For the record, we did shoehorn a few words into Steve-o’s mouth to make this comic work, but Forrest really does do most of his paid work in Flash and is thus disheartened by Apple’s apparent allergy to it.
I probably don’t have much discussion on the iPad to offer that hasn’t already disintegrated within the inexorable churning of media covering the device since months before it’s announcement, but I’m going to try anyway.
It should be obvious to anyone that the device doesn’t bring anything to the functionality table that the iPhone and a number of other devices haven’t already. It browses the web, it plays movies, and it can read, even write email. The sweet taste of innovation is entirely absent from these morsels. I would argue, however, that offering a device powered by a larger version of the iPhone’s touch screen does have some intrinsic value.
You see, I have always maintained that the most important components of a car are the tires. The rubber on the wheel is the last stop for anything the engine, suspension, chassis, or driver has done before it hits the road and causes the car to move. Changing the tire composition or tread on a car, even slightly, has drastic and immediate consequences to all measures of performance from acceleration to lateral grip to fuel efficiency. Much the same way, I consider the interface of a computer to be its most essential component. No processor, no matter how powerful, will compensate for a blurry screen and an unresponsive mouse.
So what I see in the iPad is everything that made the iPhone such a great device, specifically an incredibly intuitive and flexible input method, with a larger canvas for output. Just as switching to a slightly deeper tread on your winter tires dramatically improves your driving experience, I really do believe that having the larger touch screen on the iPad will make doing all those things we can do with our notebooks and phones surprisingly more accessible.
It’s also the closest anyone has ever gotten to selling me a PADD.
Ja.