I'm a HUGE fan of Apple - my Mac Book is the best laptop I've ever owned and I can't live without my 2 iPods. I would own an iPhone if I weren't living out of country - being a foreigner means most phone plans are totally unreasonable (i.e. minimum 2 year contract when my visa is only for a year, etc.).
Anyway, I think most people are gaga for Apple, but I wonder if the iPad is really a necessary device. Is this a case of product for the sake of a new product, or is this a technological revolution?
As a marketer I have to make a choice about the work I produce. If a potential client comes to me and wants help selling a product I need to be 100% behind the value of that product. Because I need to believe that there are people who will benefit from it.
I believe that we live in an overly populated world of gadgets and junk. A trip to a local garage sale will give you a taste of it or a journey across the vast garbage dumps of the world with little to no ability to cope with Western society's obsession with over consumption. We buy too many things we don't need, and there is a very real price to pay for it.
Reading this article by Eliot Van Buskirk from Wired Magazine I'm still not 100% convinced about the value of the iPad. I think music LPs is a very interesting concept and digital magazines have always intrigued me, but do we need yet another device for these types of digital possibilities?
What if instead of an iPad we had a macbook air with a twistable display? You could turn it into a template or use it as a notebook- I'm holding out for the hybrid that does both.
"By Eliot Van Buskirk"
- Can Apple’s iPad Save the Media After All? | Epicenter | Wired.com (view on Google Sidewiki)
Other articles on the environment implications of our techology:
The Story of Apple's Environmental Footprint
The Ecological Footprint of eBooks
Knowmore.org
