Jesse Brown

Jesse Brown offers critical thoughts on technology and what it means. Follow Jesse on Twitter: @JesseBrown

Categories: Jesse Brown, Science & Technology, Technology

The iPad sucks

by Jesse Brown on Thursday, March 3, 2011 1:35pm - 164 Comments

Now this I would have lined up for.

Apple sold 15 million iPads in nine months. But so what? The gadget is a dud.

Too harsh? I don’t think so. A year ago, there were some pretty high expectations for the iPad. It was “transformative“. It was “magical“. It was going to change computing. It was going to save publishing. It was going to kill netbooks—probably laptops too.

It has done none of these things. After the cool factor wore off, iPad owners were left with a nice way to surf the web on a couch. Compare it to the iPhone, a truly transformational device that owners interact with hundreds of times a day. My dad (not exactly a luddite, but close) got one as a gift, and within a week he couldn’t remember how he had lived without it. He now has a dorky little holster for it on his belt. It’s adorable. My mom followed up by buying him an iPad. He played with it for a day or two and hasn’t used it since. The iPhone is a crucial tool, the iPad a toy. Boys get bored with their toys.

Now we’re supposed to get excited all over again because the toy comes in white. Yes, it’s also a bit thinner and a bit faster. Guess what? Computers will always get smaller and faster. The problem with the original iPad wasn’t that it was too slow or too big. It’s that it was a solution in search of a problem. It didn’t let me do anything I couldn’t do before.

Perhaps this will change. As more and more people acquire iPads and other tablets (especially those that run on open platforms), new uses for them will emerge. New apps will be developed, and eventually someone will come up with something awesome that we will want to do all the time and that can only be done with a tablet. But when that happens, it will be despite Steve Jobs, not because of him.

Apple has steadily devolved from a maker of beautiful machines for creators to a censorious manufacturer of shiny doodads you can’t easily type on or share files with. Whereas once they led by innovating, they now aim to stay on top by using their market clout to bully others from doing so—see yesterday’s post by Chris Sorensen on Apple’s attempt to monopolize the touchscreen market.

Hoarding components—how magical!

Tags: Apple, apps, iPad, iPhone, Steve Jobs, tablets

More by Jesse Brown

writingonanipad

He's entitled to his opinion,
but I find it shoddy on Maclean's part because it's not a real review.
It's a opinion. It's not a report or informative in any way.

The truth is, it does so many things and can be a real-world replacement for someone who only checks email, surfs a bit, watches movies/tv shows, and video chats with family. It's even a book/magazine reader.

People will hate and dislike it, but the bottom line should really be,
"does this fit into my lifestyle?"

In your case, I feel it does. For about $500-1000 cheaper than most PCs.

Aaron

Pc's are far cheaper then iPads.

Knigge

Am used to better writing then this from Mcleans.
A test group of 1 and that is representative?
FUD

Canada / RIMM FUD across the board here
Pierre

There is your key point:
Once they're as cheap and ubiquitous as USB keys, then we'll start to see some killer applications (hopefully sold through an open app store).

The "ijunk" is: Too expensive, too "manufacturer locked", too complicated, and does not do enough for most folks to justify the price. And in 366 days, guess what? Your $500 ipad V.1 Toy… or your $500 ipad V.2 Toy… Will be replaced by a $500 V.3 Toy. And so on.
Apple, the original company of "freedom" and simplicity has let us down, and wants too much control over our lives, as they milk their cash cow(s) to death.
EXAMPLE:
A friend bought an ipod. Neither of us could figure out how to do anything with it. I bought him a $25 mp3 player at Wal Mart. Now he has 50 pieces of music on it he can listen to. And when he gets bored with those next week… We'll delete them, and put another 50 or 60 (or more) on it. He can even carry PDF, and WORD or EXCEL files, and Pictures on the thing. And it only took us a couple of hours to figure out and make use of.
Nice try Apple. NO cigar. YET!
Try again Stevie Wonder! You'll get it right soon. Look back to your roots!
Davis72

I don't own an IPad or an IPhone, I do have a Droid incredible and find it sufficient for what I need to get done on a 3" screen.
Now I do own and Ipod and used it daily while I was running but even that has stopped, not the running but taking the Ipod with me.
The best part about Apple is the price of the stock, when I heard about the Ipod and Itunes coming out is when I loaded up on AAPL stock at about $32 a share , it has split since that time several times and now what was a 32k investment has turned into a substantial amount of $$ Maybe someday I will break down and get an Ipad to play with, I do use my 5 laptops quite a bit and my 3 desk tops as they are very functional for what I do, but I don't play games and I can read as much as I want with a good hard cover book or use one of my laptops if I feel like it, But once again what I do love about APPL is the stock price, like PCLN, it was a great deal at $12 share & now trading at about $470 a share. but I traveled so much when I was in my 20s& 30s that I am not into taking many trips these days. to me its all about the $$$ and how each of these companies have marketed themselves, If you think back before the Ipod and Itunes APPL was having a difficult time keeping the share price above $30, Great job by Steve and his crew (pun intended) on making a failing company into the largest market cap share Co, on the S&P 500. Its fairly straightforward to me. if you don't like it don't buy it. but thanks to all of you that have, by the way The Ipad did not make the company what it is now. there were a host of great ideas coming out of APPL to make it what it is today, Oh yes excuse any typos, or I should say who gives a rats ass
Aaron

