Will it come with Minesweeper?

Just a few State of the Union thoughts from last night. First off, I hate all of the standing and clapping after every sentence. This isn’t a Democrat or Republican thing; it happens during every State of the Union regardless of party. All of the standing ovations for simple statements with no follow up actions just reminds me of the Soviet Politburo. Also, I can’t understand the criticism that the speech was too partisan. Apparently some people believe the State of the Union should be the equivalent of a public reading of a 10-K filing. Overall, I was happy with the tone of the speech and the fact that we are finally getting back to a focus on jobs and the economy, which is something I wanted Obama to do from the start. Whether the policies he mentioned are sensible or not is something I will have to see the details on before I pass judgment. I just want a government that is moving in the right direction and we don’t have that at the moment.

Well, like every other tech geek out there I was glued to my computer yesterday for word of Apple’s latest creation. Now I must admit up front that I am not a fan of Apple. In fact, I’ve never owned a single piece of Apple equipment. I use a Zune for crying out loud. However, I was fond of the old Next machines and used a Mac at times in college so I’m not totally against Steve Jobs. Still, I wanted to see what he had in store this time.

My reaction in a word: Meh.

To start with whoever came up with the name iPad needs to be fired. How they could not see the feminine hygiene jokes coming from a mile away is beyond me. I’m also a little at a loss regarding the connectivity of the device. The cheap version only has Wi-Fi while the higher end has Wi-Fi and AT&T’s network. If you have complaints about AT&T’s network with your iPhone now this will just make everything worse. There is only so much bandwidth on the wireless networks and using this as a movie machine will just eat it up like mad. While Wi-Fi is better you have to ask yourself if you have Wi-Fi why not just use your laptop? That kind of takes out using this at home.

The idea behind this advice is that it is a media machine. It is not meant to be a productivity device or even much of an input device. I assume you could type emails using the onscreen keyboard but it doesn’t seem to be a great experience. What it will be wonderful for is surfing the web and watching video. As a portable browser with a bigger screen than your iPhone it does have a market.

The one area where I think it will fall down though that most don’t expect is as an eBook reader. This is coming from someone who picked up a Kindle this month and will not let it go. There is a huge difference between reading on an LCD screen and reading on the Kindle with electronic ink. I can go through a hundred pages on a Kindle without any eye strain at all. Imagine reading 100 pages on a laptop and the headache that it would give you. The iPad will be in color and can show graphics but for pure text the Kindle will have it beat.

Yes, this is going to be popular and it is another step closer to my finally owning a tricorder. But it is not a game changer or a requirement to own. Just a cool little gadget; that is all.