The Macalope knows he shouldn’t, but he was drawn into another John C. Dvorak honeytrap of doom—only this time, he came out more concerned for the man than worried about the things he said about Apple.
Writing for PC Magazine (no link for him, as you know), John purports to take a look at the convergence of phones and tablets into what people are nauseatingly calling “phablets.”
It’s hard to call out a fad so early, but the trendy 7-inch tablet has all the earmarks of one.
Hmm. Actually, as surprising as it might seem, the Macalope bought a Nexus 7 (for science) and he agrees with Macworld’s Dan Frakes, who says the device makes the case for an “iPad mini.”
Much of the excitement is because of the $199 price point. Samsung has a similar item that I saw stacked up at Costco.
This is leaving Apple flat-footed rather than at the head of the pack.
Totally. Apple, which continues to sell about a gazillion times more iPads than the next most popular tablet, has surely been caught flat-footed because, after two years of flailing their arms like one of those fan-blown things outside a car dealer, Android tablet makers may have found a nut. The horny one has already covered why Android OEMs make ridiculously large phones. It’s because they can’t sell tablets. Only companies that can actually provide you something to do on a tablet—Apple, Amazon and Google—have shown they can sell tablets. And two of them have to sell them without making any money on them.
But Dvorak gets the Apple bashing out of the way early in this piece. And gets right into the crazy.
Well, as many of you know, I do not find tablets that useful.
Translation: In my day, we put on our bear fur coats before using laptops the size of steamer trunks, which were fueled by burning whale fat! And that’s the way we liked it!
But the 7-inch tablet, to me, is a giant mobile phone.
Uh, without the phone part, of course.
Just look at the Nexus 7. It is exactly the same as the Galaxy Nexus, only bigger.
Uh, in that they’re both flat things that run Android. Sure.
Was he always this kooky or is he especially kooky now?
So the Nexus 7 is what it looks and feels like: a huge phone.
Uhhh … without the phone part.
Someone call an ambulance, because now the Macalope’s actually worried about him.
I’ve held this thing to my head as if it was a cell phone…
OK, that’s a little weird.
…and, to be honest, it could easily work.
No, it could not! OK, technically, yes, but by all that’s true and right in this universe, no, it could not.
Yes, it is too big and kind of looks silly. But how silly?
SERIOUSLY, CONCERNINGLY, HAVE-YOU-HAD-A-STROKE-STYLE SILLY.
The Macalope knows Dvorak likes to play up the curmudgeon stuff, but what’s the reader value in listening to him yelling at clouds for 600 words?
[Editors’ Note: 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.]