This is the iPad-is-wrong rebuttal that I wish I’d written.
I’m not so sure that a touchscreen MacBook is really what you want. It may be what you think you want. But now’s the time in this piece where I dig out the ol’ Henry Ford quote about what people think they want. “If I’d asked my customers what they wanted, they’d have said a faster horse.”
…
What we want from our technology, in its most elemental form, is to make our thoughts happen. Sure, it’s still very much sci-fi in 2010, but what every calculating machine and telephone and computer and phonograph and light bulb and hammer and every tool ever invented is about at its core is our desire, our evolutionary imperative to control our environment at our will. And we’re getting closer and closer to that happening.
…
With the introduction of the product’s name, I resisted and I resisted hard. I climbed on my self-publishing platform and I railed against the name. “Apple, you fucked up,” I declared, brandishing a little bullshit linguistics. And it’s not til now, 10 days later, that I realize that I’d readily fallen into the trap I’m usually conscientious in avoiding. In hindsight, my response was reactionary and mean-spirited. Now, 10 days out, when I see or hear or think the word “iPad”, I see the Apple tablet computer…
…
This level of maturity of the hardware allows for unfathomable freedom in software.
…
It’s a piece of glass. The software is the thing. Yes, it’s in a pretty case. Like all Apple products, the case is the Trojan horse.
Yes. Exactly.