Wired: Steve's six sneakiest statements

I fail to see how the Ipad is in any way the best implementation of the tablet computer. 500 dollars for a crippled huge iphone? 800 if you want something even close to useful, and on top of that it doesn't (and won't according to Steveo) support flash? This is what they have been refining and developing for, ahem, YEARS!?

So lets get real, a net book: larger hard drive, full operating system, and cheaper. The ipad, expensive, a lack luster os and limited use.

I've had people tell me they want this thing cause it is "pretty". Really? Is this what the American public has come to? Purchasing something over priced and virtually useless because it has a shiny screen?

Apple is awesome, they do good work. I love my Macbook Pro, but they are in no way perfect. They seem to be taking steps back and labeling them as steps forward. You certainly can SAY something is magical, or genius, or what have you, but that doesn't make it so.

everyone is entitled to their opinion, including jordan. however the constant existence of the cynicism in his comments makes me question if he derives any pleasure in the products he owns.

Mentalsticks: this would only be true and valuable if the crux of his arguments were not essentially, as far as an Apple tablet is concerned, the following:

`I want an Apple tablet based on a Desktop OS with touch bolted on...even tho these clearly have been demonstrated to be utter failures and ultimately prove to be more complex than simple. Further, I want a device that is designed to be used at a shallow angle with a camera in front of it that would basically make me look distorted in a video chat...while pointing up my nose...as this is really attractive. Nevermind the data that shows most people do not use the camera in their Macbooks more than twice/month on average after the first 30 days of oooo nifty!...(if that)I have researched these things and know better.`

To me, his arguments are really no different than the 68K-PowerPC, Classic-Mac OS X and PPC-Intel ones. They smack of a lack of giving credit to people that have done forward-looking research. You get to led when you figure out where stuff is going...or decide it and make it happen.

The Cocoa Touch computing concept is clearly *not* a failure so why making more powerful hardware with a more versatile revision of this OS on top of it would be a losing proposition is a laughable notion, at best.

-K

I have a question for you Jordan:

What exactly do you hope to accomplish from your endless pissing and moaning?

Here is something for you to think about, seeing that you DO NOT head R&D at a multi-billion dollar multi-national and seem to think you know something that folks a whole lot smarter than you do do not:

1. The iPad is not going to fail, regardless of how badly you wish it to so that Apple will acknowledge this `mistake` and make a `real` Mac OS X Desktop-based tablet.

I assure you, this is never, ever going to happen, for a buttload of *well-understood technical reasons*. Mac OS X as it exists will never have touch bolted onto it. Apple will change the UI first. Let it go.

2. Alan Kay (look him up) called this one. People that bet against Alan Kay bet wrong.

3. Modern computers and OS implementations are complicated to an estimated 80%-95% percent of the population that do not use computers as an integral part of their job. Even Mac OS X. It appears someone checked into this years ago and worked out an...alternate...solution.

4. The platform on which the iPad is built is more powerful than an iPod touch, for several reason, on different levels due to technical as well as actual implementation differences.

Understand these 4 things...and just be ready to `quit Apple` or whatever it is you people do (I remember the whiners when they went to PowerPC...OS X...then to Intel...it is always the same...) when you realize that it isnt about what you wanted...but what everyone else did.

Computing is changing to a direct-manipulation document-centric paradigm. By 2020 the notion of WIMP UIs will be about as quaint and dated as a shell as the *primary, default* way a computing device works...and it doesnt matter if you like it or not.

Apple, leading the industry, will have enough folks trained and enough mindshare in place that when the two OS paradigms do merge, it wont even matter anyway.

-K

I dreamed I saw Steve Jobs crying with his daughter and son because Phil Schiller got so sick he almost died, and Tim Cook was the guy who was running the company in light of the events, also he always called Jobs on saturdays to make him and his family feel better over Schiller's bad health condition .. Eventually Jobs' old daughter runs the company even though her younger brother refused that notion .. I swear that was my dream from yesterday & I woke up in cold sweat .. Am I a fortune teller or what?!

hahaha does this mean that we're gonna see some "Apple Flash"? Adobe's work is going to fail, Apple's gonna be "amazing"

Really annoying conspiracy theory stuff here. Surely it's more like a combination of R & D and feeling out where they can make a truly significant contribution.

Yeah, things change, and decisions get modified as resources improve -- like ummm, battery technology, chipsets and processors, etc.

He quotes a 2003 interview where Jobs says Apple has decided tablets were going nowhere?!? A quote from over 6 years ago when our high mobile tech was a Treo?!?

Well, back then tablets really weren't going anywhere, and actually in their current form they STILL aren't. The current tablet form factor makes very little profit and is not revolutionary in almost any way.

Biding time, investing in R & D, feeling out the market, and changing strategies is 'misdirection'? Saying that Jobs misdirected for a product 6 years down the line is laughable, and Jobs probably IS laughing when he reads stuff like this.

Sorry Brian, but probably the one guiltiest of 'misdirection' is you!

If that's true... Where's Blu-ray? ..."World of hurt"...

@David So let's chase down your example.

What Steve implied was that Apple wasn't going to release a Kindle clone. And they didn't. In hindsight, you can see how Apple obviously had a bigger vision than what was delivered in the Kindle, Nook, Sony Reader, etc. When he said that people don't read anymore he implied (with insider info) that Apple's vision of a successful device would be *far* more than a book reader. But you and others (without insider info) assumed it meant that Apple wasn't interested in that space. The difference is that you brought your assumptions with you, and Apple had a much different (and far better) focus than you gave them credit for.

Don't feel bad, it happens to so-called Apple pundits all the time.

Apple is rarely - very rarely the innovator. They are normally the fast follower that looks at a market, figures out what the innovator missed, and then comes out with something that drives at a profitable niche. The approach is older than prostitution :)