“The iPad has fewer capabilities than a netbook, in a similar size. Not a good start,” Lee Gomes writes for Forbes, “People about to buy a computer tend to fixate on speeds and feeds–megahertz, megabytes, megapixels.”
MacDailyNews Take: People who don’t know how to buy a computer, that is; like Lee, we strongly suspect.
Gomes continues, “After watching Steve Jobs talk about his iPad tablet computer, though, I had the notion that a better way to approach a new gadget is to ask three questions: How much do you have to think about the decision to carry it with you? How long does it take to turn on? How do you tell it what you want it to do?”
“Remember these, and you have the only computer advice you will ever need,” so sayeth Lee Gomes. “I can use them to explain my initial, somewhat lukewarm, reaction to the iPad.”
MacDailyNews Take: Getting computer advice from Lee Gomes sounds more than a bit like getting chastity tips from Tiger Woods. Best to look elsewhere.
Full article, in which Mr. Myopic Luddite Who’s Missed The Whole Point complains about — drum roll please — “the lack of a physical keyboard” – Think Before You Click™ – here.
MacDailyNews Take: Whatever, Lee. It’s times like these that make us wish Forbes would just stick to their core competency: publishing lists.
physical keyboards are so last decade
” People who don’t know how to buy a computer, that is; like Lee, we strongly suspect.”
Couldn’t agree more!! Who cares about features? I want something “elegant”, “cool”, and “sexy” looking so I can feel like I fit in somewhere (and I know that I do at Steve Jacks’ blog)……
To hell with “speeds and feeds–megahertz, megabytes, megapixels” … I just want something in a delicious looking package that makes me feel that I’m “skating to where the puck is going to be”…..
WOOOOO HOOOOO STEVE!! I Love you !!!
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I just want the iPad to be a success so we can silence all of the sarcasm about it.
@Really,
I mean REALLY….its about the experience you fucking dumb ass. The speeds and physical aspects can contribute to the experience with the software also plays a huge roll too. Thats why Apple gets it and others don’t.
Simple as that.
He does have a point: I wouldn’t carry around an iPad. Too big. For me it’s a home and travel gadget. IPhone and IPod Touch will continue to be the truly mobile carry gadgets! U will hear a ton of stories of the iPad hitting cement as people awkwardly try to balance it on their laps. It’s slippery as hell. Mark my words. Buy the case!
Not clicking but oh boy is he in for it
There are a lot of people right now who haven’t the vision to see what kind of device the iPad is. There are guys like Gomes here, and there are those who think it’s an oversize iPod Touch or iPhone. The iPad is something else. It takes the few activities ordinary peasants use their hulking pcs for and puts them in hand, anywhere in the house or beyond, obliterating the need for a computer except for those who actually need one. Plus, it replaces those paper-wasting things like books, magazines, and newspapers, and then lets you watch tv and movies, access internet resources, and manage your photo/video/music collections. Sometimes you want to take it along; but frequently the iPhone is the best device for that. The iPad will fundamentally change the look and activity of modern life, very much for the better.
“U will hear a ton of stories of the iPad hitting cement as people awkwardly try to balance it on their laps. It’s slippery as hell. Mark my words. Buy the case!”
Probably not any more than you hear about people and their iphones being dropped.
In any case i’m sure someone will design an iTether to keep it from falling.
How come all these guys still have jobs after they get it wrong time after time after time after time? Huh? Eh? Answer me that? Eh? How Come???
Why doesn’t someone take this guy out and have him scraped? and I do mean “scraped”!
Exactly how am I supposed to drive this horseless carriage without reins and a whip? I doesn’t make any sense.
Common Clay. Salt of the Earth. You know………
I just read that full article, though I was inclined to stop when I got to this sentence regarding the requirements of carrying tech besides a cell phone, or a watch –
“The mental effort, though, is not small.”
That should say everything about the mental capacity of Mr Gomes!
@Swing Geezer
“How come theseguys still have jobs…?”
Because sites like MDN keep linking to them!!
