More Reasons Why The iPad Sucks And You Shouldn’t Buy One
Bertrand Vasquez | Jan 29, 2010 | Comments 34
As if there weren’t way too many reasons already why the iPad pretty much sucks. People have started to uncover even more things that make the iPad not very useful. Let’s face it, Steve Jobs trashed netbooks very harshly, and the thing [the iPad] does not back up his trash-talk at all.
We already know that the iPad does not support Flash, one of the main technologies that pretty much drive a lot of the Internet nowadays. Adobe has even expressed its discontent with Apple for not embracing the technology. Another huge letdown is the lack of a camera, USB ports, and SD card slots. Sure those two latter ones have a solution, if you buy those nasty adapters. And who can forget the ugly design? Nothing sleek about it.
Click after the break to see all the reasons why the new Apple iPad sucks that we have not covered.
- The name - iPad? Apple, and more specifically the device are the laughingstock on the Internet. The name apparently and obviously reminds people of a certain product women need to use every month to prevent accidents caused by nature. Enough said.
- No multitasking - Apple thinks it can replace netbooks and computers with a device that doesn’t allow you to run more than one application at a time. If you want to send an IM, you’re going to have to stop any music app you use while you send the message, and then restart the song again. Not convenient at all.
- No support for other mobile networks - Steve Jobs painted a pretty picture when he announced the iPad was sold unlocked with data plans from AT&T. Everyone thought they wouldn’t be bound to AT&T, given the iPad is “unlocked.” Turns out, despite it being unlocked it only supports AT&T’s GSM network. Plus, it uses microSIM cards. You can’t even use it on T-Mobile’s network, much less Verizon. It’s pretty much exclusive to AT&T.
- No HDMI output - Want to watch HD videos downloaded from iTunes on your giant HDTV? Sorry, you can’t.
- No Widescreen - Speaking of videos, the iPad itself looks squarish, its screen resolution is 4:3 not the standard 16:9. For those two reasons videos are said to look horrible on the device. That is, unlike you like watching two big and thick black bars over and under your videos.
So much for a revolutionary device that was supposed to change history. At this point, even the JooJoo tablet is looking better. I think nobody can blame us for getting our hopes about the iPad, after all we’ve learned to expect great things from Apple. Unfortunately, it appears the company is not delivering great results anymore. I mean, it’s not the first time Apple disappoint us with a device. We don’t know why anyone in their right mind would want to buy the iPad.
Do we believe the iPad will be successful? Yes, but only in the sense that Apple fanboys will buy anything from Apple, no matter how crappy the device really is. Then, there are those who follow and will mimic what others are doing. Just look at the iPhone, people give up their awesome coverage from other mobile networks just to get the iPhone with terrible coverage from AT&T just because that’s the “it” phone everyone has.
What do you guys think? Still buying one?
Filed Under: Technology
Great post, I agree with everything.
I understand some of your disappointment. But not all of your facts are true. While you cannot multitask, you can listen to your music in the background while you work on another app. But music is the only thing that works in the background.
As far as the design, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. If you don’t want one that’s great, but if you were going to buy a kindle why not spend the extra $15 and get a better kindle that will also play music, videos, games, and some basic office applications.
yes I will buy this product and even though its not everything I had hoped for I think it still has great potential. I’m an educator and I have already come up with a couple of great ideas on how to use it in my classroom. So yes I will be purchasing one of these revolutionary devises.
@Weeble:
Yes, but that only applies to the official Apple music app. However, it’s a different story for music streaming apps like Pandora or other similar apps.
While the Apple fanboys are all over the internet defending their boss’ latest creation, sadly, Apple appears to be milking the fanboys’ loyalty here..
Jobs and his marketing team very well know that come what may, the fanbois are going to buy it the first time. So, why bother about R&D expenditure for six months while you can bring a substandard device and let the fanbois pounce on it and get an iPad 2.0 with features like camera and multitasking that should have been there in the first place..The fanbois will buy it again..
Jobs can make double the profit that way.
