J-P Teti

iPad followup post

First off, I’m kind of blown away by the response to this post. Mr. Patrick Rhone posted it on Minimal Mac, an honor itself, but a reader sent it to John Gruber and he actually linked to it. I’m kind of amazed. A few updates, clarifications, or interesting things:

1) This has taught me something interesting and rather sad: The vast majority of people on Hacker News are cruel and sarcastic. There are a few of them who were very nice (and several of them disagreed with me, which is fine), but while I was responding to them, I think I’m just going to ignore them. Haters gotta hate, and I’m not going to stop them.

2) To be very clear, Facebook is not installed on the iPhone by default and it is on some Android phones. But this article was about the iPad. And yes, it is true that you can do most of the things I’ve mentioned out of the box on any device with a browser, but my point is that it does all that and more to an average user.

3) I used the example of Sophie because it was a specific one, but it’s a general opinion. Adults I’ve talked to think that the iPad does more than a laptop and all of my friends do as well.

4) I do not in any way think that the iPad should replace all computers. I couldn’t use just my iPad for forever. But I’m thinking of the iPad as a sort of computer-training wheels. It’s problem free so you can explore, then move on to bigger things if neccesary and you are interested. The iPad opens technology up to more people who would otherwise avoid it at all costs. This is the sense in which it’s open.

5) It was an accident that I did not mention Microsoft and Nokia. I rather like Windows Phone 7 and it just slipped my mind when I wrote it.

Finally, my sincerest apologies to “shasta” on Hacker News for wasting your time with my article. It’s disheartening that you’d rather make fun of my obviously exaggerated title then actually explain why you hate my post so much.