“With the introduction of the iPad, Apple’s status as a cultural icon reached new heights. Based on an unscientific survey of newspapers archived by The Newseum, pictures of or stories about the tablet-style computer appeared on front pages in at least 47 states and the District of Columbia and no fewer than 24 countries on six continents—in places as varied as Bulgaria, Uruguay, Turkey, and Portugal,” Arik Hesseldahl reports for BusinessWeek. “The media’s crush on Apple is not just alive and well, but it has gone global.”
Hesseldahl reports, “In the last decade, Apple has revolutionized the music and wireless industries with its iPod and iPhone, respectively. The recent buzz around Apple reflects high hopes that with the iPad, Apple can similarly transform a third industry: publishing. But based on early reviews, the iPad as introduced may not deliver.”
MacDailyNews Take: There have been no “early reviews.” There have only been write-ups following a brief hands-on session offered the media following Apple’s unveiling. The iPad is not even FCC certified, yet. Let’s do something radical and wait for the actual iPad reviews, okay? Hesseldahl does a disservice to his readers with that bit of disinformation.
Hesseldahl continues, “Yet it’s hard to see how the iPad, in the form unveiled last month, will come close to transforming daily life as much as the iPod or iPhone.”
MacDailyNews Take: Arik Hesseldahl. Any less imagination and he’d work for Microsoft. Please see: BusinessWeek’s Hesseldahl can’t imagine where Apple goes from here – October 02, 2008
Hesseldahl continues, “I’ve talked to a lot of people who don’t seem to get what the iPad is for, no matter how many times I explain it to them. Dave Letterman joked about it in his Top Ten list on Feb. 1. Among the surprises in the $3.8 trillion federal budget: ‘A $1 billion research grant to figure out what the hell the iPad does.’ On Saturday Night Live, Weekend Update host Seth Meyers said: ‘This week Apple released a thing that does stuff that its other stuff already does.'”
MacDailyNews Take: Two geniuses there, Arik. How will Steve Jobs’ visions of the future ever compete with those of Dave Letterman and Seth Myers? We heard the same sort of naysaying with the launch of the Macintosh, iMac, Mac OS X, iPod, iTunes Store, and iPhone. And, who’s surprised that Arik can’t explain what an iPad does, no matter how many times he tries?
Hesseldahl continues, “Without a killer app, is there really such a strong demand for a large-screen device that plays music and movies, browses the Web, and displays e-books? Apple clearly thinks so or it wouldn’t devote the money and resources to make the iPad. There’s plenty of time for Jobs & Co. to unveil iBooks, or iNewspapers, or a collection of many things.”
MacDailyNews Take: Arik must have missed the part where Jobs announced deals with all of the major book publishers and demoed the iBooks app and iBookstore. It’s entirely possible, indeed likely, that Arik has also forgotten that iPad already has over 150,000 killer apps and counting.
Hesseldahl continues, “Here’s a suggestion: The iPad might make an ideal universal control for all the smart gadgetry—TVs, entertainment systems, thermostats, alarm systems, surveillance cameras, and baby monitors—found in so many 21st century homes.”
MacDailyNews Take: Brilliant, Arik. Such rampant imagination and originality! Don’t quit your day job. On second thought, after slogging through this mess, you might want to consider it.
Hesseldahl continues, “What if consumers never get it? Apple hasn’t had a hands-down failure (the PowerMac G4 Cube) for about a decade, and let’s just say for the sake of discussion that this turns out to be one, and that Apple shuts down the iPad line at the end of, say, 2011. Apple would still be an astonishingly strong company… At the same time, it may also signal that the transformation of Apple from a late-’90s casualty of the PC wars into the most important technology company on the planet is near completion, and that its upward trajectory might begin to level off.”
MacDailyNews Take: That the naysayers always have to revert to using the Cube as an example of an Apple “failure” speaks volumes. The Cube was simply a Mac model. Nothing more, nothing less. It was discontinued the same as was the original iMac and several other models. Some might say the Cube was the forerunner of the Mac mini.
Hesseldahl continues, “That’s the logical conclusion of the skeptical case, anyway. And as we all know, Apple has a funny way, in the fullness of time, of proving the skeptics wrong.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Thanks, Arik, for plopping a cherry atop yet another one of your piles of horseshit.
MacDailyNews Note: Arik loves email (he might even tell you that he’s “Ivy League-educated,” whether you ask or not): .
BusinessWeek’s editors can be contacted via web form here.
This is a fellow who needs to have his shovel taken away. He just keeps digging. Oh, wait. There are no consequences for talking heads being full of it. For some, it just increases their ratings.
It’s gonna be big – I work at a middle school and the kids are talking about it. It’ll tap users who up to now don’t really use computers. It’ll be the perfect coffee table gadget. Students will have them everywhere. Just wait till the programmers get ahold of them.
And what if this asteroid falls on earth?
