Last thoughts on the iPad, and why it failed
As we all know, Apple introduced the "magical" and "revolutionary" device, that just isn't much either of those: the iPad.
Apple took the iPhone and made it bigger. It's actually an bigger iPod Touch, since there's no phone in there. Even they've built that for years, it looks like it has been built in few months. Why? Let me point some things out. The Home Screen. It's just the same home screen you see in your iPhone. They just made some more space for the icons and put some 3D into the dock, but that's it. That home screen was designed for a small screen, not for a big one, and it shows. Icons just float around. They could've bringed some new features to it, but they chose the easy way: stretch iPhone OS to match that screen size. No multi-tasking. Some say, Apple will introduce multi-tasking with iPhone OS 4.0. For the iPad's sake, I wish that's true. It would bring iPad closer to a Mac laptop if it had a real Dock or a App switcher. Then again, why they thought it was a good idea to launch a product that "falls into middle" if it really doesn't? It's nowhere near a Mac, it's still an iPod Touch, no matter which way around you look at it. Mobility. It's small, but in the same time, it's huge. Mainly because it doesn't bring anything new you couldn't do with your iPhone. It's not that much smaller than a MacBook. So why, instead of MacBook (or iPhone), you should take your iPad in the bed with you? You could take it to the toilet, but where you are going to place it while you wipe your behind? No camera. No video calls with Skype. No nothing. After all, it'd make a crappy camera because of it's size. And if you don't do video calls, do you want to take pictures of your own face everyday? No. No OS X. You can't go and download Boxee. You can't go and download Things. Or Coda. Or Firefox. Or even iChat. Even though they'd all work pretty ok with the touch screen. Old apps designed for a smaller screen. Displaying a small app in a huge screen is just plain stupid. Pixel doubling doesn't fix that, it's just a zoom. They should've just skipped that and say with a single line, that it can run old apps. Gaming. It would be great to run Civilization on the iPad, but... Racing? Did you see the demo, where you had to really stretch your thumbs to make it all the way to those pedals? Borders around that screen are huge. FPS? Nope. Touch controls and gaming doesn't always match. There should be a wireless controller. A wireless gaming console. That would rock. I can't see myself buying one. Even when I'm always anxious to get my hands on new devices. There's just no room for it in my daily use. I don't need it. On the other hand, I could see my mother using one, but she's quite happy with my old PC. Someday, the iPad will be great. But the day isn't here yet.
Comments [0]