My fear though is that Apple won't fully understand why this is underwhelming to a lot of folks.
Don't worry. I am sure they understand perfectly. Look at who's complaining, for one. How do you please most of those folks? A LOT of noisy folks is a tiny percentage of the population who will instantly 'get' this device.
It's true that the iPhone owes much of it success to the apps; but that's the iPad's biggest problem. The most important/popular apps on the iPhone - Phone, MMS, and Camera - aren't on the iPad.
Yup, the iPod Touch has really bombed without those apps.
It's easy to lose interest in something you can't buy.
Apple needs to stop this nonsense of debuting a product and then saying it will be available X months later.
People show as much interest in the iPad as the Apple TV, which Apple never advertises and word of mouth is not working. If Apple is going to keep public interest up, they are going to have to either debut it again or start advertising it.
Apple would have loved nothing more than to have held its media event for the iPad in March and announced they would start shipping the product immediately. But with a device like this, you have to file with the FCC and that's a public process. In other words, instead of a controlled unveiling, information would have been presented about the product from media accessing Apple's application. The same thing happened with the iPhone. Apple was forced to unveil the product long before it was available for sale.
And in regards to the fact that right now, with zero examples of this product in the wild, interest apppears to be low, well, yes, that's to be expected. When it is available for sale two things are going to happen which will make or break this product. One is that review samples will flood the market and the other is that consumers will start using this thing and their reaction will matter big time. If this device is a game-changer, i.e. changes the portable computing experience for the better, reviewers and consumers need to be experiencing the device in order for there to be any meaningful feedback. If you ask someone who hasn't even tried out a product are they eager to buy one, naturally the reaction would be probably not. Is watching movies on this device amazing? Quite possibly. Is browsing better than on any device that has come before it? Jobs has assured us that it is but who would take his word for it? After all, impartial he's not. But if it is, reviewers and consumers alike will see that and value it. What about the device as a gaming platform? As an e-reader? What's it like to use the device over an extended period of time? Is it light enough? Is the user interface well thought out? Does it work well for students and others needing something to take notes with?
Right now, none of the preceding factors into anyone's decision-making process and yet isn't it the heart of the matter? After all, the iPad diesn't do anything new. All of the things it can do other products can do. The question is, how well does it do them? If the answer is that it's significantly better suited to several tasks than anything else on the market, clearly this device will be a major sales success. And who, among all the folks surveyed, has a clue if that's case? In other words, they're being asked for an opinion about an unreleased product that they really know little about. Kind of pointless.
Survey folks a month or so after the iPad is available for sale and then, maybe, you start to get an idea of how people are going to react to the thing. At least then they will be reacting to the product itself and not to what they might assume the product will be.
$130 extra for 3G is a rip-off. The chip and antenna probably cost $0.50. Hell, the chip is probably just disabled in the non-3G.
Yea and one needs to evaluate how much data they would be using, i.e, 250mg or unlimited 3G ATT plan plus the 3G is PER unit or iPad. With MifI 2200 currently from Sprint or Verizon, one could justify the WiFi only iPad, purchase a 250mg Verizon MiFi plan (currently 39.95) and have up to 5 devices connect to it wirelessly. You really have to evaluate your personal needs. My health care practice will likely purchase WiFi only iPads because we have wireless internet access within the offices and also my home for that matter. If I want to take my iPad where there is no internet access, I have the MiFi. Just my thoughts.
If you were asked if you wanted a new Nokia or Toyota or ? available in a couple of months how likely would you be to say "yes:?
I have an iPhone and a MBP so I have a reasonably good idea of what the iPad will. Because I have those I am unlikely to buy an iPad.
BUT most of the people likely to buy an iPad WON'T have an iPhone and will have to actually see/play with this new product to get any idea of how useful it will be to them (or not).
It's amazing the number of people who say 'It's not for me, so it's an iFail'!!!
I have seen very little written about how 'education' will be a significant market.
"At least one Edinburgh primary school is hoping to buy a ?class set of iPads?. Previously it had been seriously looking at iPod Touches, but the launch of the iPad has changed the plan?
