“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???
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”grin” style=”border:0;” />
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.
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”wink” style=”border:0;” />
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?”
Give the kid a break; his parents couldn’t even spell “Eric” right!
@Macdoc
The decline of “real” journalist who actually write meaningful, thoughtful and fully researched stories are a dying breed. Instead we get FUD Master, HIT Whores and opinionated stories, rather than factual well researched stories. I’m sure this guy has been iCalled already.
As a device of this type (whatever form it may take) is going to be the future, even though it failed even the Newton showed that, Apple will never close down the iPad lines, it would simply adapt and manoeuver what is a new platform in whatever direction it needs to develop while the technology and understanding catches up with it.
What fools like this commentator, fail to comprehend is that if in the early to mid seventies the personal computer was presented at a big event to the public at large, nearly everyone would have shook their head and wondered what possible use this could have to the average person.
G4 Cube is by far the most valuable computer ever made by anyone. Ten years after it was introduced, it still sells for at least $200. Remember, it is a G4 processor, 500MHz clock speed (slower than all modern smartphones!), 64MB graphic card… It only (legally) runs Tiger (although Leopard runs fine on it, when installed using firmware hack).
The fact that the masses somehow didn’t want to buy into it made it a cult collector’s item. Most remarkably, though, even the ones with the original G4 chip (and maxed out RAM) still work well for vast majority of tasks that vast majority of people do most of the time. But then again, all other old Macs work similarly as well…
It is true that it does not do much of anything different than a laptop or iPhone/iPod Touch.
It is also true that the iPhone/iPod touch platform has become incredibly popular.
The problem is that we as critics have become incredibly used to technology only being “good” if it is technologically innovative at the surface. The iPad, though under the hood is technologically innovative, doesn’t have some astonishing amount of horsepower or other obvious win.
Bringing the iPhone experience to a laptop sized device is not technologically innovative on the surface. But it is where we are going with computing in our lives. The idea of stepping down to less powerful devices is anathema. But it has been proven in the market place already. The “good enough” technology era has already dawned. The meaning is that we increasingly are seeing these devices are necessary tools that should just work rather than the special thing we have to work to use. After all, the apps on the iPhone are not astonishing software, but their utility in our lives are becoming essential. Not just iPhone, but all consumer smartphones, obviously now copying the iPhone, have created/uncovered the notion that we SHOULD have all of this with us all of the time.
The iPad negative nancys are viewing it with the wrong criteria.
Isn’t the Mac Mini a modern version of the cube?
This is Steve Job’s chance to take back the computing industry and redefine the paradigm without making the same mistakes that were made with the original Macintosh back in the ’80s and ’90s. The way I see it, the technology has finally matured to the point where the iPad is what Steve really wanted the original Macintosh to be. This time it’s not a black and white screen. This time it won’t cost $2500 (in 1988 dollars) for an entry level system. This time there won’t be a settlement with Microsoft. This time there won’t be a reliance on Motorola for processors. This time the company won’t be emasculated by any sugar water salesman. Did I mention the $40B warchest? Apple has been planning this for years. It’s not going to fail. It might take 5 or even 10 years to catch on, but eventually we’ll all need one of these. It’s only a question of who can seize the initiative and deliver something useful and which are going to be left behind.
I predict that when there are about 300 million of these things out there, the iPad name will be dropped for simply “Apple.” Fifty years from now, when it can run for a year on a charge, has terabytes of storage, and weights only 8 oz, “Apple” will be a colloquial word for the things we carry around to communicate with; kind of the way “Kleenex” means tissue or “Band Aid” means bandage. It’s going to change the world that much. Get used to it.
For all the “what if …? analysts out there, here’s a blast from the past…
If the sun refused to shine, I don’t mind. I don’t mind.
If all the mountains fell into the sea, let it be. It ain’t me.
‘Cos I got my own world to go through, and I ain’t gonna copy you.
What if six turned out to be nine? I don’t mind. I don’t mind.
If all the hippies cut off all their hair, I don’t care. I don’t care.
Jimi Hendrix
What the …. How can this idiot possibly make reference to the comments of two comedians and treat them like they were serious commentary?
I think the iPad will go viral; it will start a bit slow, but sales will grow quickly when people can actually touch them.
Hess, you lost it on this one.
