GizModo Knows About Sucking, Apparently

Gizmodo was very quick to put up a page denigrating the iPad. Generally, for a consumer device, I would view disapproval from Gizmodo as a good omen for future success¹, but wanted to address their statements anyway.

1. Big, Ugly Bezel - Yeah, I thought it was too big when I first saw it, but ugly? It's black and shiny. What's ugly about it? Were you hoping for beige plastic, perhaps? Anyway, then I gave some thought as to how you would hold a device this size, and you know what? I bet Apple had a darn good reason for making it precisely the size they did. I'll bet on Apple's product design and testing against Gizmodo's kneejerk reaction any day
2. No Multitasking This is a geeky need. Most people don't need it. I need it in my day-to-day computing so this would never be my primary computing platform, but as a media viewer, why would I need it? And most non-geeks concentrate on one app at a time, and as long as when they come back to the app, everything is where they left it, that's just as good as multitasking. Apple also has competitive reasons for doing this: they don't want you listening to Pandora, they want you listening to iTunes. You might see that as a negative, most people don't because most people use the default player anyway. On the Mac, most non-geeks use iTunes and on Windows, most non-geeks use Windows Media Player
3. No Cameras Okay, I sorta agree with this one, though I'm not sure it's going to be that big of a deal in person for the people who it's targeted at. I don't see my mom having a burning desire to do videoconferencing, and for me, well, my phone has a camera already and I alway have that with me. My laptop also has a camera. How many friggin' cameras do I need? The iPad is kind of unwieldy to use as a camera, and videoconferencing on the road would likely be a huge battery suck.
4. Touch Keyboard I'm not saying anything on this one until I've tried it, but if you need the keyboard all the time, buy a MacBook, this isn't the product you need. Move along, move along. Expecting every product to do everything is silly. I mean, my phone won't do the dishes, either, but I don't tell people it sucks.
5. No HDMI/HD Video OutAgain, not sure most people will care. It's a tablet, not a media center. It's designed to be portable. It's NOT a DVD player. If you need a media player, buy an Apple TV or an inexpensive desktop computer.
6. The Name iPadOkay, I've got nothing here. I don't like the name either.
7. No Flash This is a bad thing? Please. This is the greatest thing to happen to the web since, well… ever. Lazy web devs who use Flash as a crutch won't be able to use it any more. Adobe has proven themselves incapable of delivering a good non-Windows version of the Flash runtime, so let's give content providers reason not to use the fucking thing. Or, I should say, another reason, because the iPhone has already started playing Flash's funeral dirge.
8. Adapters, adapters, adapters Yeah, and if they had made it bigger to attach all those things that you'll only use rarely and at your desk, you'd be complaining that it was too heavy or too thick. Newsflash: it doesn't have a floppy drive either. Most people won't care. They'll use one or two adapters at their desk, and won't want them when they're elsewhere.
9. It's Not Widescreen Yeah, well, I sorta had that same reaction, but with the black bezel, letter boxing isn't that big of a deal, and I doubt people would want this product if it was any longer. There's no real argument that they should have made it thinner to match 16:9 so, once again, I'm going to say that Apple had a reason for designing the product this way. I'm sure they tried many different form factors before settling on this one, so I'll go with their track record over Gizmodo's gut.

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1- I'm not knocking the Gizmodo folks (too much). Just pointing out that they are geeks, like me, and are not necessarily the demographic that this device is targeted at.

Posted in: Rant