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5 Reasons Tablets Suck, and You Won't Buy One
Crazzaper writes "When the iPad was announced, a lot of people who didn't care about tablets came out to bash Apple's new device. These same people said 'I would have bought it if it had a full OS,' but in reality full OS tablets existed before the iPad rumors even started. This article gives an interesting perspective on why this happened, and argues that there's five big reasons why more powerful tablets exists but no one cares."
From the article:
Windows is a "full operating system" in the sense a cheapass laundry machine is a "full cleaning solution". It's a cobbled-together appliance with rusty parts you're lucky doesn't burn down your house.
The reason people don't want a tablet, especially the iPad, is because it doesn't do anything special. It's pretty much the same "throw existing apps on something without a keyboard and call it a tablet" that everyone else has tried. That's not how the iPod and iPhone were successful. It's not how smartphones became successful in general, or even how netbooks became successful. If you want to make a real tablet, you've got to have a focused, tablet-oriented system, and a pervasive tablet UI. Unfortunately, the one possibly valid point in the article starts to hint at this and then veers back into clueless land.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
"Apparently we have that. The new ARM processors when put with the new hardware decoders are capable of this, as we'll see. Apparently Apple was waiting for just this breakthrough to enable this platform and as soon as it was able, made it."
Fanboyism never ends. Just because Apple said it doesn't mean it's so nor was there any "breakthrough" recently that Apple was waiting for. Apple has never claimed realistic battery life ratings.
You have to admit though that a large part of Apple sales comes completely from the "I want to show I'm fashionable/high status/popular" crowd. I own Apple products for a lot of the same reasons you describe, but a lot of people buy Apple simply because it's cool right now. They have built a brand image that goes along with hip and $300 jeans.
What bothers me the most though is that Apple itself seems to have shifted from a computer maker to more of a consumer electronics makers. They are embracing the fashion crowd at the expense of the technical crowd. I guess I can't fault them because there can be much more money in the fashion crowd, but don't forget about the people who make all the content that drive the sales of their 'magical' devices.