Of all the people in the world I’m amazed how you don’t get it… How could you possibly not see how this device will transform the computing , educational , publishing family and consumer world and become the all can do staple of the millennium?
Kevin J. Weise:
Bold as love……..nice one
Yep, it may fail. Talk about pointing out the bleedin’ obvious. It may not be what consumers want, they may not bite. It’s a risk. But any company that innovates rather than follows the crowd has to take risks. Apple’s track record, though not 100%, is good. Very good.
Okay – I was not worried about the success of the iPad – I thought it would be just fine and sell like hot cakes. I was interested in whom this product might appeal to – would it’s market base be broad enough? I’m not worried about that anymore. I walked in on a conversation between my mother and my – talking about the iPad and how they “will” use theirs. Which accessories to use. Should I get a keyboard doc, etc…..
Before that conversation I would have bet good $$ that my mother would have no idea what one was and that my wife would not be interested. I would be a much poorer man!
This is good. We need more article like his, so MS victims will get curious and go to stores to check out why they should hate iPad.
Kevin J. Weise, breeze
I seem to remember that the Cube was introduced to the strain of “Purple Haze”
DRMSSDB, Famous Grouse, etc.
I liked your comments. The dialogue stream is beginning to smooth out, the better to see insights bubbling like goldfish under the surface
Hi MDN, love the fact that the site keeps me up to date with all the latest news but you are, at this point in time, starting to wind me up with your perpetual refusal to allow anyone to say anything slightly negative about an apple product without adding in your ‘take’ which basically amounts to pulling their hair and calling them names. Ask yourself, and be totally honest, are you entirely happy with the iPad as a product? I’m a huge apple fan and love my macbook. my iphone, the 4 other iPods I’ve had. But I recognise when things are a bit lame. My airport extreme base station gives poor wifi coverage compared to other products and I am entirely underwhelmed by the iPad. Sure it may be good if we get the right apps on it; but as a piece of kit it’s sitting firmly in the “could have done better” department in my mind… let the name calling commence!!!
The Newton was a failure for two reasons; it was too expensive, and it did not have the iTunes infrastructure to rely on. The iPad will. As I recall, the iPod didn’t catch on until Apple introduced the iTunes store and opened the platform to Windows users.
@whatever
You could say that the Mini and the Cube are related, but not if you consider selling price. The cube was just too expensive.
Apple failures? How about the iPod speakers? One day Steve J. was proclaiming them insanely great; a few months later the were quietly gone.
And SNL has a good record. Remember the SNL bit when the original shuffle was released – SNL predicted the iPod “pequano”. It came to pass last year as the 3rd gen Shuffle – something too damn small for mere humans to manipulate.
At first, after reading the coverage of the keynote, I didn´t get it either, what is this thing all about. But after watching the keynote and seeing how this thing really works, I´m all for it. This thing seems to do everything my iBook G4 can, with a lot less weight to mule around, sure, the keyboard will take time to adapt, but I´m sure I´ll get the hang of it. And with that cool case, I can´t wait to buy one. Don´t see it as a revolution, but a very smart Gadget for about 90% of all computer users. There is barely a need for a laptop, of course, I wouldn´t want to miss my iMac.
Methinks Arik wants to bump down Apple stock to create a buying opportunity himself (or for his friends). Wonder how much he made the last time he pulled this stunt in 2008.
The only reason the Cube is trotted out as a failure is “at that time” the iMac had just set sales records for 2 years straight. Any new model after that was compared to the iMac and if the sales were not the same, the industry “pundits” labeled it a failure. (sound familiar?)
Everyone I knew who bought one loved it and it worked well for years. Still have one customer keeping one running for old software testing.
Don’t forget all ye faithful. The Cube may have been ahead of its time but it gave rise to the best little inexpensive powerhouse in the world – the Mac Mini. I just bought the Server version. $1000 for a core duo 2.66GHz, 4GB, 1TB HDD with an unlimited server license? Wow. A worthy successor to the under-appreciated Cube.
Zillions of PC users buying the mini.
Comparing the Cube to the iPad is like comparing an orange to a bike. One has NOTHING to do with the other.
The Cube was, in no way, ever looked at as a game-changer. Don’t think it was intended to be. Just looked cool.
