We Have Moved!

Please note that Fecund Musings has departed the humble abode of its childhood to move on to greener pastures.

Change your bookmarks, subscribe by RSS and point your browsers towards www.fecundmusings.com.

Send the link to your friends, family, acquaintances, pure strangers, dogs, cats, fish and other household pets. Then paint a 500-foot billboard with

GO TO WWW.FECUNDMUSINGS.COM NOW!!!

written on it and hang it in Times Square (or local equivalent) in the dead of night. Hiring a few of those people who walk around with signs strapped to them and getting them to wear the same message would also be helpful.

That should be fine. Thanks guys!

Why You Shouldn't Buy the iPad 2

AVOID THIS

That's right. It's not a typo. I'm actually telling you to avoid purchasing an Apple product.

If you haven't got an iPad, go buy one - the original. You can save around £400 on the top of the line iPad 2 if you get a brand new top of the line iPad 1 on Ebay.


If you already have an iPad 1, don't upgrade.

Why?

First, let's clear something up:

I love the iPad - I got up at 5am on US launch day (April 3rd, 2010) to get in line and be one of the first to get one - a cool two months before the rest of the UK. I'm not a hater, I love Apple products, and I certainly don't endorse buying the Motorola Xoom or Blackberry Playbook.*

And yet I still stand by the title of this post, for one simple reason. Apple are being lazy. Lazy, cheap and overconfident, knowing that they control over 90% of the market and that there is no legitimate competition from Windows, Android or Palm OS in the tablet market. They have the best product on the market, and they aren't currently under any real pressure to improve. The iPad 2 is a shadow of what it could have been, had Apple not done the admittedly smart move to secure their profit margins.

Apple altered the design, added two terrible cameras and upgraded the processor and graphics processor speed. At face value, this doesn't seem half bad. But when you consider everything Apple could have done and chose not to, probably to save for the iPad 3, consumers aren't getting the greatest deal, not by a long shot.

Apple omitted two key features to the iPad 2, both of which could have been easily implemented - early leaks even suggest they were part of an original draft of the device.

1. Retina Display: the iPad and iPad 2's 720p screen resolution gives it a measly 132 PPI (pixels per inch), compared to the iPhone 4's 326 PPI. This makes a huge difference to the sharpness of text, movies, and pictures. everything on the device looks better - as is easily seen comparing an iPhone 3GS to an iPhone 4.

2. SDXC card port. Seen in a leaked iteration of the iPad 2, this would have been a huge addition to the iPad - no longer would customers have to pay Apple's excruciatingly large upgrade prices to get a larger storage capacity, or connect the iPad Camera Kit in order to easily download photos.

That's it.

That's all Apple needed to add, to make the iPad 2 a vastly superior product to the one it is now. Those two simple additions make such a world of difference to the overall iPad experience that it was lazy and greedy of Apple to leave them out. Despite this, the uneducated masses, and undoubtedly a fair share of the educated masses, will happily gobble up the iPad 2.

That's why I implore you not to. Buying an iPad 2 is giving in, an act of relinquishing common sense and morals for the sake of a meagre technological improvement. Wait for the iPad 3, or buy a hugely discounted iPad 1. But whatever you do, DON'T BUY THE iPAD 2.






*These are comparably expensive products with comparable hardware to the Pad 2 but are nowhere near as polished or well made, especially on the software side.

Absent Apple

CES starts this week. Macworld starts on the 27th. Apple will not be present at either. Neither will they be at the Macworld Expo in London in the fall. Years ago, Apple left the Macworld Expos in Boston, New York, Paris and others. Historically many great announcements have been made at these shows. The iPhone, at Macworld San Francisco in 2007. The infamous Microsoft Deal at Macworld Boston in 1997, the birth of the Apple Retail Stores at Macworld New York in 2001. Yet one by one, Apple has left all of these trade shows, many of which have since perished. The culmination of this exodus was the final, Steve Jobs-less keynote at Macworld San Francisco in 2009. The show has gone on to flourish without Apple, a feat many other shows could not duplicate.

One question - why? Why did Apple leave?

For (relatively) very little money, an entrance at a trade show generates enthusiasm and publicity for a company, while giving it the chance to showcase its products and interact with consumers and journalists alike. To most companies, the choice is a no-brainer, but for Apple, it is far more complex. Apple is a very special company in that they don't need to generate enthusiasm, or publicity, because the press and their fans (often one and the same), will do it for them. For free.


When Apple needs to announce a new product, they hold an announcement of their own - they make you come to them (if you're lucky enough to be invited), not the other way around.

If anything, Apple probably gets more publicity from not being at the show than from being there. People, like me, spend so much time bemoaning or analysing their absence that they become a popular topic of discussion, without ever having to spend a cent.

Their absence enhances their carefully cultivated walled garden of secrecy, which also serves to generate interest, merely because of curiosity about the unknown.