Me and My iPad

Let me be clear: as far as the iPad is concerned, I want one. Preferably now.

I’ve been following the screeds about this device with a lot of amusement and enjoy reading as many of the pros and cons as I can. I get a lot of the “here’s why the iPad is awesome” posts through RSS. One of the people I follow on Twitter (you know who you are, @williamgarrity!) has been helpfully forwarding along many of the “here’s why the iPad sucks” sources.

Who knew there were so many things to love? Who knew there were so many things to hate? Especially because this is a device that only a few hundred people have actually seen and held. Whatever happened to “wait and see?”

I’m especially amused by the folks who already despise the iPad because it’s not all-inclusive-it doesn’t play Flash; it doesn’t have a huge array of connectors (USB! HDMI! Firewire!)-or because it’s not a netbook of some kind or because you can’t mod an iPad or because .

Katie Hafner gets it: she wrote an intriguing piece for the Times on Sunday. The article, When Phones Are Just Too Smart, appeared in the Fashion Section of the paper edition—so it’s amazing that I saw it. But the point Hafner makes is that while a lot of people own a lot of iPhone apps, they tend to use 5-10 apps regularly.

There was another article in the Times onn Sunday that made a related point. In Steve Jobs and the Economics of Elitism, Steve Lohr writes,

From computers to smartphones, Apple products are known for being stylish, powerful and pleasing to use. They are edited products that cut through complexity, by consciously leaving things out — not cramming every feature that came into an engineer’s head, an affliction known as “featuritis” that burdens so many technology products.

KISS, we were reminded just yesterday by @bluefuego.

Indeed. I don’t want really complex stuff on websites I visit. And I certainly don’t have the time or patience to deal with highly complex products. I have a lot to do, every day, and I don’t enjoy having to figure out how to use a highly complex tool with largely inscrutable instructions.

So am I that strange? I don’t think so. I think many people yearn for simplicity and respond to a product that provides a very high level of functionality, even as it eschews needless complexity. Some of my friends like to tinker with stuff and figure out how it works. I admire them, I really do. But I’m someone who’ll pick up a santoku rather than start up a food processor to julienne a carrot or chop some garlic.

Why is the iPod so successful? Not because, feature-for-feature, it’s the best MP3 player, but because Apple made smart choices in creating a device that many people could use, easily. [It doesn’t hurt that the iPod looks great and that iTunes makes it easy to buy content and download it to an iPod.]

So back to that iPad. I’m expecting a small, light, multi-purpose device that can replace my laptop in some situations like when I travel, especially when I travel for pleasure. I’ll be able to read on it, watch movies on it, check websites, do light email. It’ll be great in that situtation. Will it be perfect? Nope, you can bet it won’t be.

But I expect it to be most of these things because it’s an Apple product.

Can I have one, now, please? Naysayers be damned.

And who knows? It might even be good for the web. I, for one, won’t be sorry to see fewer stupid deployments of Flash.

Posted by Michael Stoner
Additional Posts (286)
Categories: This Electric Life