Wow what a day, the iPad announcement and State of the Union address. Prime time performances by Steve Jobs and President Obama, two icons of our time.
It's not often that one sees Jobs make a mistake. He is clearly one of the brilliant businessmen of our era - maybe any era. Still, to name the product the ipad, ignoring the reference to its association with a feminine hygiene product can't be intentional, can it? Perhaps it's a really interesting choice. My bet is insufficient research into the implication of the name - a total miss.
My wife Lori, no feminist, nor kid, now in her late 40s had the MadTV parody ipad commercial from 2006 up when I came home this eve and told me about online chats of women angry at another clueless man. "Surely no woman was in on that decision," they said. That seems absolutely implausible, but then I sat through 15 minutes of the Apple site's announcement with five geeky guys talking about how wonderful the iPad was and I thought it just might have been! Hey, the product looks great, though I admit the MadTV version might be more interesting. When my 18 year old daughter finally got home I played the commercial first, then the product video. Her laugh was as big as mine on the MadTV, but when we watched the promo it was clear she didn't care about any political connotations. "I want that," she said.
To be honest, so do I. For years I've been contemplating the tablet concept and since last spring eagerly following rumors about Apple developing it. It looks great, but a major gap of no camera or mic means I'll wait until until the holiday season for version 2 before shelling out the cash. I want to skype.
Anyway, I'm thrilled that Jobs screwed up. Let's take bets on if he can learn some humility through it. That would be a great gift for him. And yes, the iPad is a game changer.
Onto the other speech - The State of Union. Caught most of that driving home from a late night at work. Obama sounded great on the radio, just what I wanted to hear. But watching on TV my wife Lori had different take. "He said all the right words, but I don't trust him because he never looks at the audience," she said.
In prior speeches, I've noticed the "head bobbing" left and right and have even been distracted by the President's occasional clearly uneven sideburns. But beyond the grooming check, has anyone suggested sometimes staying in one direction a bit longer or better yet, focusing on the TV cameras straight ahead? Obama's so good with speeches that his people probably don't want to mess with a winning formula, but he really needs to be visually connecting with the audience (100 million or so on TV) to make the full impression.
The bride admits she's cynical. She is.. But she's got good insight. The long and short of it is that neither of these guys are coming for my advice, but Steve, unless you truly planned it, admit the faux pas and rename the product. President Obama look into our eyes.
When the inevitable max-iPad jokes started, um, flowing, I thought they were tedious. Though I'm hearing more of the "no women were involved" opinions, I still like what I put on FB yesterday: "That's a predictable response from the basement-with-the-Kim-Kardashian-poster dwelling, Linux-running, jailbroken-iPhone carrying, "Apples-are-too-expensive" complaining, pimple-faced Engadget set." No one will laugh at the name once it's sold 5 million units, which may happen by 12/31/2010.
ReplyDeleteiPad does have a microphone, so it will be Skype capable and other VOIP. No built-in phone app may be a part of the deal Jobs brokered with AT&T for pay-as-you-go 3g discount pricing. The thing could be turned into a phone with an app from Apple. It's designed to be a media sales machine, with all major content forms involved: books, movies, TV, magazines, music. It's like the razorblades and razors model, except this is one cool razor. No camera is stupid to me, but should make for a great version 2 upgrade. Speech to text would have made it revolutionary, but might be delivered in software and made possible by the reportedly incredible power of Apple's home-brewed chip, the A4.
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Obama's speech was brilliantly delivered, actually. He is not addressing a camera, but a partisan crowd; I thought he stared down the "right" sufficiently to let them know he's not quitting. A great way to analyze the speech is the NY Time's transcript/synched version of it, at
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/01/27/us/politics/20100127-obama.html
This was the State of the Union, not American Idol. Obama wasn't playing to the cameras. I do wish there were more shots of specific people's reactions at various points. The first thing I said after the speech was over was "The President's pissed," which is exactly the message I think he intended to deliver.