MacFlaunt

Iconic vs. Ironic. Is the iPad worthy of this juxtaposition?

Will it change your life forever? Could it be another iconic addition to Apple’s pioneering hardware back-catalogue? Probably not. Here are five reasons why…

1. No one cares.

As my colleague Sam pointed out a few months ago, there has been a huge dip in the popularity polls. The poll showed that 52% of their random sample were definitely not interested, up from 26% before release in the US.

Cnet’s Buzz Report has been slating Apple for going to AT&T to get the contract to support the 3G tablet’s capabilities. The point in question here is signal. AT&T play second fiddle to the likes of Verizon - providing 5X more 3G coverage than AT&T. So even if anyone did care about it, they probably wouldn’t be able to read about their own iPad’s dysfunctionality because of signal.

2. No Flash.

Flash is not supported on the iPad. A fantastical fail on Jobs’ part at the iPad’s San Fran Keynote speech in the latter of January this year when he stumbled across a flash video during a demonstration. iPhone users are sick of this and anyone who buys an iPad is going to have to endure the same level of annoyance.

3. Usability.

Turning the iPad through to its horizontal plane will not enable it to put videos and films into 16:9. While those annoying black lines are somewhat at-home to the visual-phile of cinema, it’s just as well - watching films on the iPhone is impossible but on the iPad it will be improved, though tedious.

The functionality of this tablet its pretty dire for the amount of money it is currently going for in the US. You get no SD card slot, no E-Ink capability so it’ll definitely be hard on the eyes when reading E-Books and then there’s the apps…

Who will buy a beefed-up version of an iPhone gaming app, just for the iPad? Let’s face it, people don’t install them to have a blast of a night playing all in the top 5 free games list. Instead people download them if they’re bored on a train to kill time, killing whatever’s new that week. Oh and note to the developers: ‘Don’t develop older games, now!’ At least wait a bit to see if those polls change…

Oh and forget trying to do a few things at once. There is a huge problem with the apps that run with the iPad: it will not let you run more than one at once. With a 1GHZ CPU you would have thought it would at least be able to run at least two.

4. Its name.

I’m with Cnet with this one: “Include some women in your focus group, Apple.”

5. Who is it for?

As far as I’m aware: it’s a tablet; but not a tablet, an iPod; but not an iPod because it’s bigger and it’s not an iPhone because it doesn’t make calls. A pessimistic and problematic compromise, respectably.

It is just too cumbersome to be anything short of a huge inconvenience when carrying it to wherever you will need to ‘use’ it. However, the carry case that Apple sells as an extra is pretty swish. Like a leather shell with a book-cover like flap, the flap has two membranes, making it able to stand up for the ease of typing. Another way you can present the iPad to others is through standing it up on its side, with the case, and leaving it cycling through pictures - like a digital picture frame. Very nice if you can afford it.

Granted, this is all very well and, well, bad for Apple to have as much criticism as it has in the last 4-5 months. We will see towards the end of this month whether it was all worth it, or in vain as the iPad goes on sale in the UK. The numbers will speak for themselves.