On iPads

I posted earlier today why I dislike the iPad indirectly, as Apple's latest, greatest foot-soldier in the ideological war about what mobile computing specifically and the Internet in general should be. I have plenty of reasons for disliking it as a device as well: namely that just a few short months ago, I was incredibly excited for what it might turn out to be and honestly thought it might be the first Apple product I'd ever own. Here is what I dislike about the iPad from a tech/spec perspective. None of them are anything you haven't heard before, but they're all worth consideration.

Aspect Ratio: This may seem incredibly finicky, but this is actually my biggest complaint. Apple is trying to advertise this as a device that will revolutionize the way we consume media; and then they gave us a format that's only fit for a single type of media: eBooks. 4x3 does not work for video anymore. Everything is produced in either 16x9 or 16x10 these days, and I want to watch it in those formats without letter-boxing on my portable media device. I prefer 16x10 for normal use, too. It lets me have multiple pages/applications open simultaneously. Oh, wait, that's another inexplicable failure on the device. We'll get to that later.

If you do want to use the device as an eReader, maybe 16x10 isn't quite as natural, but it allows for longer pages and you'll get used to it. Moreover, with all of the talk of eBooks evolving beyond plain text, of providing their own multimedia experience (an idea that I'm leaning towards disliking, even if only for the sake of codgerliness), you would think that people would be pushing eBooks into the landscape layout and using the additional horizontal real estate to provide a dedicated place for these supplemental materials or for improved navigation options.

Really, the only reason I see for the 4x3 aspect ratio is the ease of providing digital versions of magazines/comics. If the screen is the same layout as the original publication, there's no need to reformat for the new device. If reading Time or Spiderman (probably for no cheaper than you could get physical copies) is really what you want an iPad for, though...well, you're not exactly a person with reasoning with.

Multitasking: This isn't a major complaint, but I hinted at it earlier, so I may as well cover it now. On a device this large, I want to be able to have multiple applications running simultaneously. I want to be able to take quick notes on the page I'm reading or have a chat window open alongside my browser. That doesn't seem like it's asking a lot. The only good reason to disallow multitasking is to improve battery life; but that doesn't seem like a good enough reason for me. If I need to conserve the battery, I'll be careful about what I'm doing. God.

Flash: So long as I'm discussing things that are relatively minor complaints, lack of Flash is just stupid. Any talk of Flash killing the battery life has been stuffed by the existence of hardware accelerated Flash, and with the state of the web being what it is, not having Flash is crippling. Also, if I ever actually hear somebody claim that the iPad's lack of Flash support is causing people to abandon it, I will strangle them. Not to death, but certainly to discomfort. The iPad user base will never be more than a minute fraction of the Internet using population. HTML 5 is changing the Internet. It has been and will continue to do so regardless of what formats the iPad supports. It has been months since YouTube required Flash in either Chrome or Safari, and as more browsers adopt HTML5 standards, more people will switch away from Flash.

Expansion: Really? No USB or SD support? How on earth am I supposed to move media between my home computer and my iPad? I need to sync it with your proprietary software (and probably use your proprietary media formats)? Ummm...no thanks. I've already got several SD cards and USB drives littered with music and video that I use with my existing devices and that I'd much prefer to continue using; and I see no good reason why I shouldn't be able to (other than the fact that whatever file system running on the device likely isn't capable of it).

Camera: Again, no good reason to not have a camera built into the bezel. One of the major selling points of the device is that it's everything you use the Internet for without the hassle of a whole computer; but video chat is a major app of interest these days, and a tablet like this is a perfect vehicle for it. If this thing could use Skype, I would buy one for my mother so she would finally leave me alone about getting it set up on her (ancient) XP machine. The only reason I can see for not supporting it is because people would find ways to use it over the 3G connection, which would piss off AT&T. Is this a good enough reason? Not even kind of.

Profit Margins: Nobody makes $250/device on bleeding edge technology, or at least they shouldn't. Sony is still barely turning a profit on each PS3 sold. The fact that Apple is making that much per device at a minimum is proof of just how much better the iPad could be at the same price point. What's most frustrating, to me at least, is that the 3G option costs an additional $130 (plus a separate data plan) when, by industry estimates, it only adds $30 to the production cost. I'd be willing to pay a premium of $50 for 3G on this sort of device, but $130 is just ridiculous.


So, there you have it. Even if I weren't supremely pissed off by Apple's business practices and ideology, I would never buy this device in its current iteration. Instead, I'm looking forward to Tegra powered devices, particularly the Adam, which seems like everything I hoped the iPad would be back before its official announcement. We'll see where tablet devices head in the future, but if Apple succeeds without improving the functionality of the iPad, I will be seriously disappointed in humanity.