| Kippreport.com

Apple tablet to herald new era of smugness

January 27, 2010 5:30 by kippreport

Apple launches its eagerly awaited touchscreen ‘tablet’ device tonight. It will be, no doubt, a zippy, smart, revolutionary, and mind-bogglingly expensive bit of kit.

But despite the hype, Kipp is wary. It is wary of the ‘trendier-than-thou’ attitude of Apple bores, and the likely barrage of self-consciously cool sentiment that will accompany the launch.

Ever since the Macintosh launched in 1984, there’s been an ‘us and them’ attitude among Apple owners. Buying one of their products has always been a fast-track way to distinguish oneself from the dowdy, Web 1.0 masses. Apple means a carefully-cocooned, insular but slick operating system, versus the C: prompt in DOS. It means Steve Jobs’ trademark black turtleneck and blue jeans, versus Bill Gates’ wooly jumpers. It’s Starbucks Vs Nescafe. George Clooney Vs Bono. And hell, don’t their smug converts let you know it.

Of course, Apple’s products are amazing. They look good, feel good, and (usually) work ok too. They are smart, they are sexy. The point is, buying one of their products does not automatically mean you inherit such qualities.

For while Apple’s products have always been ‘cool’, they’ve never been effortlessly cool. It’s all too self-conscious. It’s like being a Kings of Leon fan in 2009, rather than 1999. Why not go out and find the tech equivalent of that as-yet-unsigned indie band? Kipp hasn’t found it yet, but it did once use Linux…

Anyway, we don’t claim to have the answers. We’re just warning you: Watch out for the boasts, the smugness. We can hear them now… “My iPad/iSlate/iTablet is better than your Amazon kindle. You can BLOW on it to turn pages of a book.”

Actually, that would be cool. Damn you, Apple.

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Tags: Apple, iPad, iSlate, iTablet, Steve Jobs