Why I will never buy an iPad
The recent announcement of the iPad and launch earlier this week has started what is essentially the next feeding frenzy for Apple fanboys (and fangirls) along with what Apple hopes to be a sizeable market share from people who don’t like Amazon’s Kindle. It’s a cool device, I’d play with someone elses for 10 minutes but I will never buy one.
Never buy first generation Apple products Sure, they are well engineered, thought out and functional but there are always inherent problems with them that require software patch updates to fix the bugs and / or hardware problems. The second generation of nearly ever Apple product ever released is cheaper, better and less problematic.
It’s expensive for what it is! It’s an over-sized telephone with none of the features of a netbook and has the inherent problem that all iPhones have; the inability to load flash files while browsing the web. Dumb! Why should I be forced to load a YouTube app just to watch YouTube videos? Worse, I can’t simply go to Hulu.com and stream shows, I have to sit back and wait for an app to be written.
$30 a month for the 3g features is insane. I don’t know anyone who will buy an iPad who doesn’t already feel like they’re getting raked over the coals by their mobile provider, let alone paying an additional $30 a month to AT&T for Internet access on the iPad, which has been less than perfect already.
Less then a week in the wild and there are already numerous tutorial sites touting ways to fix or enhance the Wi-Fi function and the 3g functionality of the iPad because it’s riddled with problems.
Keep dishing out the money too. Time Magazine announced an iPod app, but if you want the whole edition that week, the cost is still $4.99! For digitally delivered content! Not one tree fell in the making of that content compared to a traditional print magazine.
There is nowhere that I’m going to take my iPad that I couldn’t take my Macbook already. Sure, some situations like riding a subway train may make it slightly more usable but at 2/3rds the price? And chances are, wherever I’m going I’ll need a real laptop anyway.
Until the price for digital distribution of books, magazines and other subscription based items come down from their insanely high prices, the iPad will receive about as much success as Apple TV and that is to say, a core group of users who love it but no real mass appeal. $500 for the cheapest model or $630 for the 3G enabled one, which is more like $990 for your first year of ownership when you calculate in the $30 per month AT&T fee is too steep a price for the mass market. In a world where netbooks can now be purchased for well under $250, is having a touch screen enabled device worth the premium? The luxury of this device is just that, a luxury that no one really needs. Unlike the iPod that hammered the final nail in the portable CD player’s coffin, the iPad hasn’t even started to build a coffin for anything yet.