Oh yeah, this would be cool if it was 1999, but
It’s not Prince.
Apple is over, I’m buying a Lenovo Thinkpad
I’m going to make a mountain full of money
And not give anymore sir jobs!
Your’e just as colored as a Apple fanboy. Probably frustrated because Apple is popular now, and you don’t get it.
The iPhone isn’t so popular because “it is the phone everyone has” it is just a good product. Look at the other phone brands trying copying the iphone.
The fact that a computerbrand has fans says enough, they make quality products.
http://www.slashgear.com/notion-ink-tegra-android-smartpad-uses-pixel-qi-display-1866308/
Notion Ink Tegra craps all over the ipad. and is cheaper. It’s pretty much what the ipad should be.
Remeber that Apple as a company used to be called “Apple Computer, Inc.” a few years ago, until they changed their name to “Apple, Inc”, dropping the word “Computer” from their company name? That basically says it all.
I mean, when rumors startet to appear about what has now become the “iPad”, I couldn’t understand why everybody was expecting something like a real tablet computer from Apple. Apple has lost in the computer market a long time ago. Of course, they still make Macs, but their overall marketshare in that area is pretty much limited.
With their iPod and iPhone, however, they have been successful, and now Apple has found their new “home” in the market of manufacturing closed, limited-purpose devices that they completely control. For people like me who are “computer folks” more than “gadget folks”, such things don’t have any appeal at all.
Now, economically, Apple’s obvious “slow departure” from the computer market to the “vendor-locked gadget” market *could* work out. However, I’m very sure that the iPad will not be able to repeat the success of the iPod and iPhone. The reasons for this have already been pointed out, but let me sum them up once more:
- As a major new feature, the iPad ads “reading books”. I’m personally still unsure if ordinary people would want to read books on an electronic device, and those who do might be better of with the e-ink technology deviced like the “Kindle” offer.
- In can play music and videos, but provided you want to use these features “on the go”, the thing is way too bulky and won’t fit in your pocket, so that an iPod or another portable audio / video player are much better suited.
- It allows you to surf the web and read eMail, but in a very limited manner (i.e., no Flash). Yet, for the price of the iPad, you can already get a decent laptop computer that is much better suitable for surfing the web, and even let’s you do “serious” work and stuff without problems.
So … what’s the purpose of the device? There’s none I can see, I fear. If you’ve been watching closely, you will have noticed that Apple is not (and probably never has been) the “savior” many people have seen in it during the last few years…
@le chimp: Lenovo Thinkpad, Great Choice!
@The Apple Fanboy: Perhaps its time to get re-educated yourself on the meanining of revolutionary. From what we seen so far, it has nothing innovative about it. If anything, it is really a big disappointment.
for the most part i fully agree with this article.
AT&T is not that bad, maybe just a little behind verizon, but way ahead of the other 2 providers. try something before you talk smack. every cell phone provider sucks anyway.
@Frits:
I didn’t say the iPhone wasn’t great. I just mean a lot of people don’t even think about what they really need, or compare it to other phones. They just buy it because it’s trendy.
@matt: Even AT&T itself has admitted, it needs improvement. A lot of people agree it is a really bad carrier. Even iPhone users.
Couldn’t agree more!
Nice post!
Seriously, they want to every shity piece of garbage look good just by putting an apple logo on it, spending millions on advertisement and targeting teens to buy them.
APPLE SUCKS!
What critics of the iPad don’t seem to understand is that it’s not a computer, and it’s not meant to replicate the functionality of the computer. It’s a device created for consumption of media, web content, and gaming. It’s not meant to be used for creation of content. It’s a niche device, though the niche is rather large, and getting larger all the time with the continuing increase in wireless bandwidth. The question is whether people are willing to pay between $500 and $800 for a niche device.
But to compare the iPad to a computer is like comparing the iPhone to a last-gen cell phone. They are completely different classes of devices.
I guess Kowboys gets it completely right here.
What disturbs me the most is that there are a lot of otherwise “trustworthy” people out there wo continue to suggest that the iPad is meant to be a real computer, and – even worse – that it and the concept behind it would be the death to “computers as we know them”.
