Even as the snig­gers and the iTa­m­pon trend on Twit­ter began to gain promi­nence, the tech and the biz worlds realised one thing for sure: Apple’s “new cre­ation” was cer­tainly not the rev­o­lu­tion­ary device pun­dits had been rant­ing about. At the best of times, Apple’s prod­ucts have hardly show­cased sen­sa­tional tech­nol­ogy. This time, it seems, was not even close to the best.

Just another iPhone

Through the years, and increas­ingly since the iPhone was launched, Apple has relied on a heady pre-release buzz to con­fuse peo­ple about their product’s actual worth. This time’s near-delirious antic­i­pa­tion makes the even­tual out­come seem even more painful. How we wish some of our pre-release predictions/hopes had actu­ally been true!

In all fair­ness, the prod­uct is stun­ning. With one qual­i­fier. Its looks are stun­ning. Period. If you’ve already jumped onto the iPhone band­wagon, then this prod­uct is as under­whelm­ing as they come.

Apple has never really released any device that was rev­o­lu­tion­ary in the tech­no­log­i­cal sense. Whether it’s the iPod or the iPhone, most of these devices suc­ceeded not due to their capa­bil­i­ties but their pack­ag­ing and mar­ket­ing. The tech­nolo­gies for run­ning these devices were gleaned from other, lesser-known, non-indigenous sources. At this moment, it seems it ran out of places to glean ideas from and sim­ply enlarged the iPhone because it’s pretty.

Con­sider what it offers you. First, a big­ger screen.  So it makes read­ing news­pa­pers and mag­a­zines and books feel sexy again. Big deal! You’re going to spend five to eight hun­dred bucks to get a device that lets you read news­pa­pers and books and do every­thing else that a net­book or even a watered-down lap­top would let you do. The screen appar­ently doesn’t even sup­port the com­mon widescreen aspect ratio of 16:9. What a waste of a larger screen!

To add to the pain, there’s no cam­era which even the most con­ser­v­a­tive tech-pundits pre­dicted. If you thought this new device would be great for your busi­ness as a video-conferencing, presentation-toting device, here’s another dis­ap­point­ment for you. Oh, and if you thought you could switch between the browser and work­space while work­ing on your doc­u­ments, the device doesn’t sup­port mul­ti­task­ing either. And wait, there’s more. Open up a web­site on Safari and a lot of blank boxes might appear because Flash is still not sup­ported. Sounds great?

Want me to rub it in fur­ther? If you want to use a USB device with your iPad, you’ll soon realise that you’ll have to resort to a thou­sand adapters to con­nect to it.

Lis­ten to the rumours, Mr. Jobs

Apple prod­ucts have always stressed expe­ri­ence over util­ity and they’ve done a fan­tas­tic job with that. Their lat­est prod­uct is bound to get peo­ple rav­ing about the fan­tas­tic feel of using it. And full marks to the com­pany for putting so much effort into mak­ing their prod­ucts attrac­tive and a plea­sure to own.

How­ever, After the ini­tial exhil­a­ra­tion of using an over­sized iPhone (that can’t even make calls or send mes­sages) dies down, there is sure to be a re-evaluation of the iPad’s worth. Even at $500, we have net­books (which Steve Jobs shot down with con­tempt) that can accom­plish far more. We’re actu­ally sur­prised that even some of the more plau­si­ble rumours con­cern­ing the prod­uct didn’t come true: no cam­era, con­se­quently no video-conferencing and no mul­ti­task­ing. Wait for the next upgrade to the iPad. There’ll almost cer­tainly be a huge over­haul and addi­tional features.

Mr Jobs, you know us men well. (Con­sid­er­ing the name of the prod­uct, I’m guess­ing he didn’t even con­sider women as poten­tial buy­ers). Yes, we like pretty gad­gets and pretty women. But you missed out one thing: we love sub­stance too! Your new play­thing is just a pretty face.

Fol­low the grapevine. Give us more!

——————————-

You know one fea­ture we’d really like to see?

The apple’s touch­screen dou­bling as a scan­ner for pho­tographs and documents!

Watch this space to view a more detailed wish­list later.

{ 0 comments }