Thursday, January 28, 2010

iPad...do any Women work at Apple or what?

Now from Apple the revolutionary, life changing, magical* devise!

So Steve Jobs showed off his latest wiz-bang can't miss toy yesterday (Got an Apple TV? Didn't think so). The iPad is Apple's "magical and revolutionary devise". It appears to be the same form factor as a iPhone or iTouch, only bigger. I love my iTouch, carry it and use it all the time. I covet an iPhone, but alas, as a Verizon customer I'm out of luck (for now). So to say I'm a prime potential buyer is no overstatement. But after seeing the big announcement I'm...not blown away.

The tech press had been teasing that something really different, a game changing killer app was a foot. I'm still waiting. The mail & picture handling is a step up from the iPhone/iTouch, but nothing better than I have on my laptop. iTunes store, App store, yeah my Touch has those too. Listen to music? Check. Watch videos? Check. OK then, how about a book reader? The reader is what looks to me to be the app with the most potential. As a student I lugged around a large bag full of heavy books. Expensive books. Books that the book store would often be out of, causing me to miss reading assignments or have to photocopy others books. Then I had the task of trying to sell them back to the book store after that semester for pennies on the dollar. Down loadable digital books would be a quick, always in stock, easier to transport, and (one could hope) more affordable than the dead tree version. If it catches on, I can see devices that serve as book readers (& more) being a really big thing. I would have loved such a setup in high school & college.

But for me, middle aged family with a mortgage, it's a harder sell. The reader is cool, but not the killer app I want. For me, the killer app would be Excel on my iPad. It would make certain important tasks at my shop much easier, replacing a lot of hand written pages with direct entry. Certainly a time saver, and would probably add to accuracy too. I know there's iWork Numbers in the app store, and yes you can export to Excel...but I would want to avoid all the extra steps to do so. Email myself the Excel file, modify it, and email it back. That's what I want.

And the price. I won't grumble about the price since hey, it's an Apple product...if you want a super low price don't sniff around the Apple tree. If I had an extra $499 burning a hole in my pocket, it would be a nice, less squint worthy alternative to my iTouch. But without MY killer app, it's just a cool toy.

And the name, oh the name. Was it some passive aggressive move by the women at Apple not to point out the obvious FAIL that is the name iPad? Even before the introduction was over, Twitter was being deluged by hygiene product jokes. Steve Jobs, hello! Didn't you run this one past your wife?


*Apple had the nerve to call it magical? Well perhaps it is, if it can make $499 disappear from my wallet in April.

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