It’s the “round peg/square hole” mode; the iPad is a completely new product, but instead of evaluating it like that, too many “anal-ysts” are evaluating it like they would a netbook when it’s much more than that.
And @iMaki, the iPad’s not much larger (and quite a bit thinner/lighter) than a standard hardback book, and people carry those with them all the time. And with the iPad you’re not just limited to one book at a time.
Apple Bash=Free Ink! Most of these guys are clowns….running iWork even a lite version is fairly impressive. How many times do you talk to people that think of themselves as POWER users…when in reality they barely can run their email program.
We thought my dad was dying. My son flew up from Texas, my sister from Wisconson. The nurse came into the hospital room and laughed. I looked up and saw the object of her humor; the three of us hunched over our laptops working. Sister with her idiotic baby laptop from HP; the Son with his Dell or whatever; me with my MacBook pro. And I thought, never again, if I ever have to do this again it will be with an iPad, in the folder case thing; no harder to carry around than a yellow lined pad in a holder, something I’ve done for years.
Dad recovered, he’s 86 years old and can’t wait to buy his iPad. Pretty sure he’d brand the tool who wrote this piece a fool.
If this thing takes off, as I suspect, it could be the beginning of the end of the pc market as we know it. Since Apple has over 90% market share of the over $1k market and the under $1k market has razor thin margins, the iPad could suck all the air out of it, leaving businesses the only major customers. I doubt if they can come up with any credible competition.
Even if Pad sales hit the level that MDN insists they will (more than any prediction anywhere) there still will be those who wonder what the fuss is all about – a new glitzy gadget that does a lot of stuff that a lot of people enjoy. Magical and revolutionary.
So what?
@large w/fries
It’s the end of the PC as we know it.
It’s the end of the PC as we know it … and I feel fine.
Good one about that dumbass Tiger Woods. The Swedish golddigger will have to find another sugar daddy. NBA maybe?
Lee Gomes was correct – the majority of people obsess on specs.
MDN was correct who don’t know how to buy a computer obsess on specs.
For better or worse, the majority does not know how to buy a computer.
Face it, technically literate folks like those who read MDN are a small minority; Gomes addresses the general case, as do most journalists.
Gomes sounds like my eldest son. The one who switched to a PC over a decade ago for “work reasons”. My son is smart and well-informed, but he just doesn’t GET it. He keeps forgetting significant details, like … this PC, or card, or whatever, was a freebie cast-off from a previous contract assignment. His one inarguable point is that Windows runs Visio – and he needs to be able to run that.
My son will look at various specs and see that ‘this’ has, oh, the best telephoto lens so it must be the best camera. Then he wants to know why I didn’t spend an extra $100 to get THAT one, and I point out a) this takes better pictures, b) this has a better wide angle c) this is more compact d) this has the flash in a better place and e) this cost $100 less.
Gomes is focusing on the easy details, forgetting the larger picture. DOH ! ! !
“People about to buy a computer tend to fixate on speeds and feeds–megahertz, megabytes, megapixels.”
No they don’t. Most people don’t have any idea what any of those are. It’s the sales people who fixate on these things. Most computer sales people are the geeks that dwell on those things. And most articles about the subject are written by other geeks that do the same.
People about to buy a computer tend to fixate on something they’ve seen someone else using or doing, plain and simple. They don’t walk into a store with a list of technical attributes, nor do they care about any of that. None of that should matter anyway. What should matter is that it works well and the person is capable of getting things done and enjoy the experience.
Funny enough, I think Lee’s three questions are pretty good for decision-making process. But my conclusions are different: it’s light and easy to carry, it turns on immediately, you touch the screen to tell it what to do. His lack of vision is his weakness.
Do a Google search for reviews of the original iPhone. I hadn’t realized how much the reviewers hated it because it was missing features. They laughed and said that Apple would be lucky if they sold 1 million of them. It just goes to show that people cannot possible see “the Big Picture” and they only focus on what it can’t do… small brained people suck!!!
