Harken, if you will, dear reader, back to days long gone by. Imagine, if you can…a time before the iPad.
Yes, the Macalope sees you recoil in horror. “A time before the iPad! No, Mr. Macalope! Say it isn’t so! Say there never was a time when faces did not bask in the iPad’s warm, loving glow! Oh, how empty people’s souls must have been, not even knowing that they were incomplete!”
But it’s true.
Just two years ago the iPad was just a dream, a wisp of the willows that eluded us as we sought to grasp it, to hold it, to know if it was real.
And as we ran through verdant fields yelling “iPad! Oh, iPad! Come back!” a collection of nitwits were talking about how Microsoft was set to trump Apple by announcing its own slate computer at CES.
Sample, if you can stomach it, the conventional wisdom of January, 2010.
My bet is the Microsoft-HP offering will offer robust slate computing functionality that will be priced starting at well under $1,000 and that the Apple tablet will offer a great user experience but will be overpriced for what it brings to the table. Look for the Apple tablet to be priced at well above $1,000.
Nailed it.
That was pretty annoying. What was even more annoying was when they did it again the following year.
Burned by Microsoft in 2010, technology pundits were a little more cautious about the company being able to stand up and pull a rabbit out of its butt going into CES 2011. Meaning they put “iPad killer in quotes” so they could say “Hey, somebody else said that, not me!” Still, as the Macalope’s said, dope springs eternal and any number of them predicted Android tablets like the Xoom would kill the iPad.
Going into CES 2012 the Macalope’s not hearing a lot of tough talk.
Well, it only took them two years. You said they’d never learn.
[Editors’ Note: Each week the Macalope skewers the worst of the week’s coverage of Apple and other technology companies. In addition to being a mythical beast, the Macalope is not an employee of Macworld. As a result, the Macalope is always free to criticize any media organization. Even ours.]