Interesting. I have been reading some very negative reviews, and all I can conclude is:
There are people who are scared to death the iPad will succeed.
I don’t know why. Maybe they have stock in subnotebook manufacturers. Perhaps they have Kindles and are worried they will be displaced or rendered obsolete.
I find it puzzling, but that is the conclusion I come to. It isn’t that the product doesn’t have shortcomings, heck, no 3G out of the box is a serious one in my opinion, and it isn’t the only one.
Like Thurrott (who calls people with the opinion that the device could be transformative “tools”) I think this guy is missing the point.
I spoke with a Freeper last week who was an intelligence analyst in his former life, and you could tell that his synapses were firing with the possibilities of a device built from the ground up with a touch based interface (as opposed to a standard tablet, which is basically just a desktop computer you can carry around a bit more conveniently)
The device itself doesn’t really have any transformative powers in it. It is an evolutionary device, not revolutionary.
But the way it will be used may well be revolutionary.
The models that went on sale Saturday were not intended to have 3G... the models that have 3G will be going on sale at the end of the month. There are WIFI and WIFI/3G models available. If you wanted the one with 3G, then you had to wait for the FCC to finish the certification.
I'm not a Mac person, but it seems to me that's the key right there. I've been following the iPad pretty closely, and it seems to me the "game changing" effect of the iPad is really going to be in the 4.0 OS that's coming for it, which will allow multi-tasking on the new iPads and newer iPhones. Then there's the "enterprise" features that have been built in including over the air provisioning and full encryption for all data on the device.
I work at a very large international bank and we're looking at how we're going to incorporate them into our environment, as well as the impacts to our web environment for our high-wealth clients and relationship managers that are already demanding to use them with our systems.
They're going to be evolutionary alright, no doubt about that in my mind, and I say that as a 25+ year PC guy.