I am not buying a single accessory (not even a case) and I don't think the majority of people are either.
BTW, "you need to go to the gym" arguments are ridiculous. I can argue that if you need a MBA over a 17" MBP, you need to go to the gym. If you can't pick up a 27" iMac, you need to go the gym. Lighter is always better. That's why I have an iPod shuffle. Are you saying that an iPod nano is too heavy for me?
The iPod shuffle is good comparison, actually. It's a crippled and less functional version of bigger iPods. Even the biggest iPod fits in your pocket so, according to people here, it is not more portable. Yet they are still selling like hotcakes.
It can surf the web just fine. You are a little shortsighted. The future is flash free and Apple will accelerate the process. CBS and NBC has HTML5 versions of their site and ABC is following. Hulu and all the others are next. In six months, flash will be dead.
My friend, a photographer, has his whole website designed in flash. When he heard that the iPad won't display it, he immediately started redesigning it without flash. Most companies have this mindset.
First, I never made the "gym" argument, so go elsewhere with your quote and reply. Take your ridiculous BS and shove it. Honestly, do a little research and see who made the statement before you go accusing me of somehow offending you - maybe lighten up a bit. Quite honestly, you have downright pissed me off. How many times do you ever see me making personal attacks here or calling people names or shortsighted or whatever on these forums just because they don't agree with me?
People need to take a chill. We're not talking Communism vs. Democracy... nor Abortion vs. Pro life... We're debating MBA vs. iPad. It's not that important that we need to call people names. I get sick of the damn disgusting comments people make on these forums all the time when someone attacks their favorite Apple product or points out a truth about a product's shortcomings. We are discussing technology not people. I am not here to attack anybody, why the hell do people think they can go ahead and tell people off and call them names...
all over your furor to a damn comment I never made!
I already pre-ordered the iPad myself too, so don't go tell me that I don't get it or I don't know the facts of the product. I get the whole thing. I am looking forward to it, but it doesn't mean I am going to throw my MBA away. It also doesn't mean I cannot see where the iPad has serious limitations.
BTW, I think the long term success of the iPad will be amazing and bigger than the iPhone and iPod Touch. I see them being used for so many things not even thought of yet, and the App Store is where the real breakthroughs will come. It's the App Store that drives the innovation and app development then drives sales of the iPad. The App Store doesn't make Apple a bunch of money from its 30% cut of the app sales... the Apps make the innovation and uses of the products more specific to the end user. The desire to buy and use the apps actually drives sales of iPod Touches and iPhones unimaginably, and it will work even better with the iPad.
In the short-term, I find its lack of power and ability to surf the web troubling. In addition, I don't feel like many people will be happy when they learn they have to pay for every bit of content on their iPad and learn just how big the Flash loss truly is to their surfing. I don't believe most people are aware that Flash isn't just videos and banner ads. People just don't care now, but I think they will care when their iPad doesn't do what they really need it to do on occasion.
The bottom line is I like to argue both sides of the issue. I find a lot of the iPads inabilities easy to fix. In the long run HTML5 and h.264 will provide an acceptable solution - the problem is in the short term, Apple doesn't have any way to display the Flash content whether it's a video, navigation, an intro page or an advertisement. Flash isn't going to be removed from the Internet in six months - maybe five years (no not even then). Even then, why should we remove Flash unless it's actually inferior to a better solution. The recent Flash vs. HTML5 and h.264 testing results showed the same performance where both apps had access to hardware decoding. Flash isn't evil and neither is Adobe. But at least Apple can be happy knowing that Adobe doesn't beat it at web graphics player technologies - that's really how stupid this whole thing is. Jobs doesn't like Adobe and cannot accept Flash as a standard, so he is going to bring it down and call it crap software.
Do you realize how many small business, entrepreneur, and even text-based sites there are on the web that use Flash for an introduction, graphics, or even the navigation bar? Those are not going to be changed out in six months. At least 90% of them will not even know an iPad cannot view their site. How many went and removed Flash from their sites with the iPod Touch and iPhone releases? About as close to none as is possible. A year ago, 98% of all devices that connected to the Internet had Flash installed and where fully capable of displaying Flash content. The bottom line is it's going to cost a lot of money to rid the Internet of Flash. If I owned a small business, I wouldn't change my website for less than 1% of Internet users using iPad/iPhone... and probably wouldn't change anything unless I owned a tech based company with heavy Apple product users buying my products or services or sold products and services that worked with Apple products. Otherwise, there's very little reason to rid the Internet of Flash. It's not worth small business owners money to change out Flash. About the only thing I would do is remove Flash from homepage graphics and ensure navigation was acceptable. I definitely wouldn't remove video content being displayed by Flash. The bottom line is Flash is an accepted standard whether Apple likes it or not.
Please do not take it as a personal attack that I can argue against the iPad and in favor of the MBA when it comes to this debate. At the same time, I am buying an iPad, and already committed the money to Apple via a pre-order. I will have it day one, because I am an Apple fan. In addition, my AAPL pays for my Apple products. If I didn't own AAPL, I probably couldn't afford Apple products, LOL.
