1. Shitty Name

There’s a linguist somewhere who can explain why the hard "a" sound in "Pad" is unappealing.  "iSlate" was better.  So many of the Web prognostications were better.  And if the original hard drive iPod can be renamed the "Classic", maybe the iPod Touch can be renamed the "iPhone For Verizon Subscribers" and the iPad can gain its rightful title, "iTouch".

2. Narrative

Steve Jobs understands it’s about story.  Whenever you try to sell something, facts and emotions need to be woven into a fable, starting here and ending up there.  Presentation is key.

And speaking of presentation, the Keynote effect of dust being blown up whenever a price descended was genius.  Kind of like when lasers were first introduced in rock shows.

3. No Fakery

Jobs was actually using the iPad, you could see what he was doing on it transferred to the big screen, it lent credence to the product, to the whole proceeding.  When you drape your music in effects, it actually undercuts the music itself.  Then again, if the music can’t stand on its own…

4. A&R

The presentation needed to be shorter and needed a hit single.

Got to give Jobs credit, when no one was clapping, he didn’t lose his cool, he didn’t speed up, he stayed to the script.  If you do live presentations, you know this is almost impossible to achieve.  Which is why bands will tell you one show is better than the next, they can feel the energy of the audience, the audience was with them.  Steve started out with the audience in his hand, then he lost them, minute by minute.

5. Hit Single

Jobs needed the one killer app that would make us rush out and buy an iPad.  He was so busy focusing on album tracks, he forgot the home run.  Sure, the iPad can surf, display pictures, create presentations, but what can it do that wows us? The iPad is like a blank CD.  The technology is marvelous.   But you get over that.  Because the music is what you’re truly interested in, even if the sound ain’t that great, you get the magic of "Satisfaction".

One can argue that iBooks is the killer app.  If so, Jobs should have focused on that, convinced people why they needed the iPad for books.  Talked about inventory, prices, readability.  But he did none of this.  So busy trumpeting elements we didn’t care about, he buried his message.

6. Saving The Media Business

I think Jobs tried.  But he shouldn’t have introduced the product until he had partners.  Hell, he’s not shipping for 60 days anyway.  It would have looked better if there were more desirable ways to consume films and tv shows and magazines, all the elements the media speculated about.  But these were completely absent.  It was like launching a new record company without product.  Sure, you might have some legendary executives, you’re getting me to pay attention, but now what?

7. Buzz

Now this is the modern music business.  Where the anticipation is at a fever pitch, and the product is wanting.  And by telling us how great the iPad was, Jobs just made us uncomfortable.  He would have been better off underselling it. Talking about hopes and dreams.

Again and again, Jobs has delivered.  Met our expectations, even exceeded them.  This time, he did not.  Proving that everybody can fuck up.

But if you know your rock history, Bob Dylan finally released a clunker known as "Self Portrait".  Reviews were scathing. What did Dylan do?  He immediately went back into the studio and recorded "New Morning".  Because when you’re pissed and you’ve got something to prove, you refocus, you can do great work almost instantly.

Steve…  How about another presentation the day this product actually ships?

And how about a Verizon iPhone?  Yeah, I know it’s incompatible technology, that only a few countries use CDMA, but trumpeting AT&T is like the music industry trumpeting slotMusic and the Digital Compact Cassette, lame formats that work for the businesses purveying them, but are considered a joke by the public.

I’m not convinced I need one!

I remember vividly the moment I knew I needed an iPod.  I was on the back side of Mammoth Mountain, waiting to get on Chair 14, and the guy in front of me had white wires dangling from his ears.  It wasn’t even 2002.  The device had only been introduced only two months before.  Been trounced by commentators as overpriced and unnecessary.  But if you owned a Rio, as I did, and you contemplated FireWire transfer and a thousand song capacity…you wanted one.  But that day at Mammoth was when I realized I needed one.  With that desire that makes you run to the store, lay down your hard-earned cash and emerge with a smile on your face.

Steve Jobs gets the question.  Of need.  He lays it right out.  At the advent of the presentation.  Even revisits the question again at the end.  But he just didn’t close me.

Oh, he had me at the beginning.  As he did those in attendance.  Who gave him the anticipatory ovation a rock star gets before he even said a word.  He wore none of GaGa’s outfits, in fact he wore running shoes and a mock turtleneck, but you knew he had something to say.  Like our old rockers, first and foremost, we wanted to hear the music.

