I like my netbook a lot, and really wasn’t getting all that excited about the iPad. I had a bit of a lightbulb moment when I realized that I wasn’t that excited because if I want an ultraportable wireless device, I want something that’s good for content creation, not something that’s only good for content consumption.
Now, Stephen Fry wrote a glowing piece on the iPad, admitting he was an Apple fanboy and all that smack.
I was surprised that he was that excited about the thing, to be frank with you. The man’s an actor, a writer and what have you. He creates a lot more content than I do, just sayin’, ‘Course, he also makes a lot more money than I do, so dropping $600 on something to view content probably doesn’t seem as absurd as it would for me[1]. If I made as much money as Mr. Fry, possibly I’d own an iPad right now.
But I doubt it. Even the fact that you can read books on it wouldn’t quite be enough for me. Certainly, I’d own it over a Kindle. Do I read Kindle-enabled books? Yep, all the time. I read ‘em on the PC software on my netbook. Call me the Alton Brown of technology, but I’m not a big fan of a single-task device unless it’s really cheap or so astoundingly good at doing something I find necessary that I’m willing to own a single-task device. I mean, even my MP3 player[2] doubles as my alarm clock!
I do think there’s a strong possibility that the demand for something cool for content consumption will kill off the demand for a small cheap computer, though. And that rather depresses me, as the netbook was the computer I’d been waiting for since I was in my teens.
[1] Since dropping $600 solely to view content does seem absurd to me, I suppose that it’s obvious I still own a television that’s a CRT, too.
[2] Yes, it’s an iPod. 2nd gen Nano, in fact.