iLust on Hold

I almost hate to say it, but I'm not sure if I understand this whole iPad craze everyone's going on about. Initially, I started to drool when I saw the demo video, much as I've done with pretty much everything Apple has come out with in the past ten years. There's that iLust which I think is brought out in most everyone except the most diehard PC/Microsoft loyalists out there, and I know I'm as big a sucker for it as the next person. And I have to admit, the iPad seems pretty cool on first glance: a tablet computer, probably without all the past inadequacies and glitches of PC tablets that prevented them from ever really catching on. From the demo video, the coolest parts to me seem to be the ability to watch movies and videos and browse the internet on a larger screen than the iTouch/iPhone in a completely portable interface (and I can't deny making big eyes when they demoed what I presume to be a modified iCal app...it was designed like the pages of an actual planner, fully customizable).

But to me, that's what the iPad is: a big-screened iTouch that you can buy broadband for from AT&T rather than fruitlessly trying to hunt down a free, unprotected wifi connection. It doesn't appear to do much more than an iTouch at all...it's just bigger, and I'm talking physical size, not capacity: the biggest iPad hard drive is 64GB. WHAT THE HELL CAN YOU DO WITH THAT? My iTunes library would take up fifty percent of the hard drive space from the get-go, and I couldn't even put half of my photo collection on it. My primary uses of any computer, including my iTouch, are to store and organize my music, videos, and photos and to browse the internet. With the iPad, I'd basically only fully be able to do the last thing on that list.

Then there is the classic iPhone/iTouch problem of not being able to run more than one application at a time. For something more than an on-the-go device, I think that's pretty despicable. I'm not sure how you can market a product as a revolutionary electronic device that naturally fits into your daily life and habits to an increasingly caffeinated and ADD world when it can only run one program at a time.

And the name. The stupid name. The proposed "iSlate" or "iTablet" would have been miles better than "iPad," which sounds like the word "iPod" said in a severe Canadian accent. It also brings to mind hygiene products, which leads to the start of "iTampon" being a trending topic on Twitter after its initial release. They could have thought harder about the name, but then again, I still think "iPod" sounds stupid, and look how that's become a cultural icon.

Maybe I'm missing the whole point of the product: maybe it's not meant to be a new "computer" as we know it. After realizing its hard drive limitations, anyway, I figured out pretty quickly that it wasn't designed to become a person's primary computer. But then if it's not meant to be a new style of Mac primary computing device a la the MacBook line, then what is it, and why is it so hyped?

• It's the iTouch in size large. I've got one of those and I love it, but I also love it because it fits in my purse.
• It's the Amazon Kindle/Barnes & Noble Nook manufactured by Apple. Still not revolutionary. I like paper better, anyway, and I'm not sure how easily I'll be swayed by the digital readers for the next ten years or so.
• It's an organization device. So is the iPhone, most smartphones, a Palm Pilot, and a Moleskine planner.
• It's a great photo viewer. Well, if it's 64GB maximum, and most photos are being taken with cameras over 12MP these days, that's not going to get you that many photos.
• It's a movie viewer. This is actually it's greatest merit to me, since it's a slim, portable film-watcher without sticking in external media with a decent-sized, great-quality screen (Mac certainly knows what they're doing in terms of screen manufacturing).

Maybe it's so hyped because it's the start of that "tool of the future" that so many people have envisioned where we no longer need to buy daily newspapers or countless DVDs or books that need to be disposed of or stored somewhere, and we just carry a screen around with us to get every type of media we could possibly need to use when we're not at home. That part I'll give them, but I honestly believe that it was the iPhone/iTouch that did that, and now they've just decided to supersize it. That obviously makes it a more enjoyable reading/watching/browsing experience, but it's not revolutionary. My point is that everything this machine does, some other machine already does it, most notably, APPLE'S OWN PRODUCTS. I'm not saying I don't want one or think that it's useless, because if someone decided to hand me one right now, I'd probably jump up and down like a five-year-old, but it doesn't replace any gadget I already own: I'd still need my PC for storage, I'd still need my iTouch for portable listening (and browsing when someone releases their iron-fisted grip on a wifi network), I'd still need my TV for watching live programming, and I'd still need my phone for making calls. Increase the storage capacity by at least double, permit it to run multiple applications at once, make it do something never been done before, and change the stupid name, and I'll be drooling over it just as much as the rest of the world seems to be. In the meantime, I'm still saving up for my MacBook.