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The iPad- Was I Blown Away?
Wednesday, January 27, 2010 / Apple Culture
In my last article I opined that Apple would either blow me away or cause me to go a little ho hum on the product.
We know now what it is… so did it blow me away? Again, I will emphasize that I’m only writing from a personal perspective here. After all, Apple does a terrific job of telling you what you want. I don’t really need to add to their very professional, slick messaging. But for me personally… the answer is “no.”
Oh it’s definitely pretty cool. I’ll probably end up with one at some point partly because that’s the business I’m in. If I was a real road warrior I might consider it since it’s a lot less to carry around than a MacBook Pro, and keeping up on emails is about 90% of what I have to do out there. But I will have to try the virtual keyboard first. I type a lot, and if a virtual keyboard just doesn’t cut it for me (although I’ll readily admit it’ll already be light years ahead of the iPhone keyboard for me), I might not worry about it.
But they didn’t blow me away because it doesn’t do anything I didn’t expect, which is what would have blown me away. Grace to Apple, however, for the fact that blowing their customer base away is a little like expecting the home run record to fall every year. Pretty hard to do, especially if you can’t take steroids.
Questions, questions, questions
I have questions about the keyboard, and about whether I really could read a whole book on their screen. The liquid ink of the Kindle just makes reading so easy, so I really doubt I’d figure on the thing being a replacement for that. I should also qualify that while I own an iPhone, I really don’t use many apps. And in the end, a computer is just a resting place for applications, so if there are some really cool ones that I’ll want to play with on a bigger screen, without my phone’s battery life draining before my eyes, I might gain interest. Watching movies while traveling probably just got better and easier as well.
But the monthly fees would annoy me… I already feel as if Americans spend too much money on monthly subscriptions, whether it be cell phones, cable, bottled water or the wine of the month club. But of course Apple is in business to make money, so adding what will probably be an ancillary device with monthly revenue is nothing short of genius… for them.
Perhaps my feelings are colored a bit by the comparison of the product to the hype that led up to it. Apple has become ingenious at doing nothing to create all that hype. By being secretive, they create a frenzy of speculation and guesses that must be valued at a billion dollars of free publicity. What a coup. The thing would have had to be able to replace my TV, heating blanket and microwave to live up to all that hype. But in the end, in my opinion, it’s just another cool product that will look a little long in the tooth a year or two from now. However, I think the OS and perhaps the style will be a springboard to some of our computing future. I think that may be what it will be remembered best as.
The prevailing thought in the company is that the iPad is a so-so name. Surely we’ll see some fake commercials playing on the name in the vein of feminine hygiene products. Personally, I feel it goes pretty well with the name iPod, which was an odd name when that first came out too. So I think it’s fine.
Not quite changing the game
I guess the way I’m feeling is that for every pro, there’s a con, and for every con, there’s a pro. For me, the iPod was only a pro… I had no interest in MP3 players before the iPod was introduced. I would say the same about the iPhone; I didn’t really give a rip about smart phones before they introduced that. But the iPad doesn’t approach those game changers for me. It’s just a nice product that a certain percentage of people will absolutely love, and the rest will absolutely ignore.
Lastly, you have to give credit to Apple for putting a beautiful gloss on a style of product that has already been introduced by other companies. No one makes things like this more attractive or elegant, nor gets as much publicity out of it. They’re a machine, and I have no doubt they’ll make plenty of money with it. One day I have no doubt that something similar will replace my MacBook Pro. But I’ll still be annoyed at having a monthly bill that replaces something where I have none.
Getting one is clearly a personal choice, and clearly there will be people who absolutely love it. We’ll be selling them, and happily so. But I also don’t mind, despite being an Apple reseller, providing an alternative voice to the Apple marketing engine. After all, you, our customers, are by far the most important asset of our company.
January 28th, 2010 at 12:20 am
It is refreshing to see the CEO of Powermax unafraid to speek his mind about the Ipad. I worry that while Apple has the market cornered on cool, that Steve Jobs is in many ways is limiting and controlling choice. “All it takes for tyranny to gain a foothold is for good men to remain silent”, is I think how the saying goes. I know I am being paranoid. I just worry we are transforming from educated consumers into mindless disciples. I’m afraid as you lamented we will all “probably end up with one at some point”.
January 28th, 2010 at 1:51 pm
Will you be carrying them in your inventory, i.e., has Apple granted you permission to sell them?
January 29th, 2010 at 11:10 am
the biggest bust for me is they still have not PUT FLASH into the mix. here was a perfect chance to FINALLLLLYYYYY appease all of us users who, on a daily basis, curse when we got to a site that requires flash. When will this be resolved!!??#$@&%$#
January 29th, 2010 at 1:01 pm
In a word, “underwhelmed.”
January 30th, 2010 at 4:38 pm
For someone that doesn’t need to do much in the way of productivity beyond email, word processing, presentations and storing photos and music, then this is going to be okay. The deal breaker for me is that their is no web cam built in for doing Skype or VoIP calls. How difficult would that have been!? And I mean a camera that is mounted on the screen side like the iMac and MacBook family.
January 30th, 2010 at 11:50 pm
In my many years as an Apple fanatic I have never ceased to be underwhelmed at the products Apple releases and then amazed at how much they become a part of my life after I’ve purchased them.
My first Mac, the old beige, was ok, I thought, but so what. Then I started using it and never looked back. The same with the iPod until I bought an iPod touch and now use it every single day.
And so, while the iPad probably won’t push the state of technology very far, I’m willing to bet, at least for me, that once I purchase one it will unwittingly become part of my daily life. Apple and Steven Jobs have a genius for introducing products that find places in peoples lives once they’ve experienced them. That’s Job’s whole mantra. The experience you get in using Apple ware.
January 31st, 2010 at 2:08 pm
Kevin, heard your words, trust your judgement, I know you are right, yet….I have one question for you: “When will you start accepting orders for the ipad and for how much?
February 4th, 2010 at 5:33 pm
We should be carrying them, yes.
February 4th, 2010 at 5:33 pm
We’ll certainly make it known when we can start taking orders
February 7th, 2010 at 4:09 pm
No one, even Apple, is able to accept orders for the iPad yet, since it’s not yet FCC-approved (which is largely a formality). Once we get all the details we need from Apple, we’ll certainly announce it and get people in line. As for Mike T.’s comments above… Apple and Adobe are in a bit of a cold war, and technology experts I’ve talked to agree that Flash is a kludge. Apple certainly isn’t afraid to flex its muscle and drive technologies to newer and better areas even if it’s with the expense of short-term angst from some people. For those who remember Apple removing the floppy drives from their Macs, the non-Flash support may be likened to that. A lot of angst at the time, but in the end, they were right.