I do not use apple.My business partner does.I will give credit for the great software.But limited hardware stinks.And yes cheap hardware is most of windows issues and apple does not want that.Hey i get that.As for the ipad.It is the same scam apple pulled on all the buyers of the first iphone.What scam you ask.Several hundreds of dollars for a high tech do it all phone.Ol wait no video camera.For that you would have to go get a $29.00 walmart track phone that HAS IT.How lame.And the apple drones never complained.Why?
Then gen 2 of iphone WE HAVE VIDEO CAMERA WOOOW HOOO. Yea right. Not adding the simple features then adding on next gen is a scam.And for the companies that make hackintosh do you think they would get business if apple would open up to more faster hardware.I hate gates and vista.But the new window 7 not to bad.At least i for $1,800 dollars i get a super laptop and compared to $1,800 to apple.well my hardware smokes.And to be fair i truly love linux opensuse the best.But linux has to many versions to ever make it.Ol the main reason i posted ipad a flop.No camera.But cheer up version 2 will have a camera woo hoo.and maybe another cool feature.
Prior to launch, the iPad was anything and everything you could imagine, plus a pony.
Now it's merely an extraordinary device. People who've held one say you must hold one to understand how cool it is, and none of the people polled have done so. The person typing this opinion hasn't done so (meaning me).
But the insane interest before can't be sustained during the 2 months before the iPad hits market. That's life. Don't panic.
These surveys just mean that you won't have line around the block when it is released, which is likely better for everybody. It is reminiscant of the famous "less space than a Nomad, no Wifi, Lame" comment on the original iPod. With all the bashing in the press, of course nobody sees why they might want one.
It will take a little time for the iPad to hit critical mass, but that doesn't mean it will be a failure. Will the ASP be lower than the iPhone... I would assume so, but that doesn't seem to be the general expectation. Apple does need to do something to address the "cheap pc" segment, and from where I sit, this will be a pretty good option even if it doesn't have the conventional openness of a pc.
It is interesting though to see people bashing on it here; that might be best for its long-term success.
Agree with you. The iPad should do more than the iPhone, not less. Most people I talk to say they just don't need an iPad. A MacBook does nicely and is not that much bigger and heavier.
Hate to say it, but this might be a flop for Apple, especially in the New York area where coverage will be spotty at best.
We'll see soon enough.
Provided you already own a Macbook. I'm not sure I'm buying into your friends logic for people that don't own a Macbook already. Saying a Macbook isn't much bigger or heavier is foolish. The iPad is one-third the weight and certainly smaller because of the 9.7 in screen. I've read proclamations of the next Apple flop and other than the Hifi system, bluetooth headset and other smaller ancillary stuff Apple has "beat the street" on every large product intro. I don't see anything in the iPad that has flop written on it. The problem really is the confusion that comes from people on the fringe of the iPads target market failing to realize that the rest of the world doesn't share the same needs.
Quote:
Originally Posted by tomhenning
There was probably a similar response when Amana introduced the Radarange in 1967. These days we call it a "microwave."
Can you imagine what the chefs were saying? "Can't use metal pots! Doesn't brown! $495! That's a deal-breaker for me."
The survey is of very limited significance and simply shows that there's a difference between fantasy and reality for any manufactured device.
Great post
Quote:
Originally Posted by Oldandintheway
Most of my kids games use flash, without flash it is useless to me.
LOL. Who's really going buy an iPad for their kids to play flash games?
If that reflects the population at large, Apple will have the greatest hit ever. There are about 250 million people over the age of 18 in the US.
So, sales of 25 million at release?
I'm buying some more Apple stock!
Exactly. Those numbers are HUGE for a product that nobody has seen in the wild yet. Just wait until the first person whips one of these out in a coffee shop. This device really needs to be touched and held to be truly appreciated.
It's a niche device -- not for everyone -- but to have that many people wanting to buy one already is incredible.
It's pretty clear that the difference between before and after on the first graph is a large number of people who hadn't heard of it (and therefore didn't know if they wanted it), now know about it and have decided they don't want it. So?
