The iPad makes julienne fries

My favourite review of the new iPad tablet is by Cory Doctorow entitled Why I won't buy  an iPad (and don't think you should either). His first point is the most important and all his subsequent arguments reinforce it: Incumbents made bad revolutionaries. Apple has essentially modified the iPod a bit to lock more consumers into a restrictive marketplace of content and applications.

My favourite quote in Doctorow's article is in fact a reference to William Gibson's description of a "consumer" as "something the size of a baby hippo, the color of a week-old boiled potato, that lives by itself, in the dark, in a double-wide on the outskirts of Topeka. It's covered with eyes and it sweats constantly. The sweat runs into those eyes and makes them sting. It has no mouth... no genitals, and can only express its mute extremes of murderous rage and infantile desire by changing the channels on a universal remote."

The iPad is, in fact, not a product designed with consumers in mind, but designed to maximize the profits of corporate content providers. This is why there has been so much positive buzz about this product in the traditional media.

You know when something is fishy when someone reports that the lack of multitasking is a feature so that the user can concentrate on one thing at a time. Another article tried to claim that writing on an iPad is practical except he had to use an external bluetooth keyboard and a desktop PC to complete the experiment.

This is not a computer for people, its a product for sweaty potatoes.