I’ve always been a bit of an apple fanboy (fanboi) since the 1980’s, having found ways to do interesting things with the Apple ][e //c etc’s at school, and programming pascal on the Plus/Classic with my friend MacsBugs in the MacOS 6 days. Having an iPhone has simplified some aspects of my life significantly and allowed me to keep on-task and on-schedule in an increasingly hectic day.
WIth the months of rumors of pricing, features, etc.. leading into this past weeks announcement, I figured if a tablet was launched, we would get one for my wife.
With the prospect of the platform not being a success and just hype, I read everyone dumping on the lack of flash and other capabilities. (Personally, I hope this helps kill Flash, it’s usually improperly and overly used to navigate websites. Those developers should be put out to pasture). I’m now convinced that it will be a success. Why? My father is going to get one. He’s a techie, sure, but not in the traditional tear the hardware apart and overclock the cpu with the right water cooling system. He’s a techie that reads books. He’s one that sees the value in the device.
I suspect that if the naysayers start polling their parents, they will find a similar pattern. Something cheap, immune to malware and with the possibility of $15 or $30/month for mobile E-Mail, a value for them. They were not going to get an iPhone/Blackberry/Android phone anyways.