The number of people interested in it enough to be customers has actually *increased* from the "before" to the "after." Similarly, the number of people interested but still wanting to know more has also gone up. The number of people stil interested but "sure they aren't going to buy one" has actually gone down.
This is all good news for Apple.
Same goes for the second graph. the number of people saying they will buy it has *increased* and the number people thinking about it has also slightly *increased.*
These graphs don't show the dismal picture the article paints.
I do not use apple.My business partner does.I will give credit for the great software.But limited hardware stinks.And yes cheap hardware is most of windows issues and apple does not want that.Hey i get that.As for the ipad.It is the same scam apple pulled on all the buyers of the first iphone.What scam you ask.Several hundreds of dollars for a high tech do it all phone.Ol wait no video camera.For that you would have to go get a $29.00 walmart track phone that HAS IT.How lame.And the apple drones never complained.Why?
Then gen 2 of iphone WE HAVE VIDEO CAMERA WOOOW HOOO. Yea right. Not adding the simple features then adding on next gen is a scam.And for the companies that make hackintosh do you think they would get business if apple would open up to more faster hardware.I hate gates and vista.But the new window 7 not to bad.At least i for $1,800 dollars i get a super laptop and compared to $1,800 to apple.well my hardware smokes.And to be fair i truly love linux opensuse the best.But linux has to many versions to ever make it.Ol the main reason i posted ipad a flop.No camera.But cheer up version 2 will have a camera woo hoo.and maybe another cool feature.
What business are you in, you should hire an admin, you have the typing skills of a 13yr old, oh wait, I see. Just to help you out a bit, most people add two spaces, created by hitting the spacebar, after each period ending a sentence.
Oh, and never start a sentence with "But", it's bad practice.
Comments
My fear though is that Apple won't fully understand why this is underwhelming to a lot of folks.
Don't worry. I am sure they understand perfectly. Look at who's complaining, for one. How do you please most of those folks? A LOT of noisy folks is a tiny percentage of the population who will instantly 'get' this device.
I never even knew it was an online electronics store until now. I've heard the name but it was more or less meaningless to me.
It's true that the iPhone owes much of it success to the apps; but that's the iPad's biggest problem. The most important/popular apps on the iPhone - Phone, MMS, and Camera - aren't on the iPad.
Yup, the iPod Touch has really bombed without those apps.
Oh wait...
What we want is a Top of the line model, with all of the bells and whistles for $499.00 (well, maybe $599.00)
It's easy to lose interest in something you can't buy.
Apple needs to stop this nonsense of debuting a product and then saying it will be available X months later.
People show as much interest in the iPad as the Apple TV, which Apple never advertises and word of mouth is not working. If Apple is going to keep public interest up, they are going to have to either debut it again or start advertising it.
Apple would have loved nothing more than to have held its media event for the iPad in March and announced they would start shipping the product immediately. But with a device like this, you have to file with the FCC and that's a public process. In other words, instead of a controlled unveiling, information would have been presented about the product from media accessing Apple's application. The same thing happened with the iPhone. Apple was forced to unveil the product long before it was available for sale.
And in regards to the fact that right now, with zero examples of this product in the wild, interest apppears to be low, well, yes, that's to be expected. When it is available for sale two things are going to happen which will make or break this product. One is that review samples will flood the market and the other is that consumers will start using this thing and their reaction will matter big time. If this device is a game-changer, i.e. changes the portable computing experience for the better, reviewers and consumers need to be experiencing the device in order for there to be any meaningful feedback. If you ask someone who hasn't even tried out a product are they eager to buy one, naturally the reaction would be probably not. Is watching movies on this device amazing? Quite possibly. Is browsing better than on any device that has come before it? Jobs has assured us that it is but who would take his word for it? After all, impartial he's not. But if it is, reviewers and consumers alike will see that and value it. What about the device as a gaming platform? As an e-reader? What's it like to use the device over an extended period of time? Is it light enough? Is the user interface well thought out? Does it work well for students and others needing something to take notes with?