I’ve seen so many people claiming that normal computers, while meaning freedom, are too complicated for normal people, and thus normal people have been waiting for a “closed-down, vendor-driven” device like this – so much that in the future every computing device will look and work like the iPad.
I find that ridiculous. The thing is a consumption device, and if you’re really looking for something like that, it certainly has a function for you – more than likely in addition to a real computer. But as a replacement? Folks, get real!
What I’m not understanding is if it a media driven device, (ie: videos, games, and even basic web surfing) then why does it not support flash, which is otherwise universal. To me thats counter productive if apple says that it is a media driven device.
@Observer:
I believe that’s a political decision mainly. Two examples:
1) Apple sells TV shows on the iTunes store. Now there are sites – both paid and ad-financed (i.e. free to the user) that offer basically the same stuff to the user via Flash streaming.
2) Apple sells Apps from their App Store, which is the only “blessed” way to get “real” software on the device. If it supported Flash, developers could produce “almost-real” software based on Flash, put it up on the web, and have it there for everyone to use. And then, you could play all sorts of Flash games online, when Apple would probably rather want you to buy games from their App Store.
In short: Apple seems to see Flash as a thread to their “content-delivery-lock” they have on the iPhone / iPod Touch / iPad platform.
And that’s actually what disturbs me the most: Without wanting to call out a conspiracy, we’re talking about a company here that wants to totally lock you in, device- and content-wise. Microsoft’s bundling of Internet Explorer to Windows that was so widely critizised a few years back is a joke compared to this – at least Microsoft lets you install a different browser if you want to. Apple instead seems to think that “if it doesn’t come from us or isn’t officially ‘approved’ by us, then it can’t be used”. And more than any technical limitations of the device, THIS very thing is what should have people cry out in disgust!
This article hits the nail on the head. I would also add:
- Closed System
Popular Science makes a compelling case and sums it up nicely:
“Once we replace the personal computer with a closed-platform device such as the iPad, we replace freedom, choice and the free market with oppression, censorship and monopoly.”
http://www.popsci.com/gadgets/article/2010-01/ipad’s-closed-system-sometimes-i-hate-being-right
Even the price could have been lower on the iPad since they left out so much functionality. On a $499 iPad, Apple makes $208. As you move up the ladder, they make progressively more. The profit they’ll make on adaptors is OBSCENE.
When Jobs speaks of “magical and revolutionary”, he’s talking about the truckload of money he’ll be making from the uninformed masses. If I was in his position, I’d be happy too!
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9150045/Apple_makes_208_on_each_499_iPad
Apple will also single-handedly raise the costs on eBooks sold. They’ll get 30% on all eBooks and allow publishers to charge whatever they want within a closed, DRM-infested environment. Good for Apple, good for Publishers. Bad for consumers in every way imaginable.
Apple is the dystopian future of the tech world. Apple fanbois are the pawns.
Ditching my iPhone when my contract expires in 3 months.
@The Apple Fanboy:
A fellow teacher! I, too, realize the great potential of a mobile device such as this, but there are soon to be MUCH better tablet products than the iPad to choose from. Check out the Notion Ink Adam tablet…that’s one that I’ve been drooling over for quite some time now. The severe limitations and locked-down nature of the iPad definitely outweigh the benefits of the device.
Actually the tablet space that we all thought they would enter, has a clearly defined set of functionalities. That is precisely the reason that everyone was so disappointed with the iPad. It had NONE of those features.
Think about it, if Apple had just come out and said they were developing an advanced ereader like nothing else you’ve ever seen, we would have been impressed. But to say this whole time they were developing a tablet, and then show this? They killed their own hype by claiming this device was something it wasn’t.
You can’t just come into a space that has been in existence for over 10 years now, say you have something to add to it, then change the definition of the space to fit your device.