But what Steve kept saying was "It works!"

Okay, you’re Apple, I expect it to work.

I can see the engineering triumph, all the touch points, the design, even your own proprietary chip.  But why do I need one?

Not to surf the Web.  This isn’t 1995, when most people didn’t have computers and ordered up a PC just to be able to play.  Everybody’s got Web access.  And so many have smart phones.  And since the iPad makes no calls, luddites are going to buy iPhones/Blackberrys/Androids first.  Sure, the fanatics will have to have iPads the same way they needed Apple TVs.  But Apple TV never really took off.  Will the iPad?

It’s about having a killer app.

Photos?

Actually, an iPhone/iPod Touch is good enough for this, you get the idea, especially at the resolution the iPhone takes pics.

Apps?

Well, there is a mobile gaming industry, Apple is positioned as a player, will the iPad emerge as the dominant portable gaming platform?  Doubtful, it’s just too big.  But it’s possible.  As for information apps, they work just fine on the iPhone, and don’t you want to use them on the run anyway?  Hell, whipping out your iPad on a Paris street corner seems like an SNL routine.

Productivity apps?  Like iWork and Keynote?  Love the price, $9.99, but how often do I want to generate a presentation on the fly?  As for superseding the laptop…  Well, did you see Steve hunt and peck on the virtual keyboard?  Maybe he doesn’t know how to touch-type.  Still, this is a stopgap device, that does nothing better than a laptop at first glance.  Do I need to surf the Web in my hand?  My laptop is good enough for that.

How about movies?

Yup, you can take the iPad on an overseas flight and watch a movie and not run out of juice.  So maybe the portable DVD player market will be affected, but I don’t watch flicks on flights anyway, and if I get the urge, what they’re purveying is good enough, long flights tend to have more choice.  However I do appreciate the cover that turns into a stand.

It all comes down to books.

Now the iPad makes the Kindle look like a toy.  It’s got a better interface, and color.  But naysayers will state that it’s uncomfortable to read for long periods of time on a computer screen.  The Kindle’s E-Ink technology is supposed to solve this problem, and it does.  But the Kindle is not backlit.  And oftentimes, the best technology does not win.  People love MP3s, usability is better than CDs, never mind vinyl.

So now it becomes a battle of price with Amazon.  Expect Kindle cost to decline, dramatically, very soon.  But Amazon has one great advantage, the $9.99 price point for books.  Apple is endorsing higher prices.

And speaking of prices, buying TV shows and movies never really took off at the iTunes Store, do you really think this device is going to make a difference?

Where was the Netflix plan?  Where was the innovative pricing?

As for saving the media industry…whew, there was no word of that, probably because all the content providers are afraid of playing ball, fearful that Apple will start out as a friend but end up as an enemy, dictating prices, their entire business model.

The iPad is almost like a computer without software.  Why do I need one again?  There’s no MacPaint, like on the original Macintosh.  There’s nothing revolutionary.  I give Apple credit for building it, but I’ve got to give them credit for building the Cube too.

Even the presentation dragged.  It was almost like hearing the follow-up to a classic album.  You want the new one to be great, but the more you listen, you come to realize that the first one was unique.  The iPhone was a breakthrough, the iPad?  The presentation almost devolved into parody, when everybody kept saying how great the product was.  Products truly this great sell themselves.

Maybe if I get my hands on one I’ll change my mind.

But for now, I’m gonna pass.

The Apple iPad Presentation

Am I the only person who didn’t love this movie?

I’ll admit sci-fi is not my thing.  But the script will never be nominated for an Academy Award.  And although the special effects were cool, state of the art, "Up" had better 3-D.

I don’t go to the movies much.  Ever since they stopped being an art form and devolved into commercial ventures guaranteed to play worldwide, i.e. dumb enough that even if you don’t know the language you can enjoy it, but can’t movies be about the language, aren’t some of the best just that, as opposed to A+ cinematography and special effects?  What’s "The Philadelphia Story" without the banter?  Even Hitchcock movies, genre pieces, had riveting scripts.  But "Avatar"’s dialogue seems to be written by a middling junior high school student.  As for the metaphors everyone sees in the flick…it doesn’t require deep insight to see them, rather you’re beaten over the head with the bad guy Americans taking what they think is rightfully theirs.  I get it.  Anybody would get it.

