You know - for posterity. I'd imagine several people will recant from their current position, trying to shrug it off. Add a quote from your favorite folks, with a link to the quote and then we can review if any change their mind in a few months.
e.g.
Bill Gates said:
The tablet takes cutting-edge PC technology and makes it available whenever you want it...It's a PC that is virtually without limits
Bill Gates - who said “We've really achieved the ideal of what I wanted Microsoft to become.” in 2008 (
Janine Gibson Editor of guardian.co.uk said:
Personally, I'm a bit sceptical that any one device at this point could be a game-changer. But the thing Apple has done is set the direction of travel and set the expectations for the tablet market, rather than [the iPad] being the answer to life, the universe and everything. It is not going to transform newspaper or magazine publishing in itself, but what it will do is set about the idea of tablets to consumers.
Guardian.co.uk Editor interview
Michael Serbinis said:
The chance of Apple having the same impact on the e-book market as they had on the music industry is pretty slim
Link
Michael Ashley CTO FastPencil said:
Books are changing from being content sandwiched between two covers and organized by chapter.
MG Siegler said:
When it launches, the iPad’s initial target audience is iPhone and iPod touch users. Why? Because they are already very comfortable with the way you need to interact with this device.
Link
Mike D
Mike D of said:
I agree that the iPad is a disappointment and was massively overhyped.
Om Malik - GigaOm said:
[The tablet is] made for the consumption of digital media: games, music, photos, videos, magazines, newspapers and e-books
".
He called iPad the "ideal device for today's world."
Gizmodo's Adam Frucci said:
My god, am I underwhelmed by it. It has some absolutely backbreaking failures that will make buying one the last thing I would want to do.
Link
Rob Enderle -You know his
views on the iPhone
Rob Enderle said:
One of the more interesting things that we know for sure about Apple's big event this week is the venue. Apple has booked the Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco, rather than hosting it at its Cupertino headquarters. To me, what this signals is that Apple isn't quite sure of this product and wants to distance itself, in a way...I'm not sure either, but I'm rooting for Steve Jobs this round...This may be the most revolutionary product since the Apple II. The only question is whether Apple will emerge this time as the primary beneficiary or be bypassed by another firm (Google) that has better leverage and can move more broadly...iPad is a hit on design, battery life. Mixed on size/weight. Miss on display. Still in play price, content, and connectivity...Even if it fails, Apple will have created a potentially unique and advanced offering which could easily blaze the trail for more successful products to follow. I wouldn’t bet on Apple to fail, though. It does that very seldom, and given this may be Steve Jobs’ swan song product, there likely will be more emphasis on getting it right than on any product that came before it...We’ll see. One thing is for sure: It will be incredibly exciting and I’ll bet Steve, if he can, will actually present this one. You see, this thing could actually become an eBook, smartphone, and netbook killer, and if it did, what a swan song for Steve it would be.
[/QUOTE]
Apple’s iPad Tablet Could Slay eBooks and Netbooks
Google CEO Eric Schmidt said:
Tell me the difference between a large phone and a tablet
Google CEO Eric Schmidt
Nancy Knight of Baltimore Sun said:
Apple has given us what amounts to an over-sized iPod Touch
Link
Timothy B Lee said:
I'm not impressed. I'm a lifelong Mac fanboy, so I'm not averse to buying Apple stuff. But I don't understand who this product is marketed for, and I'm disappointed that Apple has decided to adopt the iPhone's locked-down platform strategy
Link
Hitler
Silicon Alley Insider -
John McKinley -
Way too much hype, and too little transformation.
Dan Frommer -
He didn't deliver -
But in the end, Jobs introduced something that is probably going to sell in the range of a few million units this year, much closer to one of the company's Macs than its runaway hits like the iPod and iPhone. Not the company's next huge growth story. Not now, anyway. Apple fans hoping for the next revolution -- or investors hoping for the company's next iPhone -- should be disappointed.
Fake Steve Jobs (Dan Lyons - Newsweek's Tech Editor)
Dave Winer said:
Finally, Apple went too far, and the emperor is totally naked for all of us to see. Ridiculous product. Absolutely completely ridiculous."
Apple's Jumbo Oreo
This is just a jumbo Oreo cookie. The original classic model made sense. This bloated mess is just a bloated mess.
Nicholas Carr said:
We've entered a new era of computing, in which media and software have merged in the Internet cloud....With the iPad, Apple is hoping to bridge all the niches. It wants to deliver the killer device for the cloud era, a machine that will define computing's new age in the way that the Windows PC defined the old age. The iPad is, as Jobs said today, 'something in the middle,' a multipurpose gadget aimed at the sweet spot between the tiny smartphone and the traditional laptop. If it succeeds, we'll all be using iPads to play iTunes, read iBooks, watch iShows, and engage in iChats. It will be an iWorld.
The PC Officially Died Today
New York Time's David Carr said:
Hold the Internet in your hands.” It’s a seductive idea, and the promise it contains will be a nice way to draw people in.
Peter Kafka at MediaMemo said:
Apple expects that like the iPod and the iPhone, the iPad will be a big enough hit that media companies will adapt to the new hardware. Some of the media executives I spoke to in advance of today’s announcements were fine with that — but noted that many of them didn’t roll out new products for the earlier devices for a long time following their launch. We may be looking at a repeat here.