A tablet has been, is, and always will be a device that is a fully functional notebook you can write on. It should be a notepad replacement. It CAN be a convertible laptop, OR a slate type device, but it needs to be a fully functional computer to fit the definition. Even a netbook is a fully functional computer at it’s heart.
The iPad is a big iPod touch…not even an iPhone. And it HARDLY fills the space they claimed it would.
Even Steve Jobs’ Reality Distortion Field couldn’t help him this time.
After having thought about it some more, I think the very vendor-locked nature of the iPad is what will eventually make it fail. Even many people, including myself, are very concerned about such vendor-lock-ins, I think people are luckily not stupid enought to fall for them. Yeah, one might suggest that people on the whole may be a bit stupid, but not that stupid, if you ask me.
In a sense, everything we’ve seen here has been tried before in one way or another, and it has always failed.
And those still talking about the iPad or similiar tablet devices killing the laptop: Far from true! If at all, tablets might be an addition or solution for certain scenarios, but not a replacement. Did the notebook PC replace desktop PCs? Cerntainly not, though I’m fairly sure that when the first notebook was released, people were all over the field, declaring desktop PCs just dead. And, as we can clearly see, they were wrong.
Now, with the iPad not even being a real computer by my definitions, I don’t see it as much of a threat and don’t predict it a success in any way even remotely comparable to the iPod or iPhone. After the hype is cooling down now, if anything, it’s vendor-locked ecosystems in general that we should keep a cautious eye on – the iPad is a joke if you ask me and thus a waste to worry about too much.
I’m definitely not getting one. they are expensive pieces of crap that suck balls. If I wanted a computer I would prefer the windows 2000 version over this crap (at least that has a usb port).
no USB, no SDHC, no webcam, no purchase of this DRM’d POS for me (i’ll stick with my Nokia N800 tablet running Maemo w/webcam, USB, replaceable battery, stylus, and two SDHC slots)
Over-sized iPod. Over-priced.
For the money their asking and considering the many limitations it has, you’re better off getting a Netbook and wait.
@le chimp: Great choice on the computer. Best there is period! Apple sucks, there products are over priced and every item they sell has closed architecture. There are even better products being sold that beat the venerable Ipod at half the cost.
I agree about how the iPad is an overpriced device.
Today I had a chance to play with one first hand in front of mobs of dumbed down people who were buying these devices up. It was ok but nothing special and for the same amount of cash, I would rather buy a Netbook mini-laptop. At least with a Netbook I am not tied to an OS and can run any software and options that I want. Apple products are for non-techies who want the easy way out and to be told what to buy and use.
Sad because I own two Macbooks and the OS is pretty solid since its based on BSD-UNIX. Along with an iPod touch and iPhone both are good toys and gadgets. But I do not like the way Apple is going tech wise. This is like the Apple Newton that failed years ago. Overpriced.
Hundreds of dollars for a “revolutionary” device that doesn’t run Flash, and runs iPhone OS? No thanks, I could get a laptop that can actually do stuff, like video editing, music editing, watching videos, games (that don’t suck).
When Steve Jobs comes out and says something akin to this being the notebook killer, he is insinuating that this thing is a computer. Technically, a calculator is a computer, so let’s be clear here.
This is tech-bling, plain and simple. This is that device you pull out of your backpack at the Bistro in downtown Manhattan while you sip your gourmet coffee and tap away on your sheet of glass you call a tablet. Yes, you are sure to attract the attention of passersby as you feign interest in some NY Times article you’re reading on your iPad while you passively adjust your turtleneck ever so slightly for maximum neck coverage.
It’s a toy. That’s all. An over-priced toy.
Even if I traveled twice as much as I do now I would still not see a need for this thing. I think people just have a fascination with moving colorful icons around on a piece of dark reflective glass.
I’ll stick to using real computers Mr. Jobs.
I agree with everything too..
however one does have to admit it makes a pretty fancy paperweight.
IPOON – next we need an IDOUCHE
@The Apple Fanboy: Its scary that you are an educator because “devises” is misspelled. Its devices.
@Mike: And I think now you all realize how dumb this article is and your comments are. Idiots…