The IT journalist's "iPad Year"
Oh dear, here we go. At the start of 2010, the IT journalists were telling us the iPad was a myth - a fairy story that parents tell their children at night, if they don't want them growing up into software managers. Then, throughout much of January and February, they told us that - yes, the iPad did exist - but it would be a flop. From about April onwards, neither of these things were true, and so they retreated into telling us that "consumers are all cunts, who like the wrong things."
Very enlightening.
I suppose it's a sort of existential angst at the thought of a world they used to be able to predict and control, slipping out of their grasp? Suddenly, the IT world is starting to be about things like Stephen Fry, and Facebook, and iPads - and all that other stuff, that they think people shouldn't be interested in.
Ten years ago, it was all so different. They could force their friends and relatives into buying a nice sit-up-and-beg tower PC, with nice copy of Microsoft Office on it (because you never know, auntie might want to convert her cooking recipes into a spreadsheet application, and you wouldn't want to get left behind, as the rest of the world puts their telephone contacts into an Access database). They could force these decisions on people, because "they knew best".
Now, they go around their relatives houses and start telling them to "stop liking Stephen Fry", or "stop using Wikipedia", and the relatives just crack open the whiskey and try to find a quiet corner to stick "Mad uncle Matthew" in, until he either shuts up, or falls into a coma.
Listen Matt, just because these things baffle me, doesn't mean I want to read anything you have to write about them - because they clearly baffle you, too. Have a big cup of Shut The Fuck Up, and find a nice corner to pass out in without wetting the carpet, will ya?
The answer to the iPad is NOT a laptop with a glass keyboard - especially not, if your reason is that "it's kind of like an ordinary laptop; only more expensive, and with a glass keyboard".
Yes, the iPad is clearly wrong, because it has nowhere to put the 80-column paper cards in. Who'd buy a computer without a paper card reader? Consumers are clearly all cunts: it's the only explanation. Have another whiskey.