Hey iPad – Twitter called and it wants its haters back

I’ve spent the last few days playing with my new iPad. I don’t really think of myself as an Apple fanboy, but evidence might be starting to mount. I originally wanted an iPad for application testing – I’m working on a few projects that would benefit from ultra-mobility and reasonable screen size.

To me this is a whole new category of device, and I wanted to get a real feel for what this thing was all about. I already have or use the devices around the niche the iPad appears to be destined for – the MacBook, the iPhone, netbook – but I really did see this as Something Completely Different. I desperately wanted to like the Windows Tablet; I’d been an early Palm user (III/V/m105) and I tried two early generations (a Compaq TC1000 and a Toshiba M205). I  carried them from meeting to class to meeting, but it never clicked. I saw the potential, but the experience was truly lacking for me.

Yes, I am still ticked off that there’s no Flash – I enjoy building apps in Flex and AIR. I’m even more disappointed that Apple appears to have removed the blue brick icon when a missing plugin is needed for page content. I have yet to see one in Safari when browsing Web sites. This was serving as an ensign for the Flash community.  If Apple has indeed removed this emblem, perhaps Flash developers should put that icon in the alternate content area of the embed/object tag. [Update 4/13/10: Someone has done precisely that]

But the real amazing thing to me has been all the vitriol about the iPad – it’s like the usual unsocialized nonsense of Slashdot has exploded all over the Web. It frankly reminds me of the early days of Twitter – “Why would anyone want to know what I had for breakfast?” was the usual slant. And that showed that they didn’t *get it*

I also feel the same sort of guarded optimism as I did with Twitter – something’s different here. Now that folks with an inclination to develop have the actual devices, There Will Be Code. And from that code will come new kinds of applications and uses that we have only begun to consider.

5 thoughts on “Hey iPad – Twitter called and it wants its haters back

  1. Brian,

    I agree with you completely about the (over-done, unnecessary) dislike for the iPad. Part of me thinks it might even be rooted in disappointment. Even though people love to hate Apple, especially nerd elites, they also secretly lust for their gadgets. That’s why there are so many card carrying Linux dorks with iPhones in their pockets. But, when the iPad came out, it wasn’t meant for people like us.

    We’re on the outer edges of the targeted user group. Its a sexy gadget, so of course we’re going to give it a look, but Steve Jobs knows we don’t want to sit on our couches holding some hunk of aluminum silicon watching DRM-ed movies. The coolest features for the tech savvy have been drastically understated, because they aren’t trying to sell the tech savvy. They know we’ll flock anyway because its thin, sleak, and sexy.

    There are people that think the iPad should be able to play their mkv rips, have .ogg support, and be an open platform. But a device that tried to please everyone would please no one. So instead Apple just did what they always do; they built a minimalized, stylized, functional but slightly limiting piece of gadget lust that appeals to the masses, and will find a home among many geeks that have a good use case (such as your mobile apps, or my desire to read PDF’ed ebooks with accurate reproduction away from the computer) and an open mind, or at least a bit of fanboy in them.

  2. Pingback: Tweets that mention Hey iPad – Twitter called and it wants its haters back | Ghosted Notes -- Topsy.com

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>