Game changer
I have a MacBook Pro laptop. I have a desktop iMac. I have an iPhone. I don’t need an iPad, but I have to say, this video made me want one.
I’m not ready to leave behind my tactile relationship with books. I am very ready to leave behind my relationship with newspapers and magazines, however. While we preserve books (keeping them, or lending them, or donating them), periodicals are conceived in impermanence (hence their disposability). Although I have been emotionally unable to cancel my daily newspaper subscription, as regular readers of this blog know, I could easily do so with my subscriptions to Inc. and Fast Company and the Los Angeles Business Journal and the San Fernando Valley Business Journal and the New Yorker and Entrepreneur and the Dramatist, because the key feature — portability — would be supplemented by new benefits: reduction in paper and clickability to related material.
Why haven’t I, then, gotten a Kindle? Because the Kindle is solely a reader (and, to a degree, a browser). The iPad is a Kindle with netbook benefits, including email, video, apps, and more. Why carry a single-blade pocketknife when you can have a multi-tool that takes up less space?
Will I get an iPad? Looking ahead, yes — at some point. We all know full well that iPad 2.0 will be released within 12 months — if not sooner. We know this from experience with the iPod and the iPhone. iPad 2.0 will feature 4G. Count on it. That’s worth waiting for. The other thing worth waiting for is the related price drop on the current offering — although I have to say, I was astonished by how low-priced the base model is. Everyone was anticipating Apple to bring out a tablet for under a thousand bucks. I don’t think anyone was expecting the base model to run less than five hundred bucks. As a colleague said today on a conference call, “That’s the end of the Kindle.”
February 1st, 2010 at 1:49 pm
When book printing ceases to be a wide practice, you’ll remember your tactile experience like you remember Frank Zappa. You’ll keep reading – in a new and different way. As for the i-Pad, I always skip at least 2.5 macintosh versions anyway, so skipping the first one fits. A trend for a long time.