Oh, come ON, Consumer Reports, you can do better than that

[trinityvixen]

Having bought a netbook to handle most of the things the iPad wants to do for me, I'm a little annoyed at the iPad's second coming. I say "second coming" because the lackluster response to it at first seems to have been eradicated now that people are starting to get their hands on them. For every person who goes, "I like Flash, actually, and would like to be able to use 99% of the internet that seems to require it these days," or grouses about a 64 GB hard drive computer costing them $900, or who might not want to sell their entire multimedia-consuming soul to Apple, you get articles like this one saying THE iPAD IS THE JESUS CHRIST OF MEDIA. WELCOME BACK, SAVIOR. I get why a magazine would be excited--they really do have to hope the hype is true because they are otherwise fucked as a medium.

I generally expect the hype to fall short at Consumer Reports, though. So I'm reading this and not only am I pissed about the credulous, easily-swayed author basically writing hundreds of words to express an emotion easily summarized in one (that word is "shiny"), but this guy isn't even getting anything...right. It's supposed to be a cogent argument about how the iPad isn't $499, it's easily twice that or more to get out of it the RESURRECTION OF MEDIA MACHINE that Steve Jobs promised you.

Instead, it's a love-letter to how, oh, that wily Steve, he done suckered me again! (But pronounced "ah-geen," like a real yokel would.) It's also flat-out filled with incorrect terminology (last I checked, one did not refer to the hard drive capacity as "memory") and is deceptive about what should be a real concern for people running to this New Mecca (the Apple Store) in droves. It is possible that the iPad can cost you, upfront, before you pay a dime for the undoubtedly expensive AT&T plan, a shit-ton of money for a device that is pretty...hollow.

What will sap your money faster than you can blink are not accessories but apps. And don't be fooled. You will need to download a ton of them to get the promised-land promise of the device. Yes, you'll still plunk down at least half the cost of the basic (and it is basic) machine at purchase time to upgrade the "memory" (I shudder even typing that as a joke), and opting for the 3G, etc. That's nothing to be sneezed at. It's a fuckload of money for less bang than you'd get from an impotent man shooting cap guns. Before the accessories, it runs the author $829, about half what you'd pay for another ultra-light-on-everything-including-the-specs Apple product, so perhaps this still seems like a "deal." In fact, it's just part of tried-and-tested marketing strategies designed to overcome your financial and logical common sense. Just as they market the iPad at $499 so you think, "Well, that's not too much more expensive than a netbook," and then you look the other way while piling on another $300 before the thing is in your hands or on Apple's network, the have the MacAir to go "See? A real computer this light would be too expensive! Buy the iPad! What a deal!"

::rolls eyes::

The apps are a big problem financially speaking, but Apple owning your ass is just not acceptable. Some people, as noted in the Newsweek article, will like Apple streamlining everything for them. I use iTunes myself--it is great for pod-collecting--but iTunes keeps its fucking hands off my everything else. No, you can't play my movies. Stop trying to get me to buy TV series at $2 an episode when I can DVR or Hulu it. If I want to read comics on a computer screen (not my reading method of choice, I assure you), I can do it with any number of programs or, the way I've been doing it 'cause I'm lazy, which is by setting a slide show in fucking Windows Preview. (WORKS JUST FINE.) Thing is, iTunes, you are NOT the best thing for my media browsing. You, in fact, do not please me in my media browsing. You do stupid things like interrupt movies for songs when I just want to check things. Perhaps I can learn to turn that off, BUT I DON'T WANT TO. You don't even support my non-iTunes movies. Why do you want them so badly? Fuck off, I'm using VLC...GAWD, iTUNES, I AM A GROWN WOMAN, I CAN MAKE MY OWN DECISIONS...

And that, in a nutshell, is why being against the iPad makes you look like a crazy person. Because it's crazy not to want something to decide everything for you. (I love you, Google. Let's get married.) I'll take my 250 GB, 3-lb netbook over that damn iPad. Is it weird and a little awkward to carry down the street, reading comics? Yeah, but it's weird (apparently) to read walking down the street regardless, and I have hefted heavier books. You know what my netbook will do, though, that the iPad won't unless you buy a gadget for it? It will let me put it down on table and the screen will stay perpendicular to said table. Isn't that amazing?