I had bought a netbook around 6 months ago since I didn’t like taking my 15″ MBP around. It’s been the worst purchase yet. Even though it’s Intel based, their Moblin OS doesn’t support the chipset. How stupid is that?? I’m sure the iPad experience will be MUCH better than that of NetBooks
I giggle a little everytime someone complains about lack of a physical keyboard. It never ceases to amaze me.
qka, it is hard work learning enough about a complex technology to figure out which specs are most important. The manufacturers won’t tell you. They’ll give you the specs that make their product look goood! and conveniently leave out those that make their product look second rate. They may even pay someone to tout their product or make rude comments about someone else’s. Like the free-floating argument that OS X is malware free because of tiny market share. Security via Obscurity is so much garbage, proven by beta testers of the latest versions of Windows getting compromised with a smaller number out there. For a shorter period of time.
Most people will tend to avoid Hard Work unless they get value from it. Maybe even then. Even us, we who love our Macs. And our numbers are growing.
It comes with a 140000 “features”. Isn’t that enough?
Ah, yes. Lee Gomes. The same Lee Gomes who, when working for the Wall Street Journal in the 1990s, went on a personal crusade to destroy Apple. In article after article, Gomes slammed Apple when the company was on its knees. I recall writing Guy Kawasaki, then publisher of the EvangeList, about this. His response was guarded, but he finished his reply by cautiously saying there was more to this than it appeared on the surface.
My conclusion was that Gomes was taking orders directly from Redmond, Washington, as an operative in a negative PR campaign to drive a final stake through the heart of Apple. Granted, the company (before the return of Steve Jobs – it was during the Spindler era) was doing itself no favors. But the incessant stream of negative articles was no accident. Gomes clearly had a wind at his back.
Lee Gomes is not just a hack. He is far worse than that. The words I would use to describe him are unprintable. Anything we can do to discredit and undermine this scumbag should be undertaken. It’s open season, boys. Time to light up the chainsaws.
WARNING: Morons on the loose!
The idiot assumes the iPad is the only computer you’ll own. It’s not a laptop, and that’s the whole point.
As for netbooks, I bought my dad one for Christmas because he travels a lot with his job and had been wanting a way to keep track of family via internet/e-mail.
I almost got him an iPod touch but then worried he’d have trouble with it. I wish I’d gone with my original instinct because that netbook is nothing but trouble (and it wasn’t the cheapest one out there, either).
It’s micro trackpad is not precise. It’s keyboard is so cramped it’s uncomfortable to use for any length of time. And he’s had fairly frequent crashes. The thing runs XP, and I have no doubt it’s already riddled with virus/malware despite its “anti-virus” processor cycle stealing software.
So, long story short. Computing bliss is what I will be enjoying: 24-inch iMac at work, 13 inch Macbook at home (aging very well, by the way) a touch for extreme portability and an iPad for casual web surfing and travel (plus myriad things I can’t even foresee).
You’ll notice no iPhone mentioned. Well, I live in a GSM blackout area, so it’s not for lack of want.
But… it’s a “magical and revolutionary” device!
How did that description get through marketing? Magical? Really? It must be the Disney ties….
I stopped reading when he tried to pretend that “speeds and feeds”, a term of art from the machining industry, has eff-all to do with general-purpose computing.
If you want to understand why the iPad is so important, you need only look at this article from Great Britain’s Financial Times:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/ae102a9a-2765-11df-b0f1-00144feabdc0.html
It’s about Trinity Mirror, the parent company of a number of British newspapers. It’s a reflection of the troubles suffered by newspapers and publications across the globe, including Forbes, the publication for which Lee Gomes is affiliated. If ever there was a need for a device such as the iPad, it’s now. But Gomes can’t comprehend that. Wait ’till he finds himself pink-slipped and made redundant.
@large w/fries,
You said: “…the iPad could suck all the air out of it, leaving businesses the only major customers.”
I’d love to agree with you, but can’t. From working in the defense industry, I can assure you that the U.S. Gov’t/DoD is the largest consumer of Windows PC’s in the world. That’s not about to change anytime soon, regardless of the how well the iPad does.
