So we’ve had all hype and the pundit’s views on the iPad this week but the giffgaff team have just had a fish and chip lunch and announced their non pundit verdicts…..and they’re not good.
So here are some of the downsides that were circulating round the table….
Poor memory capacity, no Flash player (what? You can’t claim the best browsing experience without that surely?), a SIM card format no one has heard of, not as good for reading books as a “proper” e-reader, locked to the Apple book store, locked to Apple’s chosen network partner, no camera, no USB port and an inability to upgrade hardware and replace the battery.
There are of course the unsaid upsides of “being cool” and the neat UI eye candy. The price would be an upside too if the dollar price translated into pounds using a real world exchange rate – but the likelihood of that is about as high as Apple ever conducting market research.
The concept is spot on – an easy to use, portable, big screen computer – but it only comes just the way that Apple want it to, serviced by a book store and network provider they choose.
It’s much the same with many other smartphones - Blackberries, Palms etc but what is smart about it? Hasn’t the web itself – the thing all these devices purport to access in the best possible way – taught the world that open standards and customer engagement are the best ways to breed the best services – would Wikipedia, Tripadvisor and the like be here now if the people that built the web tried to control what went on it?
Many of these companies would argue that bundling the applications with the device gives them extra revenue streams that ultimately allows them to sell the device at a cheaper price – they may well be right but that doesn’t erase the fact that what they are doing, in a small way, is limiting personal freedom. Why shouldn’t we all have the right to be able to use a device which we have paid for in the way we want to?
An alternative economic argument is that bundling services and devices in a restricted way reduces competition and that in turn helps to keep prices higher than they would otherwise be. That’s clearly the argument that has won the day in some countries such as France where only selling locked devices is illegal.
So why don’t you tell us what you think and vote on whether device manufacturers should be allowed to restrict how we use their wares – just click here.
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