ETA: Forgot to mention: Apple is using its bullying power to get rid of Flash-only stuff, btw. So soon that will be taken care of and then you can't object to their shit any more. WE ARE MAKING THE INTERNET IN OUR IMAGE. IT SHALL NOT EAT FROM THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE...

Comments

[gryphonrose.livejournal.com]

I am a big Mac fan, have been for far longer than I care to admit, own one at home, etc.

I do not like the iPad.

I am not impressed.

They could have done so much better.

If I'm going to buy something that portable--it'll be a netbook.

Which I will then make as Mac-like as possible.

But it will NOT be an oversized, overpriced, underpowered iPhone. Without a phone.

Bleah.

[cbreakr.livejournal.com]

Apple functions as a business by having the most active and convincing advertising and PR department on the planet. The whole idea is to make them seem so much bigger and more indispensible than they really are that people can't help but fall in line. It's brilliant, but it strikes me as a sort of psychological warfare capitalism.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

What Apple does well, to be sure, it does very well. But the problem is that they needed to monetize that more and more, or, I should say, their monetizing one aspect led to monetize everything and then they had a problem. They control the world with iTunes and iPod. They do it well, far as the consumer is concerned. (The record companies...not so much.) They let you bring your own music to the party, to rip your music in formats of your choice. They tried to make it easier on you, all the while subtly encouraging you to like them and their other products better. (Like iTunes? Want it to run reeeeally smoothly? Buy a mac!)

Then they started to do movies, coming from this background of power, and it was, "Buy our movies or get out." If you wanted to import your things, you had to do the digital equivalent of jiggling a metal coat hanger out the window with tinfoil on your head to get a signal. Cory Doctorow has a good point about how they used to be so open and inviting (http://www.boingboing.net/2010/04/02/why-i-wont-buy-an-ipad-and-think-you-shouldnt-either.html), and now, if you read that Newsweek article, they want to control which designers of apps talk to the press. (For real, the Apple reps the journalist spoke to sound like McCarthy-ites--"Who did you talk to? What did they say?" As if journalists don't go to JAIL rather than tell those things.)

And now the iPad. Overpriced is par for the course with Apple, but at least it's been worth it in the past if you really needed something their product did better (like the way the iPod is almost unrivaled in ease and fluidity of use). The iPad...is not that. I'm mad because I'd love a tablet PC to finally make headway, but not this one.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I think you're right, especially since they even got YouTube to support HTML5 instead of just flash. "Psychological warfare capitalism," indeed.

[arcane-the-sage.livejournal.com]

As a related side note. It's not just Apple that wants to get rid of flash. Flash is horribly craptastic in the way it consumes resources (seriously, it's like someone said to Microsoft "I bet I could make a bigger needless resource hog than you can"). Flash is also way over used for even simple things.

That said, not a fan of IPad either.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

As someone who came of age before dial-up was replaced by broadband, rest assured that I am no fan of the superfluous use of flash in websites. Websites do not need to be as bloated as they are, and Flash is responsible for a lot of that.

That said, until we see how well the next thing works, I'm wary of someone who stands to gain from the promotion of the next big thing telling me what I have now is useless.

[arcane-the-sage.livejournal.com]

The funny bit is that Google has as much to gain from getting rid of flash as apple. Droid has it's own YouTube app just to get around flash issues and should you actually try to run a flash app on Droid (or so I here) your battery does it's best impression of a funnel full of beer at a frat party. So far HTML5 examples I've seen have look remarkably light weight. I hope it stays that way ^_^

[gryphonrose.livejournal.com]

I'd love a tablet PC, too. And if Apple ever makes one, I'll be very intereted to see it. :)

[avram]

Wait. HTML5, with its canvas object, the thing that's going to be replacing Flash, is an open standard, while Flash is a proprietary technology owned by Adobe. This is why Adobe's representative on the W3C mailing list has been trying to block progress on the canvas element.

Apple pushes for control over all sorts of things, but this thing, the replacement of Flash by HTML5, is the opposite.

[mithras03.livejournal.com]

I just think iPad is a terrible name. And I'm not all for the touchscreen interface (sorry if there's a technical term that I don't know of for that). All that does is get greasy fingerprints all over the screen you're supposed to look at; I prefer to use my laptop mouse and look at a fingerprint-free screen.....

