Perhaps this post should be more accurately titled - “a message to all the iPad early adopters who are now complaining”. My message - It serves you f*cking right.
The iPad - like countless products (not just Apple) before it has been bought in it’s droves by everybody and their dog, and now those who are not too ashamed to speak out are starting to complain. It doesn’t do this… it doesn’t do that… this doesn’t work… that doesn’t do what I thought it would… it’s heavy… it’s too big….
Just shut up alreadylook crap next to the iPhone.
I’m guessing that nobody who buys technology early to actually use it has ever developed or built anything to do with technology. Only a damn fool would ever buy the first version of anything. You have to remember that things are built by real people - who have unrealistic deadlines set by managers who have little clue what their own team are doing, and in the case of the iPad an autocratic CEO who values secrecy over any form of public test or beta programme. The worst part is consumers with money burning a hole in their pocket have short memories, and they never learn.
The iPhone operating system took three attempts to get right. Windows took something like five attempts before Microsoft made it reliable. The Mac operating system went through nine versions and was then thrown away before BSD was evolved into OSX - which is on it’s fifth major version. Packaged versions of Linux such as Ubuntu, SuSE and RedHat/Fedora are all hitting version ten or higher.
Making tools takes time. No first version works well.
Don’t get me wrong though - the iPad probably is the beginning of the end for the computer hardware we interact with as we have known it over the last twenty years or so. It’s another small step along a very long road and we have no clue what will work - that’s what makes it so interesting.