Yes

by Curtis Jenson

Created on: April 06, 2010

I belong wholeheartedly to the Church of Mac.  In the current and extremely egocentric technological world we live in, Apple has proven time and again that, as their elitist advertising so humorously points out, it really is better to be a Mac than a PC.

That said, I take my religion very logically.  Apple does pretty much everything smarter and prettier, but not every niche Apple touches turns instantly to gold.  While the iPod, iPhone, iMac and MacBook have indeed redefined their various markets, the Apple TV and Mac Mini have not.  In addition, the former mega-successful products are expensive enough to belong mostly to the very rich or the very patient, and their dip into mainstream consumerism is only now beginning to ripple due to persistently annoying teenagers nagging their parents in order to fit the elitist and popular persona that Apple has so effectively created.  Oh, and the lucky businessman who can convince his boss than an iPhone will make him more productive.

So is the iPad an iPhone-like cannonball or a painful belly flop for Apple to cover with a lack of updating or advertising like the still-stinging redness that is Apple TV?  Despite the painful disappointments that have already occurred with the iPad and its deficiencies, I expect success - but not for the reason one would expect.

When rumors of Apple's new tablet device first bubbled to the top of the rumor pool, I popped them hoping for a tidal wave of innovation.  Kindle after eReader after Nook have tried and failed to give eBooks the following they need to overthrow the paperback dynasty.  Unfortunately for us as consumers thus far, their imitation paper displays are too grayscale to meet the expectations of our high color, high definition culture, and creators have completely ignored the corner of the book industry that, of necessity, is best placed to shift to the benefits of an eBook: Textbooks.  In addition, their cost far exceeds their app-less offerings, and their engineers and marketing analysts ignorantly expect that we want nothing more than an electronic version of our musty, dusty and somehow comfy paper book.  We don’t.  We want more.

The other putties hoping to patch the gap between computer and mobile device are Netbooks and tablet PCs.  Sadly, they have failed just as epically in their pathetic representation of the world’s best efforts to make small and usable fit into the same device.  We, as consumers, want a computer with an appendectomy.  We want the same uncut, unshrunk computer in a small and portable device, but if we do have to sacrifice something for those things, we want it to be the appendix of the computer and not the brain or the face.  Netbooks are fully functioning computers running operating systems that simply aren’t designed to be run on a 7-inch screen.  Tablets are computers running operating systems that simply aren’t designed for touch-based control.  Both are just awkward, and awkward is a computer that hasn’t flown since Windows 3.0.

Enter the iPad.  Sort of.  It hasn’t even fully entered yet, since 3G won’t be arriving for another month.  The iPad, according to Steve Jobs, is the best thing that Apple has come up with.  Ever.  But it isn’t.  Not yet, at least.  As I said before, I approach Apple and its products with adoring logic.  The rumors and anticipation of all things Apple is usually the greatest catalyst for success – because Apple under promises and over delivers.  This time around, though, it appeared that Apple’s announcement under promised and under delivered.  No camera, no Microsoft Office, no full-computer OS.  It’s an iPhone with a really big screen.  The hype was so great between the announcement of the announcement and the announcement itself that all of the things people hoped for and dreamed of in the iPad made it simply impossible to Apple to deliver.

So will the iPad, so impossibly positioned to fill the gap that it’s announcement created, fail?  Not a chance.  The argument that it is just an iPhone with a bigger screen is often seen as its greatest fault.  In actuality, however, it’s just what the iPhone needed.  If you think about it, the iPhone was already doing most of what the netbooks and eReaders were hoping to do – it’s screen was just too small to be considered anything other than a mobile device.  And while the iPad introduces a few new bullets that pad it’s résumé as the eReader (iBooks with textbooks) and portable computer (iWork and HTML5 internet) of the future, it’s really just that it’s an iPhone with a bigger screen that makes it a sure success.

When I bought my iPhone last year, the explosion of interesting, useful and useless apps it offered sucked a huge amount of my attention and time and money, but it eventually got old using them on such a tiny screen.  I, for one, would love an iPhone with a bigger screen, and I don’t think I am alone.  Reported launch day numbers would indicate that I am correct, so while the iPad may not be the perfect fit for the gap between computer and mobile device, it’s a heck of a lot closer than anything else and it’s built on one of the soundest foundations the technological world has seen to date: the iPhone – just with a bigger screen.

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