Thoughts on the iPad
by Alex
1. Yes, but does it play Warcraft?
2. It’s a bit sad that Jobs can no longer power the reality distortion field around his body — once upon a time the best part of Apple agitprop were the Jobs presentations. Now of the two videos on the Apple website, its the slickly produced iPad promo rather than Job’s unveiling that is the main attraction. Sad.
3. How is the iPad making Amazon “nervous about the Kindle”? Amazon’s business is selling DRM’d digital books, Apple’s business is selling consumer electronics to read them on… and this is an issue how? The kindle is merely the sixty buck inkjet printer for which Amazon will sell you refills.
4. There shoulda been a Newton reference in Jobs’s presentation.
5. I have this vague feeling that I can’t really justify yet that the transition to handheld devices is going to result in the elimination of free content. I’m not sure really why I think this — people are going to get used to paying for content and will not demand it free, new devices will have app stores and no browsers, content providers will ditch their website for app stores… I’m sure there’s a point there.
Not related to the iPad but:
6. The Roku guys refused to let me include “convenient streaming of instructions from my Martian overlords” as a positive benefit in my review of it on their website.
Ok I’m done now.
It strikes me that this is the beginning of the end of the computer as a universal household fixture. I’d guess that 90% of personal computer use is of a browser, 95% if one is using webmail. Even word processing is rare, because instead of typing up and printing out a letter, you use email or fill out a web form. How many people need the extra capability of a laptop in a portable configuration? With “cloud” based storage on the rise, a laptop’s hard drive is less necessary. At any rate, this could mark the decline of the laptop share of the traditional computer market, because if you really need the extra capability, then go for it all, with a super-large screen to boot.
On #5–bandwidth and servers and switches and routers don’t pay for themselves, and I wonder if this could be the beginning of a sort of micropayment alternative to the advertising revenue model that some people have occasionally opined would be a superior way of paying the bills.