I don’t think there are very many Mac users out there who understand what a lock-in Microsoft has in the defense industry. A few successes for Apple out there (U.S. Army using Macs for it’s website to deter hackers, a small demo competition for specialized iPhone apps) will not make a significant difference in the prevailing attitude inside our outside the Pentagon. Steve Ballmer has wrapped the defense industry around his little pinky so well, he knows he can have multiple Microsoft Zune & Vista failures but still command an overwhelming monopoly.
If I’m wrong, will someone please post some examples of large-scale computing projects today that do not use Microsoft Windows & associated technologies (you know, Access, C#, .Net)? There’d better be several hundred before we can think about a realistic change away from Microsoft.
Lest anyone think that I’m in favor of this state of affairs, be assured that I hate it. I especially hate that I feel so powerless to do anything about it. Our IT department sounds like Zune Tang (not that they do a poor job, in fact they do a fine job keeping things running, all things considered). Our managements’ attitude is that the IT dep’t can have it’s way so long as it keeps the company out of trouble with our customers or the law. I’m using a Dull Persperon running XP that needs to be rebooted every week at a minimum because it is XP and and gets lost running all the crap that has to be here to protect the company.
I’ve seriously thought that perhaps to save Apple back in 1997, the deal with the devil that Steve had to make to keep from being crushed by MS was to stay out of defense & enterprise.
question 4- if you are listening to someone who poses 3 imponderable questions that sound like they have been been translated through Babelfish, never ever listen to his/her buying advice or your next car might just be an Edsel.
I’m trying to be opened minded. I love my iPhone I love my iMac. I was not sure about a tablet even before ipad was presented. I believe that not having a physical key board is good. However I expected to see an eye opening advance in voice tech. Dragon dictate built in or something. If I buy one it will be for home or Vacation.
hmm, one of the top three, instant on. Which is so important to get a top three mention but the iPad hardly gets credit for. Of course, I’ve been using the instant wake from sleep mode on my Macs for a decade, so I think my grandchildren will miss out on those stories.
Two, lack a capability and disc drive. This one has me confused, what exactly is the 16/32/64GB specification stating if not local device storage. Am I buying 16GB of cloud storage? What exactly can I do on a netbook that I can’t do on an iPad. Watch movies? NO. Edit documents? NO. Play games? NO. Surf MDN? NO. Ok, so maybe I can’t play some sh**ty flash game and I have to play a different game from the app store. Oh the humanity!
No physical keyboard. Really, we are going there? Again? Not to mention the availability of physical keyboards announced at launch if you were really so inclined.
I did get a laugh at the MDN take about going back to publishing lists. Unfortunately, MDN should examine its own business model of publishing lists of articles. Good stuff!
It’s a shame that this clueless, stuck inside a box, and unable to grasp major shifts in how Apple has brought the future of computing to the masses thinks just like the typical corporate IT/CIO Windows drone. The shame is that he has the ability to spout his nonsense on Forbes. What a shame on Forbes.
“megahertz, megabytes”?? When was the last time this guy bought a computer? 1995? And honestly, the “speed n’ space” thing is over now, has been for years. Computers are now more than fast and spacious enough for any consumer, and everyone knows it.
——RM
Actually, Apple needs people like Gomes.
He keeps expectations from skyrocketing so when the iPad is released, the column writers and analyst can all be SHOCKED by its success.
The fact that Gomes is willing to sacrifice himself and his reputation for Apple by looking stupid is commendable.
Tsk, tsk, tsk, dissing Lee Gomes like this! Why, he’s a San Francisco “tech writer” who used to write the “Tech Talk” column for the WSJ. He must know what he’s talking about.
Oh, wait, now I remember… he was a fatuous twit back then, too.
If Lee buys a computer thinking in MHz and MB he’s living in1994.
The author is as stupid as Enderle. Remember his famous line that the iMac is dangerous because it could easily tip over during an earthquake. These two idiots must go to the same club.
The best most accurate comment goes to Michael.
By Lee’s 3-question non-sense, my GF doesn’t fit the bill either!
Can’t carry her everywhere
I can turn her on..whew
Telling her what to do is signing a death wish 😀