At this point, the people left reading this crappy rag for Twitter digests, nostalgia and bloody-minded loyalty (Hi, Dad!) know how I feel about Apple products, so the fact that I’m gonna go on a short tear about the iPad should only surprise Steve Jobs, who’s probably too busy having his feet anointed with the joyful tears of pudgy geek girls in librarian glasses to even notice.
I get what Steve’s trying to do here: he’s looking out his window and seeing a world of fragmented devices – you got your iPhone for general communications and low-powered applications, your iPod for music and tiny video playback, and your Kindle / Nook for reading eBooks and for not giving any money whatsoever to Mr. Steve Jobs, which makes him hiss balefully from the darkness and endure the discomfort of dragging his vestigial tail behind him as he limps into the light for another grateful geek girl upon which to suckle (Their tears are delicious, and they only addle the brain just enough to name new technology after feminine hygiene products!)
Not only that, he’s seeing a world where some functionality people want is crammed into devices that are wholly inappropriate for delivering it. After all, who wants to eventually watch Avatar on a 2 inch screen? And have you ever tried to enjoy porn on playback that small that size? Who needs the embarrasment of realizing you just painted the inside of a mens’ room stall door to a video of the eruption of Mt. Saint Helens (“Damn, that’s a money shot! Big Ron must’ve been eating a lot of bananas! That is… wait, is that… oh no too late DERRRRP”)?
So on paper, something like the iPad makes complete and total sense: one device that does everything! It holds your MP3s, makes watching videos easier, lets you read eBooks, and makes surfing the net simpler! Except that multitasking isn’t a zero-sum game, and the “Imagineer” who came up with the iPhone should fucking know that. Yeah, the iPad can play your music for you, which is great… until you want to go jogging, and you have to duct-tape the pig to your back like you’re going to use it to kill Hans Gruber.
You can read books on it… provided you don’t mind staring at a lit phosphorescent screen for so long that your concept of “driving at night” will be reduced to what an ambulance driver does while you lie in the back screaming that you can still read Twilight with your eyes closed. And your porn will be crystal clear and unambiguous… meaning that, thanks to screen burn, you’re never gonna be more than one careless night away from owning an $800 permanent outline of Ron Jeremy’s wang that you’ll never be able to explain away (“Uh, that’s Mt. Saint Helens… no, I don’t know what those curly trees are at the base… that? That’s, uh… Herpes Rock.”).
On top of it all, the one thing it doesn’t do is make phone calls, meaning you still need to give Big Steve cash for an iPhone… although a Russian hacker buddy of mine tells me that the iPad API contains references to iPhone functionality, meaning that it might act as a phone someday. Awesome! So not only will you be able to chuck the iPhone, but after your first long phone call with that big screen next to your face, you’ll spend the rest of your days haunted by the succulent smell of Pakistani Brain Maghaz!
So yup; the iPad is basically a computer that does it all… but it can only do one thing at a time, making it the shittiest computer designed in the 21st Century. The iPad cannot multitask, which makes it a worse computer than my Commodore 128, which my parents bought me at a fucking toy store. Twenty-three years ago.
No multitasking means that if you’re reading a book you can’t listen to music, and if you’re watching a movie you can’t surf the net. Because God knows that no one would want to listen to music while they’re reading, and it’s certainly not like if I’m watching porn without a backup clip of midget anal on deck while listening to my mash-up of Flight of The Valkyries and the theme to Stallone’s Over The Top that I can’t come anymore.
Don’t get me wrong: a device the size of a trade paperback book that can play movies and music and work as a computer appeals to me. That’s why I bought one three years ago for $100 cheaper than Steve-O’s WonderChunk. Sure, the iPad’s 10-hour battery life is more attractive, but without multitasking for tunes, that just means an extra month in the burn unit thanks to the extra 7 1/2 hours of fruitlessly wanking away layers of skin.
I have no doubt that the iPad will be an actually useful product eventually, but first it needs to go through Steve’s sales cycle, which we saw in full-on action during the two-year iPhone rollout: first, sell a crippled prototype to the millions of geek girls in librarian glasses. Then, sell a slightly better (and slightly cheaper) version to the fucking hipsters who want to be seen with an Apple logo but don’t make early-adopter money hustling lattes (And as a bonus, the geeks’ll line up and mutter, “Style, design and function! God bless Steve Jobs” to mask the sound of their being fleeced a second time).
Finally, in, say, 2012, Steve’ll announce a version that multitasks, acts as a phone, and has free Internet access to attract the rest of us… who will have since figured out that in 2011, Google created a version that does all that, farmed the hardware development out to the Chinese to build at pennies on Apple’s dollar, and passed the savings and the lack of embarrasment of having to stand with the hippies in line at a fucking Apple store on to us. Which will be okay, because by then Steve’ll be dropping hints about the next “life-changing” innovation from Apple.
And believe it or not, that one I probably will be looking forward to. Because based on how Steve’s looking today, I’m guessing it’ll be the iCureForCancer.
Course, if he’s swallowed too many grateful geek tears, he’ll be calling it the iDouche.
[tags]Apple iPad, Steve Jobs, dark humor, satire[/tags]