Not that all movies are bad.  Saturday I saw "The Hurt Locker".  At the world’s shittiest theatre, the Laemmle in Encino, where the screen is at an angle, the sound system is equivalent to a boom box and if you don’t have a walker, you almost qualify for the children’s rate.

What a movie!

I knew I wanted to see it.  That’s what the reviews engendered, a desire.  I know, I know, no one reads the reviews anymore.  Except maybe me.  If everybody says something is great, I’ll go, especially if it’s got a visceral quality, whether human relations or danger, I dig that shit.

Two-thirds of the way through the movie didn’t know what it wanted to be, when James left the compound, the movie lost a bit of its believability, but before that…  You sign up for the military, you do the time, it’s your job.  Deploy long enough in Iraq and you’ll no longer trust anybody, not the Iraqis, not your team member, maybe not even yourself.  The main goal is to get out.  Safely.  But is that even possible?

To think that men too old to fight sent young soldiers into this morass where victory can probably never be sealed and the fighters may never emerge, and if they do, without their nervous systems intact…  How about that know-it-all shrink, trying to bond with the Iraqis?

"The Hurt Locker" is built on tension.  Based in reality.  And when you leave the theatre you have a desire to go to the movies each and every day. If only there was a movie worth seeing.

And I’ve had a vague desire to see "Avatar", to find out what all the hubbub is about.  And it being a rainy day, I suddenly felt the time was now, and drove down to the Bridge to see it in IMAX 3-D.  Real IMAX, with the sloped floor and giant screen, where they show the nature documentaries, not phony IMAX, built into a regular theatre.

I didn’t bother to buy my ticket online.  At 3 PM I should be able to walk right in and get a decent seat, right?

No.  Thank god my buddy couldn’t go.  I was offered one of two dead center seats, two rows apart, if I’d gone in a pair, I’d have been sitting on the fringe, which ain’t too good at the IMAX.

But when I ambled to my seat, holding my giant glasses that were akin to the ones Will Ferrell wore on SNL when he played that old guy with white hair, two aged men on either side of my destination gave me the evil eye.  They’d piled my seat up with jackets.  It was their safe zone.

The obese man, to my right, said I was lucky, that that was supposed to be his buddy’s seat, but at the last minute he couldn’t come, so I was able to buy it right before the show.

The guy on my left had halitosis even worse than the guy on my right, and took off his shoes to relax while he ate his tiny ice cream bites.  And the two of them were talking like they were old buddies.  The one on the left telling us that Inglewood should really be four hundred miles south, and that for ten bucks you could buy a topographical map that would give evidence of ice age movements.  And the guy on the right starts telling how he used to cut trailers, before he retired.  And I’m singing the Stealers Wheel song, "clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, here I am stuck in the middle with you."

Now I know why I no longer want to go out.  The screen might not be quite as big at home, but the viewing experience is light years better.

And at first the 3-D wasn’t perfectly clear.  I kept taking the glasses off to see if it was better in 2-D.  And it was decent without the glasses, but there were double images, so I put them back on and wondered is American really desirous of 3-D in the home?  Do we really want to sit on the couch wearing these specs?

And then the movie unfurled.  In the "important" way.  Sans credits at the beginning.

Sigourney Weaver hasn’t had plastic surgery, she looks her age and that’s great, makes her more believable.  And when they first ventured outside, and Sully encountered the special effect creatures, that was cool.  But it was downhill from there.

Where did they get that Marine colonel?  He reminded me of Sgt. Hulka in "Stripes".  I wish Bill Murray was in this movie so he could whisper "Do you think this guy’s overdoing it a bit?"

And it dragged so in the middle.  It was depressing when you realized this was it, the whole damn movie, until you got to the climactic battle scene, which brought my personal grade up from C territory into the lower B’s.  Maybe if the flick had been ninety minutes instead of three hours, it would have played better.

I know, I know, it’s the largest grossing flick of all time.

But I’d rather see "Annie Hall" any day of the week.  Even "When Harry Met Sally", which is imitation "Annie Hall".  Special effects?  How about some reality!

Saw your comment on haiti wasn’t sure what to make of it, but tonite havin dinner in malibu, david crosby came up and said the same thing. Your kinda like howard stern to me, I appreciate your honesty, even if I don’t agree, and even when I’m on the receiving end of critisizm. We can only be ourselfs and speak our own truths. Rock on!

Kid Rock