Like the Segway, the iPad fell victim to unofficial, unverified rumor mongering and bullshit hype. The ipad has a forward facing camera for videoconferencing. The ipad has a revolutionary input mechanism. The ipad cures rabies.

At the end of the day, fanboys will say “but none of that was confirmed!” … but alas, hype is hype, whether official or unofficial. Apple is a big boy, and ultimately responsible for their own rep, for better or for worse. Same with the Segway. And note: just like the segway, there were plenty of nerds who still loved it when it finally debuted. I’m not trying to claim the iPad isn’t lovable. Only that it didn’t live up to it’s rumored reputation.

So this time, there wasn’t a fanboy in the house who could legitimately claim they were blown away. Everything Apple showed us was fine. It was good. It just *didn’t match the hype*.

You know when a movie is crap, the trailer shows reaction shots of the audience and supposed exit interviews, and not the film itself. This is what Apple showed us in their video — a collage of people trying to convince us as to how good this thing was, as if the product couldn’t stand for itself. It smacked of a Wayans Brothers film trailer.

That’s not to say the iPad won’t be a success. Im only saying it’s launch goes down in history as one of Apple’s most botched. This time, an apple product will truly live or die based on it’s qualities, rather than it’s hype. Because in my mind, the hype failed.

*As of today there is no proof that it CANT cure rabies.

At least HP proves that a combination touchscreen/digitizer can be made affordable. If I had to guess, I’d say the reason the iPad doesn’t have a digitizer is because of the cost and the size of the device. Jobs is all about making consumer electronics that are like appliances, not computers, so having an iPad that is absolutely as thin as it can possibly be is important. And if the opening price had been closer to $1000 instead of $700, then people would’ve written off the iPad completely.

I’m still hoping that a future version includes a digitizer. Or that I win the lottery and can rationalize buying both.

I still do not feel the appeal of the iPad (Whose name I also don’t understand. It’s specifically NOT like a pad of paper, so why give it that name? It’s … almost like they knew people would make fun of the name, generating free publicity …), but at least I have a better understanding of why other people are excited. I think. I just don’t get why they don’t make it more artist-friendly. It’s not just art students who would love to use it; I’ve shown my Portege tablet to traditional artists who were all really intrigued by it. They’d tried things like the wacom tablets and just couldn’t get used to drawing on one thing and seeing the drawing on something else, and the cintiq tablets aren’t just expensive, they’re just as heavy as a laptop. For them, a laptop they could also use as a sketchbook would be a necessity.