iPad: Hit or Miss?
Posted on | January 28, 2010 | No Comments
Yesterday Steve Jobs presented the most anticipated cross computing tool since the iPhone. After listening closely to the Twitter and blogshpere it’s apparent Jobs and company didn’t hit this one of the park – but created another major miss probably waiting to go to the wall of shame.
Granted, Jobs saw an opportunity and acted on it – create a hybrid between the smartphone and a laptop. Kudos to you for trying. However, the iPad leaves the best out of either.
Storage: What can 64GB do for you these days? Myself, and probably like yourself can eat through 64GB just on apps, never mind with files.
Phone Capabilities: This is a cross between the smartphone and a laptop. Great I can save my contacts here. But where’s the phone?
Multitasking: The OS is the same framework as the iPhone and the Touch. Which has one major design flaw for any regular computer user. You cannot switch between two or more running applications.
Camera: All MacBooks carry a vidcams, Jobs. Cameras are great when using webex, or VOIP services like Skype. To not put that ability here means I would have to carry accessories. Which reduces its portability appeal.
Extendability: iPad does not support USB. How are you to back this up without using another computer. Which is another problem.
Computer Dependent: Do Not Replace Your Laptops! iPad is as dependent on your current computer as is your iPod or iPhone. This is not a replacement device.
Flash: Because it is running the same OS as the iPhone, it doesn’t support Flash. Yes you have the bigger screen than your phone to browser the Internet. But you still find the blank holes where embedded Flash apps would normally appear.
Keyboard: Alright the screen size is small. But with regular use I could see myself get use to it. However when you the keyboard, yoi immediately reduce your workspace to almost have! Yes, they’ve come up with a docking and keyboard device. But then what do you have? Hmm a laptop.
Name: I’ll leave this to the rest of you. This has to be one of the biggest gaffs in branding ever. No cool factor there. It will be that poor kid in the school yard always being picked on for his name. Poor guy 
I admire Steve Jobs. I believe he is one of the brightest and innovative individuals to date. He will sit back one day and look back at his success with Apple. And like any genius knows, you have to risk failure to succeed. Apple has been riding a long wave of success. The idea of an Apple tablet is fantastic and a worthy endeavour. However, what they’ve come up with, in my humblest opinion, has dropped way below any reasonable expectation or more importantly usefulness. It would be interesting to speak with their design team to understand how did they involve their users into this creation. Or did they just create it from a paper napkin drawing?
I suppose time will tell if a success can come of this or just another Newton waiting to be hung.
I’ve have recently installed the Firefox Accessibility Extension (version 1.5) by Jon Gunderson of the Illinois Center for Information Accessibility. It’s a fantastic tool that allows you to test the against the FAE and beta W3C accessibility rules. It’s a simple to use toolbar that enables reporting on navigation, text-based and embedded content, scripting and more. Should be a must have if you’re developing web sites but also if you manage your own web site and need to make it more accessible. Check it out on 