Magic: we’ll be the judge of that.
Friday, March 5th, 2010
The Apple folks have announced the day-it-shall-be-buyable of the iPad, and, for the wi-fi only versions, it’s April 3rd, a mere 8 days before my birthday (in case you need any last minute gift ideas).
I continue to be intrigued by the paradigm-shifting possibilities of the device, especially for those out there who, truth be told, don’t really need a computer in their lives…they need a fancy doohickie that reads email and surfs the web and shows photos and plays games. For those people, if they never see a filesystem, they’re fine with that. If they never have to mess with another preference file or repair permissions, their lives will be that much better.
And I want to see as many of those folks as possible with these in their hands. But I also want this as a hackable, playable, messable-with device for folks like me, and it remains to be seen how completely this fits into that paradigm.
But there is one thing I’ve heard quite enough of. I’m looking at you, Apple marketing and PR weasels. You know that whole “magical and revolutionary product at an unbelievable price” thing you keep saying over and over and over again? The Steve Jobsian thing to do would be to put this device out there and let us be the judge of that. There’s gotta be a law somewhere where you can’t call your own innovation “magical”, and you’re violating it again and again.
Let us buy the thing and take it around the block and we’ll let you know. Even if the verdict is “yep, magical,” it’s for us to say, and you to smile and count our cash.