Funny….. That company that Just “topped out” just had a 50% increase in profit last quarter.
The iPad would have to do astoundingly badly for Apple to give up on it less than 2 years after it goes on sale. The Apple TV does less and is underpowered, yet it’s still a decent product and sells reasonably well considering it isn’t given the attention that the iPad will be and they still make it.
The only way I can see them shutting the iPad down is if something fundamentally more astounding is developed or it they sell them only in the thousands, and they’re likely to do that many just to people wanting to review/dissect them
Hesseldahl has to be not only deaf and dumb, but blind, too!
Ah, the Age of Deceit. I wonder how much Microshaft paid him to write this nonsensical article……
Putting the “anal” into analyst???
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Just a thought,
en
In about 5 years I will re-read Hesseldahl’s article in a digital edition of BusinessWeek on my iPad. That will be before I go to the doctor where he will review my charts with me on his iPad. Of course, that will also be after I take my grandkids to school–a school that uses iPads rather than bound books for education.
Afterwards I’ll make something tasty in the kitchen using either receipts from cookbooks on my iPad or a receipt on the Internet that I review on my iPad. After lunch, I’ll go down in my workshop and as I try to do something new, I’ll review the procedure on the net using my iPad.
Later in the day, I’ll settle in to read the newspaper on my iPad before planting my ass in front of the TV which will be controlled by the iPad. Of course, since TV will still be crap in 5 years, I’ll be doing email and cruising the web on my iPad at the same time.
Yeah, Hesseldahl’s right, what will people possibly use the iPad for?
There are so many different applications that will be developed for the iPad that it’s mind-boggling. For cars, in classrooms, for mobile purposes, artists, etc., etc., etc……..\
The mistake some people are making is that they think people will only hold it in their hand. Also, they are seriously underestimating the multi-touch technology driving it.
whattadouche
The G4 Cube was one of the best things apple has ever produced… It was years ahead of everything else… If you don’t have enough enough imagination to guage success in other ways than profit (such aesthetically or even technologically) then I feel sorry for you. You are the type of lemming that believes that a song is great because Casey Kasem says it’s number one…
I have G4 Cube, I don’t think that is a failure, I love it, it’s a nice piece of a machinery.
Didn’t see anything like that made by any other company.
Note to MDN: the iPad is going to be OK and your change-the-world guy with his unimaginable arrogance will be OK.
And, there’s no reason to go nuts when so many people want to know what the iPad will do for them and why they would want/need one. Just explain it.
Throughout the media, the tech blogosphere, and Mac boosterism sites across the web, there’s these questions.
Like Steve, you don’t suffer fools very well but without them, Apple’s customer base is much, much smaller.
It is a shame how the PC industry are attacking the iPad. Hesseldahl is getting on the gravy train paid for by the PC industry with their heads in the sand.
iPad is not about computing. My children and my mother (who all want one right away) DO NOT WANT A COMPUTER (PC world listen up). They simply want a media consumption device and ability to easily keep in touch with their friend near and far.
Eat your heart out PC world…
Is it just me, or was the whole nerd community chomping at the bit for a decent tablet device so they could fulill their Star Trek fantasies by walking about the house like Geordi LaForge, cataloging the contents of their fridge or whatever (“Let’s see..pizza, pizza, pizza” etc)? Now that Apple’s produced one it’s all “Oh who wants a Tablet anyway? We can’t see what they’re for”. Still, shouldn’t be too surprised – nerds never did have any imagination. Stick with your Linux boxes guys, real computers for real men eh?
MDN you should have a turdlike indicator on the headlines of stories like this. How do these people get this crap published?
Q: What if Hesseldahl fails?
A: He’ll keep writing.
Judging by the response to this article, I would say that the fanboys are disappointed and defensive. I saw nothing bashworthy in the article. Take your meds, people.
Another FUD moment for the iCal database “remember when” system.
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What if pigs sprout wings and fly to the moon?
And what if the oceans dry up and the trees turn purple?
We must think about these things and write stories.
The iPad is a reboot on a platform that had limited applicability when introduced by the wintel producers….
The iPad is about vision: Simplicity, Ease of Use, and the beginning of what computers will eventually become…
Like the iPhone, Apple is taking a baby step to introduce something which works in way which no other device has previously functioned.
MDN magic word: “develop.”
We are indeed on the precipice of a new development. I recommend we have patience and respect. The technology now exists for this to become something amazingly great.
@ crayon1 and Rob … right on! The Cube was one of the least understood technologies Apple has produced, along with the Newton.
The iPad continues the tradition of Steve saying “it will never work, we’re not going into that space” only to show up later with THE killer device for that market.
I didn’t realize that BusinessWeek was such a rag publication.
Well, it was bad. But at least he didn’t suggest that the iPad needs a stylus (only Dvorak could be that thick-headed).
There is s song for this guy to sing: “What Kind of Fool Am I?”