Monday, April 05, 2010

Are You a Sheeple or an Apple

Sheeple and Apple are increasingly synonyms. It's Field of Dreams for techno-geeks. Jobs will build it and they will come regardless of utility or purpose.

Witness the iPad. (No ladies, it doesn't have wings, absorb more, or make you feel fresher.) What is it? Frankly I don't know, but then I'm not that into Apple.

It's supposedly a "tablet PC", but that nomenclature doesn't stand up to much scrutiny. You can handle several tasks at once on a tablet PC, but only do one thing at a time on an iPad. No multi-tasking allowed. Want to check email? Shut off your tunes.

It's everything an iPhone is except a whole lot less. It isn't a phone. Of course who wants to run around with something the size of a tabloid newspaper pressed against your ear?

It does, however, require a telephone contract even though you can't make calls. And, no you can't simply add it to your existing wireless account. You've got to get a dedicated contract and then only through AT&T. No Verizon, Sprint or T-Mobile. Frankly, where I live AT&T doesn't appear very often except at midnight of a full moon in an open field.

It does run a billion "apps" but only one at a time. It will let you surf the web, but don't expect any of the embedded Flash stuff to work. No Flash for iPad.

You could, of course, simply connect it to your home computer by USB cable and download content for work but alas, no USB ports, no HDMI for video and no GPS to get all those cool maps, directions and updates on nearby restaurants. Nope, none of that.

No camera for video conferencing or phoning. No back-side camera for the occasional photo opportunity either.

But, it is really neat and avant garde and you can be the first to have one. Simply charge it up and run it for as long as the single, sealed, unreplaceable, no-spares allowed battery will operate. Then, simply pack it up and ship it back to Apple for a replacement.

Meanwhile you can get all the content you want simply by purchasing from iTunes. Well, no they don't have nearly half-a-million books available like Kindle, but at least you know the money is going to a good cause...Apple; the same crew who socked you $800 for the bigga-Gigabyte model of the iPad.

Seriously, who needs this thing?

1 comment:

MagiK said...

In the 80's I was a huge Apple Fan, they had a superior product...until Jobs kicked Wozniak out. When Jobs fooked over the Apple IIgs customers I vowed to never own another Apple product...and to date, have had no regrets. I do however love my Kindle :D