Opinion: The iPad
To start off with, I'm not an Apple hater. Well, I didn't use to be. I own an iPhone 3G. I like my phone a lot. It has kept me occupied when I'm waiting for appointments and has kept my step kids happily distracted while I'm doing "grown up" stuff or driving them from point a to point b.
I am a through and through an iTunes hater. I hate everything about iTunes. I hate that my phone is tethered to the software and to the store. If I want music, I'll buy from Amazon MP3. I have a handful of apps that I bought, but mostly I ignore the iTunes (except to back-up stuff) and the app store. As a PC user, iTunes runs like a pig on a PC and it completely invades your machine. Once you install iTunes, then you get little pop-up reminders when new versions come out and it tries to push Safari on you, etc. I stick with the independent music players ( Media Monkey or Songbird ) as they're a little more lightweight and IMHO, a little more responsive to the community.
Enter the iPad. Apple could have done everything right by making this a mini-OSX machine with a lot of features, but instead it is iTunes store on the go. It is nothing more than a bigger glorified version of the iPhone. Apple is now in the business of mobile devices and pushing their app store is their new modus operandi. So, I won't be buying an iPad and I've already started looking around to get my iPhone replaced once my AT&T contract is over or something better comes out on AT&T. I'd love to get my hands on an android phone to play around with and see if I like it.
Joe wrote on 03/05/10 1:51 PM
Amen!
TomasF wrote on 03/07/10 6:25 AM
Back when Apple was still a computer company, Steve Jobs would stand on stage and tell us how awful Windows was. It is slow, applications crash all the time, the OS itself will crash, etc...I don't know it's because I'm a sysadmin and have done my time in tech support, but I've never had those issues with my PC. Heck, my *parents* don't have those issues with their PC, and my mum still struggles with differentiating between double and single clicking mouse buttons.
Except... when there's Apple software involved. For some reason, Apples software makes most of those Apple claims on Windows come through. Except the OS crashing bit, for some reason even Apple apps haven't managed to take my Windows down yet. But I'm sure they're on to it. I always assumed it was a political decision, until I had to help a friend who got a macbook and had some stability issues, when I realized it's almost as bad on OSX.
If it requires iTunes, it's a nogo for me...
Cindi wrote on 03/05/10 1:31 PM
:-P~~~~~~~ Communist!