So at last Apple announced the iPad. I'd been seriously hyped-up for this device and was expecting surprising and magical things from it. And to be honest my first reaction following the keynote was one of slight disappointment as I realised that it's 'just a big iPod Touch'. But, the more I've thought about it, and I can't stop thinking about it, the more excited I'm getting as it sinks in what a revolutionary step this might be in the evolution of the personal computing world.
The haters have been very vocal, and the more noise they have made, the funnier it seems as they just don't get it. There are some right clever idiots out there!
I've always hated the fact that every man and his dog owned a computer.
The PC industry conned consumers into thinking that these computers were friendly devices that would enhance their lives. I hated it because these computers just brought grief to the lives of these people.
These poor souls weren't interested in computers as objects in themselves like it was some sort of hobby. They just wanted a computer so they could do stuff like get on the internet or look at their photos. But things would go wrong with these friendly computers and very often I'd be consulted, roped-in, or worse, just handed a machine and be asked to sort it out. Well now, this could be a thing of the past. The appliance computer has finally arrived. Now computers can return to being the reserve of the professional and the hobbyist. Just like it used to be.
Fraser Speirs gets it,
What you're seeing in the industry's reaction to the iPad is nothing less than future shock.
Gruber gets it too,
Manual computers, like the Mac and Windows PCs, will slowly shift from the standard to the niche, something of interest only to experts and enthusiasts and developers.
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