Ground Control to Major Jobs
Finally, the unicorn has arrived: the mythical and long-prophsied iTablet. Err, iPad. Anyway, the Apple Tablet has finally made it’s debut into the world! Yay! Sort of…
I’ve wanted a tablet for as long as I can remember. A portable, Star Trek-style computer to let you find information and be entertained. Every sci-fi movie from Avatar to Minority Report had one, and it’s finally here: but the reaction is mixed. Understandly so! Initially I was VERY excited about the iPad; when the rumors started flying around a few years ago, wild ideas started to fill my head of the wonderous possibilities that the iTablet could bring.
When it was announced, however…I was somewhat disappointed. Maybe disappointed isn’t the right word; maybe it’s “underwhelmed”. A giant iPhone minus the camera and cell phone antenna? Eh? But as I’ve studied it and thought about it more, I’ve become excited about it once again (more on that in a future post). Today I’d like to highlight some of the glaring improbabilities of the iPad: things that make you go “huh? they left THAT out?” You know, the typical application of the Apple 99% Rule. I’ll examine the issues I feel are most heinous and try to justify them from a business point of view. Let’s begin:
1. SD Card Slot: SD is ubiquitous to the point that Apple, a company that lives in fear of electronics with a variable nature, such as memory cards, adopted them and put them in their laptops. A pretty huge step for a company that’s NEVER integrated any sort of memory card slot at all previously. Does the iPad offer SD? Yes…with an external adapter. But why the heck would I want to carry that around? Why would I blemish my slim, trim iPad and kickstand case with a chunky card reader? WHY, Apple?
- Justification: SD cards = memory cards = more onboard memory = why the heck would you buy anything but the base model and then just toss in a 32-gig SD card to get more capacity on the cheap? Apple is protecting their product line by not integrating the card slot into the device. I suppose you could also argue that the SD card slot would allow dust to get in, but it does have a Dock connector, so that’s not really too valid.
2. USB port: Now this one I just don’t get. They offer a USB adapter…but it’s only for connecting cameras. So I can buy a USB adapter, I just can’t use it? Whaaa? Really though, the iPad needs a USB connection. It’s be super-cool to be able to plug in a memory stick and transfer files quickly or to dump pictures onto. But noooooo. Boo. Hiss.
- Justification: Apple allows third-party vendors to build externally-connected accessories…but only via the Dock connection. Plus, we wouldn’t want to be sneaking in any extra memory on the side, right? :p
3. HDMI port: If I didn’t get the lack of a real USB connection, then I just can’t fathom not adding an HDMI port. So let me get this straight: you have an HD-capable player, you have Keynote HD, it’s built for doing mobile presentations, it’s 2010, and you can only output - max - 1024 x 768 over VGA?? Are you KIDDING me? Who even has an XGA-rez projector? Even my lowly business projector is 720p, and it was built ages ago!
- Justification: Two reasons here: the AppleTV and Rev 2. First of all, the home theater is the realm of the AppleTV. It’s not a particular well-performing product, either - Apple tries to own an ecosystem and people aren’t signing up to it quite like iPod users were to iTunes. Having the ability to hookup your iPad to your flatscreen and play all kinds of crazy stuff would require Apple to setup some sort of video streaming system like the AppleTV has, and that would eat up the market pretty quick, I think. I can see Apple releasing a remote control app, but that’s probably about it. But who knows, maybe they’ll surpise us and throw in Wireless HDMI, but I doubt it. I think that HDMI was left out both because of a time crunch to get the product out, and to give users a reason to upgrade to revision 2 of the iPad. The day will come when all of the early adopters will go “oh snap! iPad 2 has HDMI? Gotta get me one of those!!”
4. Webcam: This is something that I was truly expecting to see. Come on, you give us an iTablet, but no webcam? You serious? It’s like the most advanced, neatest gadget on the planet, and it doesn’t have the one feature that every real tablet should have: VIDEO CHAT!!
- Justification: 3G and Rev 2. AT&T is already suffering under the load of 20 million iPhones (and of course, instead of investing all that profit back into their network, they didn’t); so much so that I actually ditched my beloved iPhone late last year because my service had gotten so bad (I was a user since the iPhone 2G, went to 3G, then 3GS, and it got progressively worse - sad). Having an iPad with a webcam would absolutely slaughter their network. iChat would be choppy, slow, and low-res. It wouldn’t be an optimal viewing experience. And Apple can’t exactly come out and say, wellllll you can only use iChat Video Chat over Wifi, because then what’s the point of having a webcam if you can only use it near a Wifi spot? Plus, it’s another feature to get Rev 2 purchases to buy it, at which time AT&T will probably have upgraded to 4G and be able to handle the increased data load effectively.
5. Multi-tasking: A 1GHz CPU and no multi-tasking. For reals. So I hook this into my car, I pop on Pandora to listen to some tunes while I’m cruising, then I switch over to my TomTom app for directions…oops, wait, there goes my Pandora. Sorry, no multi-tasking
- Justification: Wow, I don’t have much of a justification for this one. Better battery life? More system stability? Increased app speed and perceived user experience? Those are all weaksauce.
6. Flash: “The world’s best web experience”. Um, sorry, no. No Flash, no optimum experience. Steve Jobs was dumb enough to demo a website (New York Times) as one of his first websites to visit on the iPad, only to have a nice, big, giant, glaring blank spot with the “No Flash” symbol on it. Oops. I use Vimeo daily. I use a TON of sites with Flash content in them. You cannot have the best of the web, without having Flash.
- Justification: Apps/videos and bugs. From a business perspective, disabling Flash is a smart move. Who would buy Doodlejump if you could just sign onto games.com and play for free, streaming? Or get a monthly subscription to a Flash-based multi-game site and play to your heart’s content? Plus, Apple wants to control the video ecosystem, which apps like Hulu and Netflix Streaming would infringe on. Flash is not a good business move from that perspective, although I bet they could win over millions of hardcore nerds who otherwise wouldn’t buy the iPad for that very reason. On the technical side, Flash IS a buggy piece of crap, so I don’t really blame them for not wanting it to crash Mobile Safari. It crashes on my Mac computers weekly. But still, it’s an essential part of the web, and people aren’t going to change that just because an iPad exists - they didn’t for the iPhone, they won’t for the iPad. HTML 5 is NOT Flash.
So those six items are really my biggest gripes…if they added all of those in Rev 2, I’d be one happy camper, as I’m sure a lot of my fellow techie-friends would be. That’s not to say I won’t buy one; it’s just that to really realize it’s full potential, it kinda needs those features. You just know the Android is gonna be all over those, and a lot of people are going to snag Android tablets because of it (although I’m sure they’ll have a hard time competing at $499, haha). I’m sure we’ll be seeing a lot more positive reviews of the iPad once people actually get their hands on it, and developers start making cool apps for it, but for now, it’s hard to ignore all of those missing features.
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