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DBZmusicboy01

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Sep 30, 2011
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Did many people say it will be a failure and that they would never want to have it? But now millions have it and same with the iPhone 4 when it was leaked everyone called it ugly and nothing special.
 
With the iPad, all many of us saw is that it was a big iPhone (that couldn't make calls) and the track record of tablets up until that point was long streak of failures.
 
Well people just won't say something's good until it's really successful. Like right now everyone says they don't want an iWatch an it's going to fail. This is not as bad as the iPad but some people say it.
 
Did many people say it will be a failure and that they would never want to have it? But now millions have it and same with the iPhone 4 when it was leaked everyone called it ugly and nothing special.

It's because people generally do not have vision or foresight, and jump to voice their opinions as if it were fact.
 
I still don't see it as a real tablet. My computer with a Wacom digitizer, real keyboard, proper OS is a tablet to me.

The iPad is still a glorified media consumption device to me. A good one at that, but that's what I think it is.
 
I had my doubts because of the lack of Flash.

Still bought one on launch though! Lol
 
It was due to past tablets being desktop os's squeezed into a tablet which really didn't work. With the iPad we got iOS with a great App Store backing it up.

If you wanted to be brutal it was the App Store and dev's that made the iPad what it is today.
 
My recollection is that the biggest issue in the 2010 ipad run up was the price point--which was widely rumored to to be $1000. When apple released the ipad at $499, it created instant market momentum. Reviews of the ipad were very positive, and the display was much praised. That said there were many threads here about why anyone would want an ipad, what could you do with it, etc. However, the whole "app" thing had tremendous cachet at that point--and the apple store and itunes provided the perfect envoronment for the ipad to thrive.

I was disappointed that apple did not address the pen issue in its first ipad release--and I still feel this is great ommission in the product. Now I have a surface pro, a tablet that finally provides the functionality I need
 
Most said it was just a giant iPod touch (myself included). Of course we were all wrong and it went on to create a whole new market segment and become wildly successful. I think it was an even more genius product than the iPhone. Apple pretty much made us want something that we didn't know we wanted. That's impressive.
 
Did many people say it will be a failure and that they would never want to have it? But now millions have it and same with the iPhone 4 when it was leaked everyone called it ugly and nothing special.

Mostly because people didn't really think that a "mid point" between smartphone and laptop was really necessary, OR that Apple had really figured out how to do it right. A lot of us saw and used netbooks, and saw what dismal failures they were. Some of us had also seen and handled UMPCs and early Nokia tablets, and they were clunky and hard to use for practically anything but just showing off that you blew a ton of money on these useless devices. A tablet running iOS seemed like it would be just as bad.

I have to admit, when the iPhone was first announced in 2007, I thought it was the stupidest thing I had ever seen. No 3G? No apps?! Only one carrier? No physical keyboard like my Blackberry? And it costs HOW MUCH?! What idiots! I even caused a scene at the shadyside Apple Store in Pittsburgh, which was my first hands-on with the iPhone. No lie: I loudly called it junk after trying to thumb-type on it and getting a bunch of typos, and about a dozen Apple store reps descended on me. My friends had to pull me out before things got real.

But, I was curious... I just wouldn't admit it. Then, two weeks later while I was dropping off an iMac from work to get repairs done, I used a display model iPhone again. Half an hour later I walked out of the store with one of my very own.

Likewise, I was skeptical with the iPad, though I knew better than to be as vocal and belligerent about it. :) And while I skipped the first gen, I'd have an iPad 2, 3 and Air, and have loved them all.

People reject new things off hand for a lot of reasons. They're invested in what they already have and use, and a a disruptive technology means disruption for them too. They worry it's one more gadget they're gonna have to buy to keep up with everyone else, and that makes some people silently (or even loudly) hope that it fails... until they have one for themselves.
 
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I was skeptical about iPads/tablets for my personal use. I thought that the iPad would be successful but couldn't see the point of getting a tablet when my iPhone did everything I needed. In 2012 I took a punt and bought a Samsung galaxy tab and whilst I wasn't blown away with it I saw that a tablet would be useful for me. When the iPad mini launched I got one and I love it. I use it everyday. I've since gotten a nexus 7, which is fine but I'm not as enamoured with my android tablets as I am with my iPad mini.
 
