Apple just bequeathed its second batch of iPads on Friday, and this time Steve Jobs hooked it up with some 3G power so customers can roam that long series of tubes wherever they please.
Staying in touch with the world can be a real pain sometimes, but with the iPad, the customers have the world at their fingertips. One can feel like a Precrime officer from “Minority Report.”
The mixed reviews, the critiques of Jobs’ desperation regarding its conception and the fact that it looks like a giant iPhone make many wonder whether it is worth throwing down $500. If it is hard for normal consumers to react to, such a fetishized commodity is even more difficult for hipsters to digest.
Should the iPad double as a platform to do illegal drugs off of? Is the iPad ushering in the end of print media with its iBook app? Apparently some big-name zines are throwing down to make apps for their publications. These salient questions have been plaguing the hipster community for some time now, and it’s time to set the record straight on the iPad.
The first step to proper hipster analysis is Apple’s reception geographically. According to Dublin-based consumer research agency Experian Simmons, the top 10 “designated market areas” are, in order:
1. San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose
2. Boston
3. San Diego
4. New York
5. Washington
6. Chicago
7. Denver
8. Monterey-Salinas, Calif.
9. Santa Barbara-Santa Maria-San Luis Obispo, Calif.
10. Las Vegas
Apparently San Francisco residents are 49 percent more likely to own or use a Mac product than the average American. It is easy to believe there are a lot of fixed-gear riders there, Chrome backpacks, and big hills, and it is in the same state where American Apparel has its headquarters. The next real question is what kind of people were stoked enough on the iPad to wait in line at ungodly hours in order to get their grubby hands on one?
Some of my friends do drugs. Some drugs can keep you awake for many days on end. It would make sense for people that were “mad stoked” on the iPad to want to stay up for extended periods of time to make sure they got one. Maybe everybody who waited in line for an iPad was super high and having a great time.
That would make them cool. But that’s not what it looked like. I saw some crazy footy off cnet.com showing a crazy white chick going around asking people why they were standing in line. Didn’t seem like anyone was on “cool” drugs. Seemed more like a bunch of old people just chillin’, wanting iPads for no good reason except as one old dude said, “I just want one.” Dude didn’t seem like he was on any “cool” drugs, just wanted an iPad. Weird.
Maybe the iPad is just a big version of the iTouch. I’ve heard that as a big criticism so far. Some legit dude who writes for Wired magazine doesn’t think so. Steven Levy wrote, “Until you actually hold it and interact with it, you can’t appreciate how its scale makes the iPad a different animal from the iPhone and the Touch.”
There’s something about the size and interface that engages you almost primally in reading, viewing video, Web-browsing, playing Scrabble and other activities. The iPad points to a Third Way — sitting in between the phone and the laptop — of interacting with information.
I don’t know how engaged I would be. The iPad seems to be kind of an awkward shape, to be perfectly honest. I assume you put it on your lap or table when you read it or have a special stand for it.
It doesn’t seem like anyone cool is putting forth that extra effort like being strung out in line for days to get the iPad, although maybe all the cool people were smart and pre-ordered. San Fran’s cool right? Some cool hipster bros there, chillin’ on fixed gears. San Fran had the highest percentage of Mac users. They probably dig the iPad.
When it comes down to it, the iPad is pretty much good only if you want to make your friends jealous or like doing illegal substances off shiny surfaces. That sounds like two great reasons to purchase the latest brainchild of our friend, Steve Jobs.
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