I mostly like Apple designs; they are usually well thought out, and I dig the iPhone.
However, Jobs unleashed the iPad, which I should mention is only a letter away from iPod but not even one notch close to as revolutionary.
Steve spewed off to the media prior to the event that “it was the greatest thing I have ever done [so I figured] oh what the hell.” But all I can think of when I see the iPad is a rushed product to tap into the market of some already-existing industries such as netbooks and eBook readers (both of which Apple previously had no finger in and stood behind the sidelines while others’ profits were skyrocketing), and simultaneously carrying on with the iPod lineup all at once, when the two are totally unrelated to one another.
In other words, you can now have your ketchup served alongside your peanut butter and jelly sandwich! Amazon’s Kindle is great because the screen looks convincingly a lot like actual text to reduce eyestrain, but with the iPad, I have the privilege of staring at a blaringly backlit, portable laptop touchscreen monitor, starting at $499.
Nobody would consider reading lengthy novels on a computer so why would iPad be an exception? Worst of all is that Apple TV faced the same failure. Apple executives were thinking “TiVo is taking off, we gotta get on those benjis pronto, but without any support for use with cable television, we’ll design it only to play back DRM-crippled, proprietary iTunes downloads you have to pay for!”
The iPad just screams profits for a robust number of companies without any perceived benefit over what is already out there: eBook readers, more iTouch-related product lines, smart phone capabilities, a quarter of laptop functionality, etc. The iPad has gone too far and become a morbidly obese, astonishingly 1984-esque version of my now retrospectively primitive iPad nano that I can install apps on and make calls on. Futhermore, it still fits in my pocket!
Evan Seaman is a junior majoring in marketing. He may be contacted at eseaman@themiamihurricane.com.