Right now, none of the preceding factors into anyone's decision-making process and yet isn't it the heart of the matter? After all, the iPad diesn't do anything new. All of the things it can do other products can do. The question is, how well does it do them? If the answer is that it's significantly better suited to several tasks than anything else on the market, clearly this device will be a major sales success. And who, among all the folks surveyed, has a clue if that's case? In other words, they're being asked for an opinion about an unreleased product that they really know little about. Kind of pointless.
Survey folks a month or so after the iPad is available for sale and then, maybe, you start to get an idea of how people are going to react to the thing. At least then they will be reacting to the product itself and not to what they might assume the product will be.
This author clearly is a moron, and is just looking for something to babble about, because Apple doesn't release news between events.
Get a life.
$130 extra for 3G is a rip-off. The chip and antenna probably cost $0.50. Hell, the chip is probably just disabled in the non-3G.
Yea and one needs to evaluate how much data they would be using, i.e, 250mg or unlimited 3G ATT plan plus the 3G is PER unit or iPad. With MifI 2200 currently from Sprint or Verizon, one could justify the WiFi only iPad, purchase a 250mg Verizon MiFi plan (currently 39.95) and have up to 5 devices connect to it wirelessly. You really have to evaluate your personal needs. My health care practice will likely purchase WiFi only iPads because we have wireless internet access within the offices and also my home for that matter. If I want to take my iPad where there is no internet access, I have the MiFi. Just my thoughts.
I have an iPhone and a MBP so I have a reasonably good idea of what the iPad will. Because I have those I am unlikely to buy an iPad.
BUT most of the people likely to buy an iPad WON'T have an iPhone and will have to actually see/play with this new product to get any idea of how useful it will be to them (or not).
It's amazing the number of people who say 'It's not for me, so it's an iFail'!!!
I have seen very little written about how 'education' will be a significant market.
"At least one Edinburgh primary school is hoping to buy a ?class set of iPads?. Previously it had been seriously looking at iPod Touches, but the launch of the iPad has changed the plan?
"http://applebicycle.info/tablet
I do not use apple.My business partner does.I will give credit for the great software.But limited hardware stinks.And yes cheap hardware is most of windows issues and apple does not want that.Hey i get that.As for the ipad.It is the same scam apple pulled on all the buyers of the first iphone.What scam you ask.Several hundreds of dollars for a high tech do it all phone.Ol wait no video camera.For that you would have to go get a $29.00 walmart track phone that HAS IT.How lame.And the apple drones never complained.Why?
Then gen 2 of iphone WE HAVE VIDEO CAMERA WOOOW HOOO. Yea right. Not adding the simple features then adding on next gen is a scam.And for the companies that make hackintosh do you think they would get business if apple would open up to more faster hardware.I hate gates and vista.But the new window 7 not to bad.At least i for $1,800 dollars i get a super laptop and compared to $1,800 to apple.well my hardware smokes.And to be fair i truly love linux opensuse the best.But linux has to many versions to ever make it.Ol the main reason i posted ipad a flop.No camera.But cheer up version 2 will have a camera woo hoo.and maybe another cool feature.
Does the '13' in your username signify your age?
A survey of more than 1,000 randomly selected customers at the online marketplace Retrevo
That explains it.
Would you prefer they sample at the Apple store or MacWorld readers?
80 percent heard of the iPad, 20 percent didn't know about it. 18 percent didn't know and didn't want the iPad.
2 percent KNEW NOTHING OF THE IPAD AND YET STILL WANTED IT!!!
Prior to launch, the iPad was anything and everything you could imagine, plus a pony.
Now it's merely an extraordinary device. People who've held one say you must hold one to understand how cool it is, and none of the people polled have done so. The person typing this opinion hasn't done so (meaning me).
But the insane interest before can't be sustained during the 2 months before the iPad hits market. That's life. Don't panic.
It will take a little time for the iPad to hit critical mass, but that doesn't mean it will be a failure. Will the ASP be lower than the iPhone... I would assume so, but that doesn't seem to be the general expectation. Apple does need to do something to address the "cheap pc" segment, and from where I sit, this will be a pretty good option even if it doesn't have the conventional openness of a pc.
