Thursday, March 3, 2011

iBad 2?

Well, the Apple cult reconvened in Cali yesterday, as you might have heard. And though I haven't actually touched ("experienced" in the cult-lingo) one of these new-fangled "iPad 2's", that certainly won't stop me from weighing-in.

Some personal background on where I'm coming from. No, I don't own an iPad, but I have one of it's little siblings, a 2nd gen iPod Touch. You know where that is? In a drawer. The battery died, i.e. it will no longer hold a charge, and Apple wants to charge $80 to replace the battery. So I have a teeny-weeny bit of bitterness toward Apple, which I lay out in full disclosure.

But let's be honest, I pretty much lust after everything Apple makes. Much like I said in my Charlie Sheen post, Apple doesn't even sell products anymore, they sell an "experience," a mystique, a desirable sleek cool that says something about the person using their products. Of course, this carnal craving that I and others know all too well has helped developed the Apple cult and made Apple fanboys/fangirls out of so many people. But love is blindness. 

Apple does many things well, especially battery life, which I didn't appreciate the value of until I got an Android. But are they perfect? Can one find no flaws?
Whenever Apple explodes the marketplace with a new product (or new version of a product, in this case), which after all makes sense because they are a company and trying to make money, the problem is that the now outdated device, which has served you so well, now takes on the drab unpleasantness of middle age.

Apple somehow makes you feel unattractive, ugly, in the process. For some reason, this doesn't happen nearly at all in the PC market. Yes, I have an older Dell. So what? I don't feel belittled in a hipster coffee shop when I pop the top and fire it up. But if I had an older Apple product...Lord have mercy. Forget it. I'll make my brew at home and cower in my shame.

The twist here, of course, is that my next computer purchase will be a Macbook Pro. I know what they're doing to the world with their systematic uncool-making project. But I can't get away from the excellence of form and function. A Mac just does what you want it to, in short. PC's take a little more finessing, which once mastered allows one the freedom to mostly do what one wants. Still, though, Apple seems to take a few steps out of the process, and for that I'm grateful.

Wait, wasn't this supposed to be about the iPad 2? How would I know what to say about it? It looks cool and I want one.

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