Things the average anti-iPad review will get wrong

As it’s now been released, there’ll undoubtedly be a swathe of things the average anti-iPad review will get wrong. I’m fully prepared to accept there’ll be legitimate criticism of the device, but there’s also going to be a raft of illegitimate criticism. By illegitimate, I mean illogical, nonsensical, stupid or representative of an outright failure to understand that this is not meant to be, nor has it ever been advertised as a primary content creation device.

So before I get started about all the stupid things that people will say that make no sense, I’ll suggest a few things I’m seeing that are indeed potentially legitimate negatives against the device:

• For some people it will be too heavy to hold comfortably for long periods of time for book reading, etc.
• iPhone/iPod Touch apps when viewed:
  • In original size will look silly
  • In “double” size will look chunky
• The application launcher spaces icons out ludicrously wide rather than allow more icons on screen than the iPod Touch/iPhone.
• It only has 256MB of RAM.
• Spatiality is not preserved on the application launcher when the device is rotated.

I’m sure there’ll be more criticisms that will be valid ones too, and like most other appliance based computing models, they’ll be valid. Oh that’s right, Apple is the first in this new market, so we need to wait for other manufacturers to recognise the need to cater for consumers rather than technologists before we can level criticism at other devices!

So let’s consider the inane criticisms that will be levelled against the device and the appropriate responses:

• It can’t multitask.
  • Response 1: likely coming in iPhone OS 4.
  • Response 2: (And more appropriate): It’s an appliance. I can’t boil a cup of water in my toaster while toasting in it, funnily enough.
• No flash:
  • Response: Thank goodness!
• Locked down:
  • Response: It’s an appliance. I can’t hack away at my dishwasher to make it run Linux either.
• No flash:
  • Response: FFS, I said it before, thank goodness! You want the longer answer? Flash is an abomination loosed upon this earth for the sole purpose of destroying as many CPU cycles as possible, and the sooner it’s gone, the sooner we can actually be productive again.
• Can’t create new software directly on it:
  • Response: It’s an appliance, you’re missing the point, still.
• It can’t…
  • It’s an appliance. Come back with valid criticisms that you’d level against your dishwasher or your TV and I’ll listen to you. Keep going on with criticisms you’d level against a laptop or other traditional computing device, and I’ll know you actually don’t understand what has been created – that you’re thinking like a technical end user rather than a consumer.

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