Why the iPad will Flop

Seeking Alpha ^ | 04/04/2010 | Alex Cook

[RightOnline]

First, did you see me pronounce it “a failure”? Nope. Did I then go on to say it was a “failure” due to a lack of a USB port? Far from it. Guess you missed my larger point.

Let me see you move a 12 GB movie file to that thing. I’ll watch. If it’s a media platform (and let’s at least admit that that is exactly how they’ve been positioning it), then it has to readily interact (i.e. have appropriate interfaces) to facilitate it. You can’t do everything via bluetooth or 3G or Wi-Fi or the Web. It just flat doesn’t work that way.

All I am saying and HAVE been saying is that to ignore such realities (and others) is ridiculous; glaring oversights. Some here trumpet that as “revolutionary” akin to dropping floppy drives in past products.

That is hopelessly naive and does a disservice to their target audience; their target user base.

I’m a worldwide marketing guy. I don’t know everything, I suck at a lot of things, and I’m no genius. I have, however, built a $1B+ business for a huge corporation (high performance computing, aka “supercomputing”), so I approach things from a point of view of “lessons learned”, the hard way usually. You don’t approach your market as “I’ll show THEM how to do things from now on; WE will define the new paradigm and they MUST adopt it”.

That is suicidal.

[Sir_Ed]

Hasselblad....NICE!!!

Good for you for having that knowledge, cool!

We did a complex cover with numerous spot channels and alpha channels, Type 1 fonts and AI artwork exported as clipping paths, and the service bureau had a PC ripper, for some bizarre reason, and it was a nightmare.

The vendor eventually ended up saying to us “If you do a job like this again, don’t bring it to us.”!

I’m sorry to hear about your company folding.

Printing’s still expensive...we did a job that cost $28,000, done in Medford at a Kelmscott company, and they’re great, their pressman’s the best we’ve ever seen, but then I hear from other folks like us and they rave about how cheap it is to print in Red China or Asia...it’s spooky, hard to say how American companies survive.

See ya’,

Ed

[RightOnline]

Save the sarcasm, son. I don’t appreciate it. Guess you missed the larger point, as well.

[RegulatorCountry]

Don’t know many printers on the west coast. Rice in LA would be about the only one. Know plenty of big catalog and direct mail printers in the midwest. Hennegan in OH is where something sort of fancy with sheetfed like this would have gone in more prosperous times.

Printing offshore is ... interesting. In some ways, it’s not so bad. Press proofs are a thing of the past here, but not there. Having to explain things very literally and very carefully gets old, as does paraphrasing instructions in case something gets lost in translation. You don’t get it quickly, either.

[RegulatorCountry]

Son? Nobody’s called me that since my dad passed away, two years ago last week.

Thank you.

[ReignOfError]

But I still hear that Macs are for graphics pros. No, Adobe is for graphics pros. I’ve used the suite on Macs and PC’s and actually prefer the way they worked on the PC’s.

Macs have better system-wide color management. It's a benefit of controlling both the hardware and software. The Adobe apps work well on Windows, but if the end product is going to be viewed on paper or on someone else's screen, you or your service bureau will appreciate ColorSync. Consistent color on Windows is possible, but requires a lot more work.

[RightOnline]

I’m sorry for your loss. I mean it.

[RegulatorCountry]

It’s been weighing on me of late. So many things came apart, leading up to that time. I don’t think I’ve completely come to terms with it, still.

[RightOnline]

I lost my dad in ‘84. You never really get over it. You just eventually....exactly as you said....come to terms with it. You really do. Hold onto that. God bless.

[kitkat]

Thank you, Sir-Ed.

It’s good to know.

[ReignOfError]

To me, it's a solution in search of a problem.

Problem: College students have a backpack full of books that weigh a ton, cost a fortune, sometimes are out of date by the time they're printed, and benefit from color and interactivity you can't get on a Kindle.

Problem: Hospitals and medical offices moving to replace clipboards for patient charts, scans, etc. typically spend $2-3K for heavy, slow tablet PCs with a clunky interface.