[cbreakr.livejournal.com]

That little tidbit I'm actually happy about, but for technical reasons rather than social or economic. I think HTML5 is going to be a better standard for the web and I'm glad someone is pushing it, though I doubt that was at the heart of Apple's move. A strange example of the invisble hand leading to good things from time to time.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I agree with you whole-heartedly on this point. If the idea is to have a touch-screen interface, it makes it hard to sell it as the digital media player because the last thing you want on your screen--be it TV or e-reader--are smudges. Do they imagine that people will only be touching the iPad with velvet gloves? Did they never once touch it when they were making it?

This lack of practical acknowledgment bugs the shit out of me, more so at times than the paltry specs and the Apple fanboying. It's like how you don't have a stand for this device. What the shit? It would take less than $0.00000000001 to attach a piece of plastic that slotted seamlessly into the pack that could pop out and prop up the damn thing on a table. Even if people buy the damned keyboard slot for it, what the hell are they supposed to do with it when they're not at home with the base? Do everything one-handed while they prop up the iPad? An expensive, flimsy-looking device with a big breakable screen--you're really not going to give it any damn legs? Really?

And iPad...ugh. Anything would have been better. iTampon, if you had to stick the vaguely lady-parts-related terms, would be better.

[ecmyers.livejournal.com]

I don't actually find it all that awkward to hold a netbook open while reading, because that's exactly the way I would be holding a book. Your machine's a skosh larger, though, so maybe it's less wieldy.

[saikogrrl.livejournal.com]

I love my iPhone, but YES gawd the screen rotation shits me.

Also I think the ipad is useless: a big clunky iPhone that can't make calls and is crap for ebooks because it is backlit and not e-ink.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

It's not that unwieldy, honestly. It's just a little bit awkward to page up or down. Nothing unmanageable, but it requires more than one hand free some times.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

It's impractical and filling, poorly, a niche that it won't necessarily be best fit for.

[hslayer.livejournal.com]

Sigh...yeah. I couldn't believe it when people were initially shocked at how "low" the price is, considering it's less useful than a netbook at twice the price. But at the time, I thought the price was its only real problem; that it was an okay (not great, but okay, if you think of it as what it is and not as a computer) product, with an outrageous price tag attached.

Then I learned it didn't support a stylus, or have handwriting recognition.

It's a tablet. Nay...a "pad". A pad...upon which one cannot write. Wow.

That puts the lack of memory card slots (overpriced flash memory: it's not just for game consoles any more!) in perspective.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

It does boggle the mind that Apple wouldn't want their multimedia coming-of-christ machine to have tablet capability. But, truly, they don't see it as a computer. Computers don't seem to be their strength any more. They're looking to keep expanding within the entertainment gadget sector. iPod, AppleTV, etc.--it seems like the idea is to make gadgets you can use to kill time, not things to get work done, whatever the keyboard capability of the iPad. They didn't make a tablet, not in their eyes.

Not having memory cards in their devices hasn't really hurt Apple thus far, so they probably don't see any reason to change now. For the most part, people with iPhones don't seem to care, so they're just moving on with that assumption. What confuses me is how they think that people who are using the iPad to store multimedia files are going to be happy with 64 GB. I have half that in mp3s, to say nothing of my movie/tv show collection. Is the company that is trying to sway people to buy this crap with "but we'll take care of everything!" also, at the same time, assuming that people will micromanage what files they upload from iTunes onto their iPads? Is that not a totally contradictory state of being?

[hslayer.livejournal.com]

I think there's a reason HTML5's canvas is compared with SVG more than with Flash. Trying to emulate any but the most simplistic Flash application (or iPhone app) with it and JavaScript would be a nightmare, if not impossible. So they don't see it as a threat.

OTOH, emulating the vast majority of iPhone apps with Flash would be a piece of cake. But the App Store is basically Apple's entire business model, and allowing Flash on their devices would be a giant hole in that model. Suddenly, they wouldn't be the gatekeeper (and taxman) for every app sold.

That's a bit of a diversion, though, when the point is, supporting HTML5 is not a reason *not* to support Flash. Refusing to allow a widely accepted standard to work on your device is not being "open", regardless of whether the standard in question is open or proprietary. (If they believed in that, they'd remove Flash plugin support from Safari, too.) As a developer, all I know is that I can use free tools to develop and deploy apps for Android, BlackBerry, and Windows Mobile, but I have to pay to develop for iPhone/iPad *and* submit my app for their blessing. Who's open?