That people can’t see how this device (and others similar to it) ARE the future
of get-the-computer-out-of-the-way computing.
Our digital life has just been born in the iPad for the myriad uses expressed by others on this board. It’s been gestating for a good, oh, 30 years.
Those that can’t see it now never will. They’re too steeped in old media to even fathom an iPad world.
I would love if someone could quantify the iPad, in terms of the net environmental gain of a device which allows one to feasibly discontinue the use of the printed page.
Business Week in more danger of failure than iPad.
Danger!!! Falling circulation!
HassleDull writing streetwise news in chalk on pavement for tips from passers by.
Apple will sell approximately 11,254,597 iPads worldwide in 2010. 5 million in December alone. Hell, I’m not rich but I will be buying 5 in April (wife, daughter, grandson, brother, niece) and one more in July with 3G.
It is the first true personal computer. Good enough for the serious stuff while on the move. Great at everything else.
25 million in 2011
Buy AAPL. Double your money in 2 years max.
iPad is a gift to all freelancers everywhere.
Good enough to be productive 80+ % of the time = less need to go home (the office) to work on the DT or LT.
Out and about is where the clients are.
Just some other thought, if I do get an iPad, which I will be getting, I probably won´t go for another iPhone though, rather have the iPad along and a real small phone for just calls, why have both? Now that Apple needs to answer.
So maybe we´ll see an iPhone nano in the summer?
150,000 killer apps? Bit of a stretch there, MDN. Among the large steaming piles of crap in the app store, I would guess there are maybe 1,000 “killer apps”
Funny how quantity over quality is preferred when it benefits Apple, but trashed when it doesn’t.
I personally don’t see the use of an iPad, being the owner of a desktop and a laptop. But I won’t write it off – time will tell as to how successful it will be.
One of the things that I learned at Princeton (hint: IVY) is that unlike true gold, bullshit comes in all of the colors of the rainbow.
-hh
Why would the iPad be successful. The toilet. I take my iPhone to the toilet. I use my iPhone in bed. The iPad is the perfect device to read in the toilet. Instant on. Read the paper. Watch the news. Put it down. This function alone will make me want one.
@Bongo: “Bit of a stretch there, MDN…I would guess there are maybe 1,000 ‘killer apps.'”
Hmm…that’s a bit of stretch too then, Bongo: There are at least a few thousand quality apps in games alone. Programming on an Apple device discourages creation of junk. That’s a built-in feature…
Really? There’s no junk on the App Store?
iFart, Hold Button, Pocket Girlfriend, iBeer, Sim Stapler and countless others with endless variations of one another. I don’t deny the presence of great apps (I own an iPhone and have several), but 150,000 would sound a lot better if the vast majority were not useless and/or a near exact replica of another app.
I could say that Windows has the ability to run so many more “killer” programs than OSX; therefore, it is better. We all know how flawed that logic is, but most of you don’t recognize it when used for something you support.
Also, “quality” apps are not “killer” apps. It might be a case of semantics, but I view a killer app as something that a good portion of users will use and cannot do without once they start using it.. Games, even good ones, don’t fall into this category.
@ Bongo,
Killer Apps are only killer Apps in the eye of the beholder. A game may be your killer App. A hand held x-ray and ultrasound viewer may be your Doctor’s killer App.
There are damn good Apps for bird watchers that would be your crap Apps, and so on.
I think their are a lot more killer Apps for a lot more people than what you think.
Even a Fart App can keep a moron hillbilly laughing all day long. That’s the moron’s and the 10 year old boy’s killer App.
Think about it and re-evaluate. You only need one killer App per customer no matter what interests that customer has.
Steve tried to define between smart phone and laptop in terms of mobility. but why is it making me sound like what Steve talked about Apple TV? so Apple TV has been successful? NO. here is thing to say. not all apple products would be sold many times successfully. I doubt that ipad will be huge successful just like iphone. yeah, UI is still working to people. but category of ipad is still unclear. people just use mac mini to stream videos music rather than Apple TV because mini is desktop computer that can handle more than Apple TV. in the same way, laptop can handle more than ipad. it’s still portable, lighter. why not bother? macbook still gives you 7 hours battery life. it’s enough. if you complain about it, why won’t other tablet success? because it uses windows OS? shut up. it doesn’t make any sense. you never know.