I will confess when the iPad came out I didn't see the point of it, and didn't understand why it seemed to be so popular. Laptops were so light and portable, it seemed to me if one was going to take something as an iPad with them, why not take a laptop and have a keyboard and desktop OS? Then the mini came out and I was completely floored, and I also saw the advantage of having an e-reader that could handle pdfs. And of course even the Air is lighter and smaller than the original iPad.
 
I like how people act like this is unique to Apple.

The fact is that the first generation of ANYTHING gets mocked because it's trying to either replace a titanic market or start one of its own. When Diamond Rio made the first MP3 player everyone laughed at the idea of spending all that money for a device that could only play 8 songs and had to be plugged into your home computer to change what was on it.

When Rhapsody started doing legal downloads, people thought it was lunacy that anyone would want to pay a monthly fee for music that you didn't even actually own.

No one thought Blu-Ray would catch on because DVDs worked just fine, why would anyone need MORE definition in the image? It's not like TVs at the time could play in 1080p anyway! Why would anyone spend a few hundred dollars for a new player to buy copies of movies that look pretty much the same?

Beats headphones seemed like a crazy venture. Casual listeners and fashion-conscious music fans weren't going to drop $100-200+ on HEADPHONES of all things.

The list goes on and on. The iPad was mocked at first because it was just a huge iPod, and at the time there wasn't much use for it. Now that we're years later and the app market has exploded to the point that apps are MADE for the huge screen, the landscape is different. In 2010 it was highly questionable whether we'd ever get to this point.

We did, but it wasn't a given. Tons of products have tried and failed, and Apple certainly has their share of flops (oh hello, Newton).
 
I still don't see it as a real tablet. My computer with a Wacom digitizer, real keyboard, proper OS is a tablet to me.

The iPad is still a glorified media consumption device to me. A good one at that, but that's what I think it is.

Well it's not a real tablet in the older definition of the word which your computer is. Word meanings change all the time. Everyone thought they knew what a touchscreen smartphone was. Blackberry is still delusional of what it is. ;)

The iPad is a real tablet. Made for the masses. Media consumption device yes, but I've actually used it last semester to write papers, textbooks, take tests, and correspondence for school.

It cannot create on the level yours can so I kind of agree with you, I love my iPad but I still need a full macbook pro with a Wacom tablet for work.
 
The primary thing I remember hearing from people is that they couldn't fathom how an iPad would do anything better than their laptop. When I pointed out that a laptop is not a great primary reading device - whether books, magazines, or just Internet browsing, they couldn't see outside the paradigm they were used to. Or that the battery life and instant-on/off capabilities would change how the device was used. Many of those same people have had tablets since around the second generation.

Granted the first generation WAS so limiting - especially the state of software and website compatibility at launch - that it was difficult to use it as heavily as we are able to today - but that is always the case with nearly every product. How many people spent years looking at SD pictures on their HDTV's? - often the picture actually looked worse than on a good CRT which softened the edges of the digital artifacts.
 
When the iPad was first announced in the year 2010 why

I didn't see the point initially mainly because I couldn't see why I needed more than my laptop and phone.

The light bulb moment was when I realized that 80% of what I was doing on my laptop I could do on my phone but chose the laptop due to screen size. That's when it clicked where the iPad fitted in my digital life...

I think a lot of people reacted negatively due to the usual tech blog conservatism but once real consumers started buying it the tech press quickly had to change it's tune to keep step with the wisdom of the general public.
 
I told everyone that the iPad was pointless. I said you have phone and have a laptop so what's the point of a bigger phone that you can't even call on. I remember thinking the iPad 2 was a what the iPad one should have been but still didn't get it. I remember my dad getting my mom an iPad 2 for Christmas the year they came out. I set it up and thought it was cool but still wasn't sold on one. Then the iPad three came out and I decided to get one and try it out. Let's just say I did a 180 and used the iPad all the time every day. It was great to pick up quick read the news, check the weather, watch some youtube videos, go on Facebook, chat with friends on iMessage, play some games, listen to music on pandora and check out a few cool apps. I then sold the three when the mini came out and loved it even more. I sold the mini and now have the rMini. The iPad is such great media/entertainment device.
 
The iPad hardware wise is indeed a giant iPod touch. That doesn't have to be a negative. If all developers did was create blown up iPhone apps, then indeed, the iPad would be a giant iPod touch software wise as well.

The real genius was Apple's guidelines to developers on how to take advantage of the increased real estate. By having developers take advantage of the real estate instead of blowing up a phone app, that's where the iPad experiences differentiated instead as a unique experience.
 
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