Response
The Awl has the best comment yet on the iPad:
Still, I’m a little taken aback by the immediate and vocal lack of enthusiasm for the product. What does it lack? What was everyone hoping for that did not materialize? This is a very rough thought that I may or may not refine, so take it as such, but the iPad is a lot like Barack Obama: Everyone was able to project their own fantasies and aspirations on a product with which they were mostly unfamiliar, only to sour on it once they realized that it did not live up to their impossible expectations. Only with the iPad it took about seven minutes for the disappointment to set in. I don’t know what that says about our accelerated culture or how we confuse hype and excitement for the tangible realities of life, but it says something. I mean, probably. Like I said, I’m still trying to work it all out.
The disappointment thing is pretty amazing. The specs are pretty much exactly what everyone expected (minus a camera maybe) and yet the response seems to be that this device isn’t all that exciting (at least not yet). So what is it? Maybe we just don’t get enough real mystery any more …
Hi, I'm 
I think there’s a couple things at play here:
1) The name is a disappointment, and people were mocking it almost immediately (me included) — just Google “Jezebal iPad.”
2) People have incredibly high and unrealistic expectations, and they have no one to blame but themselves. Apple is great at building hype before a product launches and all they have to do is keep their mouths shut — Apple fans/evangelists do plenty of hyping on their own to create buzz.
3) Most importantly, we all know by know that technology is in a state of constant beta. We KNOW this isn’t the best iPad. We KNOW that probably 12 months from now there will be a new version, so with that reasoning we’re already EXPECTING the current iPad to be lacking SOMETHING, and people enjoy pointing out flaws (Ex: American Idol) just as much as recognizing achievements.
With that said, I think the iPad is a solid device, but I’d feel like I was throwing my money away when Apple will probably update a better version a year from now.
For me, the disappointment is stimming from two things:
In their own presentation and video where they state that the device had to do web, email, video, photos and so on better than both your iPhone and you Macbook – magical and revolutionary. I think they’ve failed in most of these points, as is summarized nicely on mashable.
What to me is the biggest turndown is the fact, that they have deliberately done so. It’s not the fact that the thing doesn’t have a camera or two, phone capability, GPS, at least one USB and HD-output, it’s the fact that they’d been easily able to include all these, but they don’t want you to have it.
They want you to consume on it. If you want to watch a movie on your TV, buy our Apple TV. You want to make a picture? Use our iPhone. Would like to make a video chat with mom? Use our Macbook.
I assume this concept will work out fine and they’ll continue to make a fortune out of it, but it doesn’t fit my philosophy of devices for the “age of unbundled media”.
This guy has an interesting POV I found on Tumblr this morning:
“This Is Why It’s Worth Learning About Advertising”
http://www.rinich.com/post/357307070/this-is-why-its-worth-learning-about-advertising
Noah, I think you answered your and the awl’s question in your own post. “The specs are pretty much exactly what everyone expected…” If everyone was able to accurately predict what this device would be, do, AND look like why should they be excited? We used up our excitement a year ago when the first “pretty accurate” depictions of this device came out. The only thing we didn’t know was the name, and, well… it sucks. There was no magic, no surprise, nothing new in the launch and that is why people are down on it.
or maybe marketing and media pros have gotten so good at building up hype that’s impossible for the actual thing (whether it be politician or product) to live up to it?
I was very excited all day jan 27 th till I finished watching the keynote that night. My disappointment was visceral and over the last week I have been probing to understand the underlying logic.
I’ve realized that I am disappointed because the ipad doesn’t really change anything much.
Let’s consider why ipod and iphone are great successes.
The ipod came along with itunes and solved a huge problem of finding inventory. Before which digital music for the most part was limited to people who knew how to rip songs and understood what bitrate was. With itunes it brought to the game something that never existed before.
The iphone was a phone – so we all expected it to do what a phone does – and it did what a phone did – but it came with a app platform like no other mobile platform. It established the app era. The iphone had an accelerometer. It blew people’s minds with how it could be used in apps. And the apps and crazy accelerometer were all leap years ahead of blackberry. It was a phone with a massive bonus.
The ipad, is a tablet. I assume a tablet to be a computer. That’s how my brain categorizes it. I expect it to be able to do what a basic computer can do and if it could do anything beyond that I would be blown. But it doesn’t.
It is a tocuscreen device. But we are already familiar with touchscreens. It has an accelerometer and gps. That doesn’t blow our mind anymore. It is just not as long a leap the ipod and the iphone took. And unlike google’s products that evolve through innumerable iterations, one expects apple products to take a long first leap.
Charlie Brooker from the Guardian tells it like it is…
http://is.gd/7FnMp