No one has yet posted a valid use for the iPad. Computing devices go obsolete quite quickly, but iPad are obsolete while still sitting on the store shelves. This product is THE most useless computing device to ever hit the market. But Jobs already has an army of suckers to buy his crap. If people made purchases based on research, and not social appeal, Apple would be long out of business.

Mykeljon

The comments are full of descriptions of valid uses. Maybe you should try reading some of them!!!

http://twitter.com/lukesimulacrum @lukesimulacrum

I've been hesitant to wade into this one, but the militant devotion of the iHorde that's on display here reeks ever so slightly of a self-conscious desire to justify one's own fetishistically expensive purchase.
carsonew

Shock. Horror. Headline. Nice one ;-) I know you secretly love your iPad really, and probably used it to write your attention-grabbing headline… well you got my eyeballs so well done. Shame there wasn't much sense or weight, and not even that many words in your article. Unlike the iPad, that IS boring.
http://twitter.com/shmish @shmish

Yes, there were some great descriptions of valid uses such as the ER doctor and the guy that reads academic papers on the subway while he goes to work, or people that have accessibility issues. I also get the feeling that the overwhelming use of the iPad is to use it while on the couch for surfing the web, reading an email or playing a video game.

Really? Is that what we have evolved to? The need to spend $500+ on a device to sit on our fannies and multitask relatively mindless activities? That is supposed to be a game changer?

The brilliance in the iPad, for the most part, is iTunes. The iPad is all about consumption, not computation. Without iTunes, the iPad would be nothing.

The touchscreen aspect is completely oversold in my opinion. While doing any type of computer task I'm doing one of two things: I'm either reading a screen or typing. I spend a ridiculously small amount of time navigating a UI (I assume that I somewhere close to "normal" in this regard). Unfortunately the iPad is rather lacking in the concept of typing in both form and function. It is a device for reading and digesting media, and an expensive one at that. It works well for some people and others just like it, but I don't think it is a device to hold up as bastion of technological need or supremacy. Perhaps it can be held up as a brilliant work of marketing though.
tinkertank

I disagree…. My friend's mother is terminally ill and hospitalized… they gave her a PC, then a Macintosh… she couldn't get the hang of either of them… then they gave her an ipad… She won't stop emailing them! She loves it… It's an accessible tool that she can wrap her head around. Sure it doesn't change 99% of the stuff that they claimed it would, but what it's really turned out to be is the computer for people who don't want, need or understand computers.
http://www.promotionalcode.ca/ Markus

All Apple has done is create a new "niche" product to make money with. It's like car companies coming up with new categories and sub categories. There are some hits and misses and the iPad just happens to be a huge hit. No surprise there, people will buy anything that has an Apple logo on it.

Of course, people that already own a smart phone and a laptop or desktop have no need for an iPad or any other tablet. But don't tell people that, they just have to figure it out for themselves…

Anyways, thanks for this post. It's always interesting to read somebody questioning this brand's hegemony.
SMurphy

Jessie, I have to agree with you. The product is wonderful but the way it's been delivered to us is crap. The one thing we really need from the iPad is the killer app that makes it different from other devices. Right now, it's just a big iPhone.

Not that that is a bad thing. It's just not special.

The killer app would come a lot faster if Apple had an open platform. I understand why Apple is the way it is and concede it is a trade off — stability vs. freedom.

Until there is something to differentiate the tablet from being a simple cross breed between a dumbed down laptop and a larger iPod, it will be be innovative simply because it's fun (i.e. not life-changing or essential).

Again, it's not a bad thing.
Natsu

Although to add to my post above; unfortunately there aren’t enough alternatives available at the moment.
Also somehow most of these alternatives tend to make themselves more expensive than the Ipad. They do run on an open os though like the Windows 7. Now if they fall in price quite a bit, I think they will provide much better competition for the Ipad; especially with the prices falling on the Ipad 1 with the release of Ipad 2.
*hope

did you ever consider software and apps and carriers just aren't changing with the times so the iPad's capabilities are being held back by the very content it's been created to support. it's a means to other ends…but those ends are just not keeping up with jobs. moreover, people don't know how to use this technology to it max. consumers see a shiny new toy for the internet and maybe a movie…they don't bother with figuring out what it's actually capable of and how it can 'be more' to them.
Jon C

Sorry, the link above should be http://img828.imageshack.us/img828/153/photok.png