The Apple iPad is the Suckiest Hyped-Up Product in History

So the iPad’s here, is it? Well the iPad can fuck right off. Let’s get the obvious shit out of the way with first.

• It’s a giant iPhone.
• It doesn’t have a camera.
• Or multitasking.
• Or USB.
• Or flash.
• It costs twice as much as a netbook,
• it does half as much,
• and it doesn’t have a keyboard.
• It’s got a 4:3 aspect ratio…
• and a 90s-tastic 1024×768 native resolution.

In other words, it’s a barrel of shite with a rather nice touchy-feely interface. But somehow every other reviewer in the land is being paid stacks of cash or freebies or blow jobs or whatever to rave about this overpriced digital doorstop. Lucky for you then that someone at apple forgot to grease ol’ Chad’s palm or spit-shine his cock, so I’m gonna tell it to you like it really is.

If you buy an iPad, you are buying into a fundamental power shift in the user / device paradigm.

You are no longer a creator. You are a consumer.

Apple founded its reputation on being the creative’s choice. Long before it became the machine to be seen posing with while sipping your non-fat latte and working on your god-awful rom-com screenplay lovingly based on your own life, Macs were machines for graphic designers and musicians and other creative types who wanted to get shit done.

Then Apple turned evil. It started out small, with the iPod. But make no bones about it, this is where it started. The iPod is solely a consumption device. It’s to consume media. More than that, it’s a feed to encourage you to buy media. Remember when everyone used to just share music on tape or CD or Napster or Soulseek? Well, now you’ve got the shiny Apple iTunes store selling tracks at a ridiculous price for something that isn’t even real, taking an enormous cut, and basically dictating the direction of the music industry.

The iPad is Apple’s attempt to dominate the publishing industry in exactly the same way. Think about it. These fuckers want you to consume your books and your magazines on the iPad. That’s what it’s been designed to do, supposedly, if you believe the reviews, more or less perfectly. But do we really want Apple controlling our digital futures?

People rail against Murdoch for being monopolistic and attempting to dominate markets. Doesn’t the iTunes store now have more or less a stranglehold on the music industry? Apple aren’t the good guys any more, folks. They’re the evil empire pushing the little guy around. Just because they make shiny quasi-futuristic devices that look great and are easy to snort coke off, doesn’t make them the nice guys.

Think about digital bookstores. No more sharing your favourite book with your friend. You can’t just lend them your dog eared paperback. How’d you lend a DRM protected, encrypted file? Heck, knowing Apple’s track history, you probably won’t even be able to cut and paste.

The iPad is a device designed to get you to spend more money.

Think about the “app store” and the “app” revolution. What a crock of shit. You’re all a bunch of fucking asswipe dummies. 90% of “apps” are just a repackaged way of requesting, receiving and displaying data from the internet. And you’re paying through the teeth for the “convenience” of it.

Apple is a closed platform, folks. That means they’re in control of it. They control what gets uploaded to the app store and what gets deleted — if it’s got questionable content, it’s gone. If Apple had a similar stranglehold on the publishing industry, what else might get deleted? Would Lady Chatterley’s Lover be facing a new obscenity trial in the digital age — with judge, jury and executioner being some faceless suit at Apple HQ?

Basically, the iPad is shit. It’s a shit expensive portable monitor designed to encourage you to buy more shit, like apps to view newspapers and magazines that are available for free right now online anyway. The iPad isn’t designed so you can create. It’s designed to encourage you to consume. It’s like having an advert in the palm of your hand all the time.

Oh, and it can’t do Flash.

Chad Fanstor

Further reading: http://ipadmakesmesad.blogspot.com/