Lies, Damned Lies, And The iPad

Jan 28 2010, 9:53am CST | by Robert Evans

Every single Apple product launch in recent memory has been preceded by a flurry of rumors, ranging from the curiously accurate to the ridiculously outlandish. In the aftermath of an event like yesterday's unveiling we can finally take a good look at who was right, and who was wrong.

We were all off on the iPad's camera. Most of us just assumed it would at least come with a WebCam. This is probably missing feature that people find the most jarring. While we expected the iPad to have more features, we also expected it to be hellishly expensive, in the $1000 ball-park. The iPad's $499 price tag came as a shock to just about everyone.

The rumors about a gesture-controlled iWorks suit were partially right. I didn't notice any weird new gesture input techniques during the iWorks demo. The early-January rumors that the iPad would feature no Intel inside also turned out to be startlingly accurate.

Those rumors from Digitimes about OLED screens for the iPad turned out to be fake, as everyone with a brain knew they would. In fact, pretty much all of the hardware rumors had the iPad sounding much cooler than it actually ended up being. While the A4 is, no doubt, zippy, the iPad still lacks the ability to multitask, just like the iPhone. In fact the most accurate rumor ended up being the one from AppleInsider claiming that the tablet was going to basically work like a giant iPhone.

And then we have the Verizon rumors. Nearly everyone expected something involving Verizon to happen at yesterday's event. Some even claimed that the iPhone 4G would be rolling their way. Obviously, that all proved to be laughably incorrect. Apple is sticking with AT&T (for whatever reason) with no sign of anything Big Red in sight.

On the whole, what surprised me was how accurate many of the iPad rumors turned out being. I'm only disappointed that the rumors which got it right were all, well, boring. Mr. Jobs, you can keep your "magic" tablet. I need something that can multitask. And accept USB drives. And microSD cards. And that has HDMI-out. Call me when version 2.0 hits.

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Robert Evans
The excitement about new smartphones, tablets and anything mobile drive Robert to unearth the latest rumors and developments in this fast moving space. He adopted 4G as soon as it become available and knows where the mobile market is going.
Robert can be contacted directly at robert@i4u.com.