Gina Trapani: ‘Why You Shouldn’t Buy an iPad (Yet)’

Unlike Cory Doctorow, Gina (unsurprisingly) makes a reasonable argument:

Don’t be the guy who bought the first-gen iPad when Apple slashes the 2011 iPad price in half.

That’s possible, of course. Everyone remembers the big original iPhone price drop three months after it shipped. But: I think the original iPhone was priced high to start as a hedge — just in case it didn’t sell in huge quantities. And remember: the original iPhone, even at $600, was sold out for most of its first three months.

I think the iPad is already priced to move. I don’t think we’re going to see any price cuts.

Next year’s iPad will be faster, cheaper, less buggy, and have better apps and worthy competitors. Let all the deep-pocketed Jobs apostles be your canaries into the iPad coalmine. Give developers time to fix their apps to work well on the iPad. Give Apple a year to lower prices on faster hardware and fill in all the gaping feature holes. (Remember how long early iPhone owners lived without copy and paste?)

Now this is true. Next year there will be a second-gen iPad and it’ll be superior in many ways to the ones that ship tomorrow. I don’t think they’ll be cheaper, but they’ll be better. (Remember, though, that those who bought the original iPhone got copy-and-paste for free when it was added to the iPhone OS.)

I think the comparison to the original iPhone is perfect. Me? Getting the original iPhone on day one was the best money I’ve ever spent. If you bought an original iPhone and regretted it a year later, though, you probably ought to skip the original iPad.

★ Friday, 2 April 2010