iPad v1: broken-by-design

Rumour today that the levels of buyers remorse and returns on the iPad are unusually high.

Another commentator has found obvious evidence that Apple have designed the iPad hardware and software to take a camera.

Apple’s obsessive need to control the iPad makes the workflow for word processing etc. on it all but impossible, a combination of the lack of a traditional file/desktop system and having to funnel everything through iTunes, when the rest of the world is learning to save to the internet.

Web browsing, as we know, is flawed for the average user because of the lack of Flash.  News now that Apple have banned the software functionality that would allow Flash game designers (think, Farmville) to easily convert their games to use via the App store on the iPad.  That’s right, we can’t have Flash games on iPad as Flash, and we can’t have Flash games ported to the App store, even if we are willing to pay for them. To recreate a successful Flash game as an iPad App, developers will have to rebuild games from scratch using Apple’s approved tools, a much more expensive (and unlikely) process.  This also forces the developers to buy a Mac computer.

In day to day use, early adopters of the iPad love the touch interface of the iPad, but complain that it is hard to find a role for the device that is not covered better by a laptop, netbook or smartphone, and that the iPad has “limitations everywhere”.

Why has Apple released such a flawed project? Greed. Apple expects to make 30% of iPad income from content sales.   Are Apple counting on anyone who buys the least expensive iPad ($500) to spend an additional $165 on Apps and content?  Then, in approximately a year, Apple will release an iPad with the camera that it had software and space for all along, in the happy expectation that the public will fork out an extra $500 for the latest one…

It is a business equivalent of Munchausen’s syndrome by proxy – creating problems so that the creator may then gain praise (sales) by solving them.  Missing the games Flash used to offer free on the web?  There’s an App for that! Bummed that your iPad doesn’t have a camera?  Buy our shiny new version 2!  These blatant, broken-by-design tricks are unworthy of the most admired tech company on the planet.

Purchasing advice: wait til they fix it, and use our petition to express your dissatisfaction! If you are having trouble with the iPad purchasing decision, here is a flow chart to help

Baron Munchausen underwater, vanquishing monsters of his own imagination.

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