Originally Posted by Soundburst:
“It's more the fact that people said "for certain" that it would flop.”
It hasn't been out long enough to flop, or be considered a runaway success.
Let's wait and see how it advances. Sure developers jumped on board at the start (who wouldn't when Apple launches something?) but it's how it pans out over the next year or two that makes the difference.
When I was last in the Apple store, all the prospective customers seemed to be using it for the web and playing games. Some looked the photos and videos - and yes they were impressed.
But this about the future of publishing, and I am yet to see how many people will be using an iPad on the train to read books and newspapers. I've seen a few people on public transport, but I still think it will sit in the living room 95% of the time.
For that, it's a lovely device and does what Steve said it would (he never promised it would do the things that most of us think is lacking) but it's also very expensive and other tablets are on their way that will offer more of what I think people will want - less restriction on apps, connectivity and expandability.
Fair play to Apple for creating a buzz around tablets that five years ago were dead in the water, but they must be mad if they think they'll dominate the whole market by simply getting people to point out how bad things like Flash is, and we all need protection from all the bad people out there that want to write apps that will drain our batteries in five seconds flat.
I did laugh when Apple reinvented video calling (nobody wants it, as told by so many Apple fanboys when the iPhone
didn't support it), or told us that anything that has done multitasking before hasn't done it right. Now we have iOS4 with multitasking but it could be months before we get many apps that support it, and there are different levels of multitasking too! What a joke - but it MUST be better. Everything else just sucks power and is bad.