Excellent user comment about the iPad on Mashable.com
Everyone loves to jump on these things as soon as they get announced and tally up the list of missing features. Remember the outcry over the original iPhone? After it was announced it was quickly denounced as “a toy” by smartphone aficionados, and the lack of 3G, GPS, dev kit, SD slot, physical keyboard, Flash, and a myriad of other wishlist features were called out as “dealbreakers” left and right. But then people *used* it. And look where the iPhone is now. It’s the biggest thing in the world, has had some amazing upgrades, and the detractors ate their words. Now here we are again, and Santa didn’t bring the cynical geeks all the presents they asked for, and again it’s a “fail” and a “dealbreaker,” and again you’re going to see this thing become massively popular, and by its third iteration be an awesomely powerful entertainment device that for many casual users replaces the need for a laptop AND a smartphone. We geeks who obsess over this stuff all day may cry afoul over multitasking and HDMI, but does your Mom? Your kid brother? My Mom doesn’t use her phone enough to feel the need for an iPhone, and she doesn’t use her computer enough to need a laptop. But she’d probably LOVE to have this thing in the kitchen with her to browse recipes, or to read magazines on the couch while her husband watches sports. This is a mainstream device for casual users, and I think you’ll find that many of them simply don’t need a laptop, especially when there’s a fun and pretty device that can do more or less everything they need to do. Non-geeks just want to read their email (check), browse the web (check), read magazines (check), check their Facebook (check), watch movies and YouTube (check), listen to music (check), etc. Oh, and the million other things they’ll be able to do thanks to the apps that will be coming out for this thing. As a geek and a poweruser, I wish there was multitasking. And a camera. And a USB port. And Flash. And HDMI. And I’m getting sick of Apple’s closed ecosystem. But many of those things would add to the price tag, and this is a first-gen mass-market device to open up the door. To get things rolling. iPad 2 is going to have a camera, and GPS, and probably an evolution of the operating system that supports a form of multitasking. And by that time, you’ll have played air hockey and chess with your friends on this thing, and experienced multimedia versions of your favorite magazines, and watched HD movies on the plane without hauling out your laptop, and I bet it’s going to win people over more and more. The hype got the best of all of us, and there’s a lot to be desired here, but I think it’s going to evolve quickly, and win people over in a very surprising way.
via: mashable.com
