Punditry

Ken — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 09:17:23 +0000

I'm reading a lot of "the iPad will be a failure" articles and comments lately. It just brings to mind all the "iPhone will be a failure" comments in 2007, and the "iPod will be a failure" comments in 2001. John C. Dvorak famously argued that Apple should pull the plug on the iPhone and license it out as a reference design to Samsung. Samsung. Or there was this famous Slashdot comment on the iPod: "No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame." How many people nowadays even remember what a NOMAD was? (It was a bulky, awkward MP3 player from Creative Labs.)

It's true that not every Apple product has been a blockbuster success. Critics immediately point to the Newton and the AppleTV as examples of Apple failures. But the difference with those products is that Steve Jobs did not believe they'd be hits. The Newton was a product that Steve despised; he killed it as soon as he returned to Apple. He described the AppleTV as "hobby" for Apple, an experimental, a dip-your-toes-in-the-water kind of thing. But the things that Jobs predicted would be huge, the iPod and the iPhone, were huge.

And here we've got the iPad. And just like the Nomad user back in 2001, there are people all over the Internet saying things like, "No Flash. Does less than my netbook. Lame." I wonder whose comment will be enshrined in the punditry hall of shame two years from now?