Problem: Most laptops and DVD players don't have enough battery to watch a transcontinental flight's worth of movies.

It's not a very long or difficult search. Of course, we don't yet know what the killer app(s) for the iPad will be; a lot of clever and creative folks are working on that as we speak.

[RightOnline]

Apple didn’t invent touch screens, GUI’s, WiFi, 3G (coming for the iPad), or tablet computers. The uses you list are all perfectly valid...yet what do you feel makes Apple’s product so revolutionary?

It’s the interface. Face it. No more, no less. Yes, it is cool and hip and even utilitarian. That’s all good; I take nothing away from them in those arenas.

That said...what makes them so different in terms of real functionality/apps/real-world use? It may come, and it probably will....but it ain’t there yet. Any other manufacturer would have their head handed to them for offering a product that WILL be really useful...eventually.

[Sir_Ed]

We use CDS Publications, a Kelmscott-owned company, they’re great.

They do a lot of the Apple manuals, and Army filed manuals.

We always do press checks, even though they’re at 3 am sometimes!

Their pressman, Walt, is a genius...we can tell him to pop the color, change the linescreen, angles, whatever, and he’s perfect in hopw he achieves it.

It’s sad that pressman like that are dying out in America...it takes decades to train a good pressman but the big printers are all folding or consolidating.

See ya’,

Ed

[Swordmaker]

Want to see my RMA paperwork?

I believe you... still anecdotal... and does not make a statistical blip. You may have gotten a bunch that had bad parts. Who knows... but until it is shown that they are outside the norm for the over all numbers compared to other manufacturers, it is still anecdotal.

[RegulatorCountry]

I handled an apparel catalog for years, with touchy colors, fleshtones, crazy patterns like moiré and houndstooth. The dot structure matters a great deal. Elliptical works best. Used to go to Ireland for film work, that was a nice trip. Very knowledgeable etchers, now a lost art. Same with very knowledgeable pressmen, as you mention. The best one I recall was up in Minnesota, at a large web printer near Lake Minnetonka. He could read your mind, lol. Excellent color acuity, too. Better than mine, and that's saying something.

[Leonard210]

I had no better results with my Mac than I did on the PC’s.

[Sir_Ed]

That sounds fun!

We used to use a pre-press house (DMI) in Grants Pass, then one in Medford, but they mostly don’t use film anymore, it’s all CTP, which makes it cheaper for us, though we don’t know color and seps as good as they did!

See ya’,

Ed

[stripes1776]

First, did you see me pronounce it “a failure”?...That is suicidal.

Then I don't understand your point. You say it isn't a failure. But you also say it's suicidal. Isn't suicide a failure?

Let me see you move a 12 GB movie file to that thing. I’ll watch. If it’s a media platform (and let’s at least admit that that is exactly how they’ve been positioning it), then it has to readily interact (i.e. have appropriate interfaces) to facilitate it. You can’t do everything via bluetooth or 3G or Wi-Fi or the Web. It just flat doesn’t work that way.

I download movies to my iPod Touch and watch them. I guess what you are complaining about is that you would have to download the movie from iTunes and pay for the rental. Is that what you are unhappy about? And you don't like the codec algorithm that Apple uses to make the video file smaller?

[Swordmaker]

From a simply computer standpoint you are correct, mac machines are nothing spectacular on the inside, while they do have the “cool” factor down and a very high price premium apple PCs really bring little to the table beyond their physical designs at the hardware level.

Have you ever really looked at the engineering that goes into a Mac compared to the engineering that goes into a typical High End PC???

Mac Pro Internal Design with NO CABLES


Typical High End Windows PC Internal Design

Or how about the engineering that goes into one of the G5 iMacs:

G5 iMac internal Design


Dell XPS ONE internal Design
Not bad engineering, but it cost MORE than the same size iMac.

These are not just boxes that parts are tossed into... like the typical PC case.

In addition, Apple specs their parts to the OEM to be in the top 90% of quality range rather than just the general range of parts and pays a premium for that quality. So your claim is not entirely true.

[Vaduz]

dullness factor” = buy new toy