2009-08-16
post/164181041
I have to agree on the MacBook Air, which was also ridiculed like crazy on introduction (I’m guilty of it, too). But the Air is awesome. ”
Marco Arment, following up Neven Mrgan, on people’s disdain for new Apple product.
The thing I note here is that the initial revision of the iPod was somewhat rubbish. It was the third generation, which had USB - and, probably more importantly, Windows - support that it became a mass-market item.
Similarly, the MacBook Air’s quiet upgrades over the last year and a half (notably the capacity of both the HDD and SDD options) have made that much more attractive than it was at launch. The iPhone took over a year to mature, too, with the arrival of 3G and App Store.
This doesn’t just work for Apple, of course. In today’s Observer Robert McCrum comments that “the second version of Amazon’s Kindle matured into an attractive, discreet and user-friendly tool”.
Does this mean the first version of the tablet is going to fail? Probably not. It does mean I might well wait for the second version to see if it gets better, or if the role Apple manage to carve out for it is one I actually have need of.
