Today, as I prepare to buy the Ipad 2, I want to revisit my orginal Ipad rant titled “Why the Ipad will be synonymous for failure.” A year later, the Ipad is obviously not a failure. So lets look at some of the points from my previous post.
The Kindle is a Superior E-reader
This is still true to this day. The Ipad is not a good book reader. Most people I know with Ipads also own a Kindle. At the time of that post, there was no Kindle application, and no indication from Apple that competing e-reader applications would be allowed.
Why buy an Ipad when your smartphone already has the same functionality?
I made a really stupid assumption. The assumption was that human beings are logical when it comes to making purchasing decisions. The fact is, people buy things based on appeal and desire, not left brain analysis. The world economy is driven by illogical purchasing, and I’m just as guilty as anyone else.
Lack of multitasking and user profiles makes it a bad product
Apple fixed the multitasking issue for the most part, but the user profile concern is still valid. However; most people don’t care about such a feature and Apple sure as hell doesn’t want to promote people sharing Ipads. Steve wants to sell more Ipads.
There is no camera, there is no video out, there is no usb port
The camera issue is fixed with the Ipad2, and there is a video out adaptor. I prefer the built-in hdmi adaptor on the Xoom, but I’m not sure I have a use case for video out on my tablet. A USB port would be nice, but Apple doesn’t want to sell the Ipad as a computer and they don’t want expandability. I expect that to change as the competition from Android matures over the next two years.