The iPad Hype: David Loftus

I doubt the iPad will be “revolutionary” (a highly overused and overwrought term for consumer goods in any case). The latest toys are coming so thick and fast that people are either going to run out of disposable income to throw at them, or they’ll simply succumb to “novelty fatigue.”

Though day jobs past (and the occasional temporary assignment these days) force me to work on PCs of various shapes and software configurations during the day, I’m a confirmed Apple user at home … but in moderation. Our two-year-old iMac and my five-year-old PowerBook G4 are doing pretty much everything we need them to, with only some software upgrades, an external hard drive, and other apps and attachments brought in over the years. We use simple mobile phones. I have an iPod Touch but I use it only to listen to music (nearly a thousand tunes with the odd symphony, piano work, and Bob Newhart/Monty Python/Woody Allen comedy routine thrown in).

We’re on a tight budget and we don’t need any new toys. We do enough imaginative, creative, and free-lance income-generating work with the old ones, thank you very much.