It would appear that I’m the only guy who agreed with almost everything Paul Thurott wrote yesterday. Aside from the entire post, which I think is a great read, I actually agree with Paul’s opening statement the most:
While the iPad has captivated Apple’s audience in ways that only Apple products can, it’s not a product I can recommend in its current configurations and at its current pricing structure. But complaints aside, it’s clear that Apple’s wonderful toy is pointing the way to a future where computing is simpler, more mobile, and more connected. Apple partisans claim that this means the iPad is a huge success, one that will seriously impede PC growth. But the truth, as always, is less extreme. Instead, both the iPad and the PC will evolve over time, with the iPad picking up additional functionality and capabilities while the PC adopts some of the nicer features of the iPad, including its superior battery life and simpler user interfaces. In this as-yet-unwritten future, the resulting devices will be far more like PCs than iPads, I think, and will in fact simply be PCs by any reasonable definition. But that’s in the future.
In the meantime, millions of people have foolishly jumped on the iPad bandwagon too soon, adopting a device that is too expensive, too heavy, too big, and too limited. Those buyers will be supported by software updates for a few years at least, and that’s just great. But what early adopters are going to miss out on are the more fundamental changes that Apple makes to new iPad hardware that’s coming down the pike. And if Apple is truly serious about keeping its lead in the market for tablet-type computers, here are some of the changes it will need to make in time for the second generation iPad, now expected to hit sometime after the holidays.
I honestly feel that Paul is on to something. Of course, I’m not an iPad hater. I have an iPad. It’s great for reading but anytime that keyboard pops up, I despise the fact that I have to turn it sideways, lay it flat and then spend 10 minutes trying to get out a tweet or email response. Usually, I just grab my iPhone or laptop because I just can’t do stuff on it. Multi-tasking is a blessing and a curse on the iPad. With only 256Mb of ram, it just doesn’t perform as well as the iPhone. There are points raised by Paul that I agree with.
Of course, John Gruber chimes in:
Is there anyone who thinks Thurrott’s choice of the verb fix in lieu of, say, improve does anything other than show what a dick he is?
You know, I really think Paul is saying the iPad needs to be fixed before it’s a value to consumers. The iPad has enough to be better than every other tablet currently available or ever existed. That I agree with but I don’t think that Apple has gotten it right yet. There is still a lot of work needed to make the iPad “magical”. Improvements to the iPad is an understatement. Fix is far more appropriate.
My article yesterday comes to mind. This tidbit specifically:
We’re very far off from iOS being anything worth ditching your Mac over. Personal computers are trucks? How about personal computers are dad who pays your rent, feeds you, pays for your car and that stupid dress for Prom who you cry, “is holding me back” but, really is the reason you’re even here on this Earth. Just sayin’
Of course, I don’t really think this deserved a blog post to me until I saw this post today where John linked to a post about Android Hard Resets. What’s the joke? You have to do this on Macintosh computers (backup with Time Machine or Carbon Copy Cloner, reinstall the OS, install a shit-load of updates then restore your files). You have to do that on iPhone and iPad (remember this that I linked to yesterday?)
And, I can say with confidence that my iPhone & iPad after not being synced once to a Mac in over 4 months, that iOS DOES in fact suffer from slowness, stability issues and problems after time (and no, I’m not jailbroken). I’m fairly certain that this is an issue but here’s the key difference between Android & iPhone. Android users almost never ever have to sync their Android devices to a computer or even think about plugging them in. In fact, any iOS device purchased from Apple REQUIRES a Mac or PC to do anything other than make an emergency call (iPhone). Android works out of the box as a phone. Effortlessly and perfectly. iPhone users dock the iPhone every day at home or work without thinking about it and sync. It’s just common and thoughtless and most of us iTunes configured to auto-sync and, when that happens, the iPhone gets update, is backed up and this is ultimately what keeps the iPhone functioning well. If there was a maintenance application for Android devices where you plug in your phone to the computer, it may help those users out quite a bit. There isn’t and we ridicule them for needing hard resets which is an issue I experienced with Windows Mobile, Palm, Blackberry and now iPhone. My iPhone 4 with 400 megabytes of free space needs a hard reset (hold down power & home button for 10 seconds) once a week. It’s slow as mollasses. I’ve uninstalled tons of apps and reinstalled others like Reeder and Twitter who cache megabytes of data. I’ve removed all games and no longer take photos or videos with it because it’s SLOW. I can guarantee that syncing it and restoring via iTunes will fix the issue and, as soon as I buy a Mac, I’ll be doing that.
Sidenote: Ah, for those of you just tuning in, I sold my iMac and MacBook Air before the move across country and have yet to replace them because I spent 1 month on the road, another month settling in and spending tons of money on moving expenses and now it’s Christmas time and I’m spending more money on gifts and travel. I guess I could just tell my family to piss off and buy an iMac but that would be completely out of character and unthinkable to do. I mean, c’mon! So, I’m getting by on a Dell laptop work has provided with me. Why not restore my iOS devices using the Dell? Well, my entire iTunes library of 25K songs, 1,000 movies & 400 apps is stored on a Mac formatted LaCie drive so I can’t do anything with it until I buy a Mac. Damn.
But, I’m serious. The amount of people in love with their iPads makes no sense to me. It’s a great reading device. I like reading emails, reading RSS feeds, reading books, looking up things on Wikipedia or IMDB. It’s great for seeing what my friends are up to on Facebook. When the time comes to actually input text and get work done, I spend 10 minutes awkwardly handling the device, give up and grab my laptop or iPhone. It’s the truth.