It is interesting though to see people bashing on it here; that might be best for its long-term success.
Lost interest AFTER unveiling? I lost interest WHILE they were unveiling....
no multitask, no flash, no camera, no interest....
But plenty of troll.
Agree with you. The iPad should do more than the iPhone, not less. Most people I talk to say they just don't need an iPad. A MacBook does nicely and is not that much bigger and heavier.
Hate to say it, but this might be a flop for Apple, especially in the New York area where coverage will be spotty at best.
We'll see soon enough.
Provided you already own a Macbook. I'm not sure I'm buying into your friends logic for people that don't own a Macbook already. Saying a Macbook isn't much bigger or heavier is foolish. The iPad is one-third the weight and certainly smaller because of the 9.7 in screen. I've read proclamations of the next Apple flop and other than the Hifi system, bluetooth headset and other smaller ancillary stuff Apple has "beat the street" on every large product intro. I don't see anything in the iPad that has flop written on it. The problem really is the confusion that comes from people on the fringe of the iPads target market failing to realize that the rest of the world doesn't share the same needs.
There was probably a similar response when Amana introduced the Radarange in 1967. These days we call it a "microwave."
Can you imagine what the chefs were saying? "Can't use metal pots! Doesn't brown! $495! That's a deal-breaker for me."
The survey is of very limited significance and simply shows that there's a difference between fantasy and reality for any manufactured device.
Great post
Most of my kids games use flash, without flash it is useless to me.
LOL. Who's really going buy an iPad for their kids to play flash games?
So almost 10% say they will buy one?
If that reflects the population at large, Apple will have the greatest hit ever. There are about 250 million people over the age of 18 in the US.
So, sales of 25 million at release?
I'm buying some more Apple stock!
Exactly. Those numbers are HUGE for a product that nobody has seen in the wild yet. Just wait until the first person whips one of these out in a coffee shop. This device really needs to be touched and held to be truly appreciated.
It's a niche device -- not for everyone -- but to have that many people wanting to buy one already is incredible.
I think you guys are reading the survey wrong.
It's pretty clear that the difference between before and after on the first graph is a large number of people who hadn't heard of it (and therefore didn't know if they wanted it), now know about it and have decided they don't want it. So?
The number of people interested in it enough to be customers has actually *increased* from the "before" to the "after." Similarly, the number of people interested but still wanting to know more has also gone up. The number of people stil interested but "sure they aren't going to buy one" has actually gone down.
This is all good news for Apple.
Same goes for the second graph. the number of people saying they will buy it has *increased* and the number people thinking about it has also slightly *increased.*
These graphs don't show the dismal picture the article paints.
I do not use apple.My business partner does.I will give credit for the great software.But limited hardware stinks.And yes cheap hardware is most of windows issues and apple does not want that.Hey i get that.As for the ipad.It is the same scam apple pulled on all the buyers of the first iphone.What scam you ask.Several hundreds of dollars for a high tech do it all phone.Ol wait no video camera.For that you would have to go get a $29.00 walmart track phone that HAS IT.How lame.And the apple drones never complained.Why?
Then gen 2 of iphone WE HAVE VIDEO CAMERA WOOOW HOOO. Yea right. Not adding the simple features then adding on next gen is a scam.And for the companies that make hackintosh do you think they would get business if apple would open up to more faster hardware.I hate gates and vista.But the new window 7 not to bad.At least i for $1,800 dollars i get a super laptop and compared to $1,800 to apple.well my hardware smokes.And to be fair i truly love linux opensuse the best.But linux has to many versions to ever make it.Ol the main reason i posted ipad a flop.No camera.But cheer up version 2 will have a camera woo hoo.and maybe another cool feature.
What business are you in, you should hire an admin, you have the typing skills of a 13yr old, oh wait, I see. Just to help you out a bit, most people add two spaces, created by hitting the spacebar, after each period ending a sentence.
Oh, and never start a sentence with "But", it's bad practice.