How the "pundits" paid for my iPad...
I make my living as a technologist and while I own of plenty of Apple products, they are in the minority compared to the Wintel and Linux gear I own. My point here is that I am hardly a Apple fanboy and if you get past the fanaticism and look at Apple and the adoption of its products from a historical perspective, there is a clear and definitive pattern.
Harry Truman once remarked, "The only thing new in the world is the history you don't know" and he could not have been more correct than about the technology sector. The day the iPad was announced, I was surprised by the lukewarm reception of the iPad by the press, analysts, and industry pundits. I watched as Apple's per share price dropped 7.5% in the 48 hours after the iPad announcement. I had long decided that the iPad might very well be the ideal replacement for my Sony Reader, and since i wanted the 3G version, I decided to buy some Apple shares following the announcement and hold them through the launch of the 3G version.
I'm not a Gordon Gekko wannabe, but what was being said about the iPad simply did not, from a historical perspective, make sense. The real strength and some might say genius of Apple does not lie in great hardware (great design aside), but in the company's ability to craft an encompassing user experience within an ecosystem of delivery that they control.
Case in point, seven years ago, I bought what technically some would consider a better "iPad" that addressed most of the "complaints" that people voice about the iPad today. It was neither "gorgeous" or "magical", but it was quite practical. The NEC VersaLite Tablet PC was .5 thick, 2 lb. slate, ran WinXP, MS Office, IE and Flash with out a hitch. It had 3 USB ports, built in Ethernet, CF card reader, and WiFi - the only thing missing was a camera; and all for only $2,200.00. The NEC along with practically every other slate form factor Tablet PC wound up being discontinued. Like many Tablet PC owners, I've known for years what it's like to have "the web in your hands" albeit with discontinuity of an OS where touch was an after thought.
What makes the iPad transformative, unlike its Tablet PC counterparts, is that the iPad is is not engineered around an OS, but rather the OS was engineered around a touch centric experience that integrates seamlessly to a content delivery system that Apple controls, be it music, games, or books...it is brilliantly insidious.
So the JooJoo, Courier, and HP Slate and everyone else will be playing for second place for the time being because they don't offer a ecosystem that people have integrated into their lives.
No fanboy fanaticism here, just a fact.
Can Apple deliver a iPad with a camera and a mic? Of course, but Apple is a multibillion dollar company that has seen how people will rush to buy each iteration of a product, so why deliver a "feature complete product" now? News flash, technology does not drive Apple's product roadmap, revenue does. Can Apple use the rate of adoption of their products to promote fear, doubt, and uncertainty in compelling content providers, especially those in the antediluvian print industry to adopt HTML5? You bet your call dropping iPhone they can, especially when the sales numbers turn out to be bigger for the 3G version than they were for the WiFi only version. Despite the iPad being a luxury item that people don't really need, especially in a down economy, people are buying it because the perceived "experience" trumps the glaring shortcomings.
So in the end, thanks to all the detractors and pundits that missed sales projections by at least a factor of two. Apple finished up 23% today from where I bought it during the height of iPad pessimism, so my 3G version is now paid for several times over along with a bunch of apps, accessories and any other of future iterations in the foreseeable future.
