“Sure, the iPad will sell a few million units to the Apple faithful, of whom there are many. Being very little else than an oversized iPod Touch, or an extra-large iPhone without the phone, iPads will appeal to the same people who already use the minuscule versions,” Bylund writes. “But there’s a flash flood of competing products coming up… Hewlett-Packard, for instance, promises to present a tablet of its own that has been in development for five years, looks similar to the sleek iPad design, and gives you the full experience of a larger computer. This one has a customized Microsoft Windows 7 operating system and full Flash support.”
Bylund writes, “The HP slate rocks an Intel Atom chip while the iPad runs on an ARM processor developed in-house by Apple… The iPad is a market-defining device, but not likely to remain a top choice in the market it created for very long. It’ll cannibalize iPod sales and sink in a sea of choices… In the end, given these shortcomings the iPad will join the Apple TV in the footnotes of Apple’s history.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Genius prognostication sometimes hides in strange places. Anders has quickly shown us one strange place that we can safely ignore. There must be some unwritten rule where each publication has to have at least one stupid anti-whatever-Apple’s-about-to-launch article in the database for some unknown reason. Whichever hack draws the short straw has to stick his byline on it. That’s really our best guess; people can’t really be that obtuse can they? Regardless, we’ve iCal’ed this article for future use.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “David E.” and “Luis E” for the heads up.]
I expect he said the same thing about the iPhone.
Yeah right….any buyers for the Brooklyn bridge?
Well, now we know who the Fool is…
Oh, yeah, because a “rockin'” Atom processor and Windows f****n’ 7 is sooooo much better than Apple’s custom A4 and the iPhone OS, which is, y’know, built around a touch interface.
Geezus, what a hit whore. The guy can’t actually believe what he wrote, can he? He can’t really be that stupid.
——RM
He doesn’t understand that it not just another tablet pc.
Sure and I believe in Father Christmas!
Wow. You really can’t make people see. An HP tablet running Windows 7 is the best he’s got? Man, they’re not even making it tough for Apple. There are people who do foolish things and then are people who are fools. This gentleman couldn’t have found a more aptly named employer.
Yeah, the guy contradicts himself in his own article:
“It’ll cannibalize iPod sales…” and “the iPad will sell a few million units to the Apple faithful”.
Apple still sells over 50 million iPods each year the last 3 years. To truly “cannibalize” sales, Apple would have to sell in excess of 5-10 million per year. Does this guy even read what he wirtes?
There’s no denying that much of this evaluation is widespread. The challenge for Apple will be to attract customers beyond the faithful to iPad. And, if there are alternatives, such as the HP model discussed here that are actual computers (sorry Windows nonetheless) and not simply a larger version of touch, that’s going to be an even greater challenge.
And, MDN’s iCal is getting very crowded on this matter.
It amazes me how the naysayers forget the X factor of Apple products — APPLE SOFTWARE!!! It can’t be duplicated and Windows will NEVER EVER quench the thirst of the masses!! Rather, they will choke on Windows all the way to the Apple store where the dark cloud will be lifted! It’s not the iPad! IT’S WHAT RUNS ON IT!! Why don’t they get it?!! O M G!!
So many tech writers on somebody’s payroll!
eeeeer…….. Everyone talked that same smack when the iPhone came to the market. These idiots never quite get it. It’s the software morons.
The hp slate may have a few things going for it. Like a decent sized hard drive, the ipad choices aren’t so great. Also the ability to install anything you want as opposed to a closed system where those decisions are made for you. The downside is that it runs windows and probably won’t be instant on and battery life will be crap.
I prefer apple products so I’ll end up with the ipad. One huge advantage the ipad has other than the apple magic is the iTunes/AppStore ecosystem. That’s a killer feature that can’t be matched by anyone no matter how hard they try.
A quick note about flash also. I use click2flash on my mac and I love it.
I was thinking how awesome it would be if apple bought click2flash and put it on the ipad iPhone and iPod touch. It would be an awesome solution and a welcome option for countless people. However I can live without flash but this would be a welcome feature and solution for me.
“”Sure, the iPad will sell a few million units to the Apple faithful, of whom there are many.”
You could substitute the words “iPod” or “iPhone” into that sentence in place of “iPad” and pretend it’s 2002 or 2007 all over again.
I did a trial subscription to the Motley Fool once, around 10 years ago. I didn’t care for a lot of what they said then; typical analysts giving conflicting advice based on the same poor data set and personal opinions. The worst part is, they are *still* spamming me with emails to subscribe, even though I’ve tried to get off their mailing list. This group is like a bad cold. They’re insufferable, confusing, and you have a devil of a time shaking them off. So at this point, I don’t even try anymore; I just have their emails shunted off to the junk folder automatically. I just have to empty the junk folder periodically. Otherwise, they are dead to me.
Who is the patron saint of “press tech experts”? Wile E. Coyote is my guess.
I still hope to see apple do something like an “ipad pro”
that would be somewhere in between the iPhone os and osx.
I think there is a sweetspot in the middle there somewhere and would really love to see apple find it.
Every talking point, straight off the memo. Incredible.
The problem with dolts like this is they live in a vacuum, where they don’t read all the other articles that other dolts with talking-point lists have already written.
No matter.
Everything is proceeding as I have foreseen.
@ Stephen
Back off, he’s my cousin.
@LordRobin… I know many “analysts” and believe me they really are that stupid… Not all of them, but if you dig into the background of these people you find that they have absolutely no business writing about technology, finance or anything for that matter. Most of them were the bottom of their class at some small liberal arts college and can barely form a complete sentence. You should see the unedited copy… scary shit. Enderle is the poster-child for this group of morons.
@iMaki — you are so right on that point. It is the software. Who wants a modified Windows OS to work with touch or an iPhone OS built around touch. Plus, people will load HP’s Slate Device with whatever software they want but it won’t work very well because its not built for touch. I’m surprised no one here hasn’t mentioned the fact that HP’s device only has a 3 1/2 hour battery life — which still remains to be tested.
The way analysts like the Motley Fool is to write a bunch of wildly conflicting “alerts”; ones that take opposed views. Then whichever way the market eventually goes, they can show quotes from their previous writings that show that they predicted the eventuality. They look like miracle prognosticators. Very few “fools” pore over the complete set of writings of these guys to learn how they work. These guys are totally unaccountable for their idiocy unless someone like MDN iCals them.
@kevin
have had the same experience and did the same thing!
“Another Hit whore iCal’d”
Frankly, I stopped reading after ‘Apple faithful’.