14 DAY TRIAL // The iPad has been confirmed as one of the top finalists for the Fiasco Awards, which rewards the best projects in the ICT field that have ended up as a fiasco. “We want to promote a critical spirit, a positive attitude towards the obstacles in the road to success, and why not? let's admit it: to have fun,” the people behind this project say.
Crowning Apple’s iPad as a fiasco evidently needs to be justified. And that they do. The people in charge with determining which product was the biggest fiasco in 2010 start out with a brief history of the product, and continue to talk about its reception, the negative aspects surrounding it, and finally post a conclusion to it all. We have extracted a few relevant passages to give you a piece of these people’s minds.
“Presented on the 27th of January, the iPad is a tablet PC developed by Apple that will soon be available in the market with different models. Following closely the design of their brethren iPhone and iTouch, the main innovation is simple: the size of the device, which many now simply call 'Big- iPhone' (although it should be 'Big-iTouch' because it does not allow outgoing calls),” the people at Fiasco Awards explain.
They note that, “Barack Hussein Obama, 44th President of the USA since January 20, 2009, was awarded on the 9th of October that year with the Nobel Peace Prize. With this premise in mind, why should we not nominate the iPad for the Fiasco Award 2010?”
And, so, they explain why Apple’s iPad is a worthy contender to the Fiasco Awards:
- the reception of the iPad has been in itself a fiasco: the community of Apple users, always enthusiastic, has received it with a remarkable skepticism, perhaps resulting from the uncertainty of “what is it?” - the incompatibility with Flash content and applications not distributed through the Apple Store; - it has no camera, so you cannot make video chats; - the virtual keyboard for text input is really uncomfortable; - it has no USB or FireWire port or video output (not HDMI or DVI); - the SIM card it uses for 3G connections (data) is not standard; - the screen format is not Widescreen, but the traditional 4:3.
“In short, the iPad is a Tablet PC with a few possibilities for compatibility with third-party software or hardware, and probably will have to focus on users from a new market (currently, its most common market is among young people, but those more familiar with the technology may choose to purchase a laptop at the same price as the iPad),” Fiasco Awards concludes.
Softpedia note
While they seem to be hitting all the right spots, they also erroneously note that Apple’s iPad “does not work in multitask mode,” explaining that, “You cannot listen to music while surfing the Internet or chatting.” Actually, that shouldn’t be the case. Admittedly a primitive form of multitasking, this functionality does exist in the iPhone OS, allowing both iPhone and iPod touch users to listen to music while browsing the web, or even while playing a game. With the iPad running a form of the iPhone OS, we doubt it doesn’t boast the ability to do this. Still, real multitasking is yet another lacking feature on the iPad.