Former Financial Times reporter Tom Foremski
at Silicon Valley Watcher
Tom Foremski said:
Its proprietary hardware and software strengthen its DRM; media creators want strong DRM, which will attract them to Apple. And it's iTunes store distributes the media for them and collects payment. In this way, through its closed and tightly controlled systems, Apple can provide a high quality experience to users, and provide media and apps creators with a highly efficient commerce platform. This is how Apple will dominate the sales of all future forms of digital media.
David Pogue said:
[The iPad bashing] will last until the iPad actually goes on sale in April. Then, if history is any guide, Phase 3 will begin: positive reviews, people lining up to buy the thing, and the mysterious disappearance of the basher-bloggers....My main message to fanboys is this: it's too early to draw any conclusions. Apple hasn't given the thing to any reviewers yet, there are no iPad-only apps yet (there will be), the e-bookstore hasn't gone online yet, and so on. So hyperventilating is not yet the appropriate reaction
The Apple iPad: First Impressions
Mossberg's
First Impressions
Walt Mossberg said:
It’s about the software, stupid....So, the iPad is more than just a giant iPod Touch or iPhone, even though it looks like one....
http://www.betanews.com/joewilcox/a...-need-an-Apple-tablet-or-any-other/1262456214
Joe Wilcox said:
No one is talking about addressable market....Tablet is a nowhere category. For all the hype about an Apple tablet , it is at best a niche product. The world doesn't need an Apple tablet, no matter what the hype about rumored features or regardless of what actually releases (if anything).Tablet is a Niche Product, Period... I still say that the "new answer" is already here: The smartphone, a category where iPhone already redefines "the experience of personal computing." The smartphone is good enough and it's affordably priced. In most mass-market product categories, particularly technology, good enough defines success.
Because good enough defines success.....Oh boy.
Roger Kay said:
Apple may just have sailed straight into the Sargasso Sea
Holmes Wilson of the Free Software Association said:
This is a huge step backward in the history of computing.
Link Free Software Foundation
Ballmer - Microsoft fought back with
iBall
Peter Pachal said:
Think the iPad sucks? That's because it's not for you..If you were disappointed by the iPad, chances are you're not its target customer.
Link
Ihnatko:
On the whole, I see no reason to peg the iPad as a success or as a failure. Which seems like a ridiculous thing to even point out at such an early juncture but it’s sometimes good to put it in writing. I’m as certain today as I was yesterday that any single-purpose device that costs more than $400 (like the Kindle DX) isn’t long for this world, though.
Otherwise, the release of the iPad marks a classic battle between two philosophies:
Is it better to have a device that is loaded with bullet-pointable features?
Or is it better to have a device that has a shorter list of specs ... but which does everything right?
That’s not a loaded question. It’s the key difference between the Android and iPhone operating systems. It’ll also define the difference between a netbook and an iPad. The former looks great on paper. The Apple product looks great when you’re actually trying one out firsthand.
Apple has the annoying habit of producing products that make perfect sense once you get your hands on them. It struck me that Apple was making a clear statement with the iPad: “We were right about the iPhone.” They had a clear and ambitious concept about an entirely new computing platform and an entirely new way that humans would interact with hardware. They were so right about it that when the time came to build a tablet device, changing the UI seemed vulgar at best.
Yes, I’m a little defensive. Man, was I so very very wrong! I also swore blind that there wouldn’t be a physical keyboard, not even via Bluetooth. But sure enough, there’s a $69 keyboard dock.)
An iPad won’t replace a notebook. That was Steve’s first big point: the iPad would sit somewhere between a notebook/desktop and a smartphone.
Somebody quite sensibly wondered if this hadn’t all gotten completely out of hand. My answer: Yes! Hell, yes. Like a helium balloon, this got out of hand weeks and weeks ago and it can only return to the earth in shreds, if we ever actually see it again.
This is a good thing.
It’s hype, yes, but it’s a good thing.
I like Apple for any number of reasons but at the top of the list is the fact that they’re capable of raising people’s expectations and restoring a sense of joy and delight in technology. Good technology is a creative expression that inspires excitement and awe. It’s no different from the movie trailer that burns the release date in your memory for months, or the song you hear played by a guest on a late-night talk show that makes you pull your notebook into the bed and start buying music downloads before the show even goes into commercial.
The folks who develop the best tech hardware and software work just as hard and with just as much inspiration as the practitioners of any other creative work. This sort of engineering is supposed to be an art. Hype is mere hype only when it’s the creation of cold, calculated PR. When it’s the residue of thousands of people who seemingly are open to something fresh and unexpected ... we need to use a different word for it.
In any event, it’s fantastic to see an event that gets the huddled masses as worked-up about a possible new revolution in media as they seem to be about the Octomom’s new bikini body.
Sorry. I remind you that I’ve just spent two hours browsing through airport newsstands.
(Same here - I believed in Ihnatko's take on keyboard, but hey
)
The iPad isn't a big Touch, more than the Touch is a small iPad.
It's a device that people will get home, sync, and then have, for free nearly every app they've already bought
Why doesn't the iPhone, iPad do multitasking?
e.g. To let you stream music? - Because Apple wants their streaming sorted first perhaps.
e.g. Multiple apps - That's the individual apps policy to design it so it remembers state.
e.g. Because switching between apps will be FAST enough for the benefit of the speed is better than having things slow but getting multitasking (All the time an app is unused in the background = wasting resources. If the app is doing stuff in the background it's killing battery in all likelihood).
Multitasking comes when Apple wants to bring it - OS 4? We'll have to see.
Post:
Analysts:
Shaw Wu of Kaufman Bros - 4 million in 12 months of availability.
Needham's Charlie Wolf - 5 million units.
