Victim of High Expectations?

Victim of High Expectations?, originally uploaded by Rollofunk.

Keeping an eye on the tech and gadget blogsphere (among other things) have resulted in a Tablet overdose lately. I don't think any product has generated as much rumor, speculation, emotions and hype as the recently unveiled iPad. Now it's out for all to see, and a quick look at the comments seems to reveal a crowd in disbelief and lot's of unimpressed punters. Still a lot of details missing, as the whole objective user experience for example, so I won't go into analyzing the device itself. Seems a lot of people were expecting terribly much from a gadget that may or may not be a new product category in itself, and were let down when they didn't see the light immediately in mr. Job's presentation. That's the web, and by extension (western) consumers for you, I guess. Fickle and hard to please.

Same type of behaviour can be seen in the ongoing, tragicomically US-centric smartphone debate: A while ago Motorola was being written off as nothing new and exciting appeared after the RAZR. Until the Droid that is, and now Moto is soo cutting edge again, with Nokia taking the place in the hotseat (though making a valiant effort to get out of it with the N900). Might Apple be the next to get mobbed, or do they still have enough cool points left to handle the possible flop the iPad might be? If it indeed is a flop, that is. And would it be different if it had hit more out of the blue, like the first iPhone? I believe it would.

Glad I'm pretty exclusively working with designs most gadget blog speculators never even hear about.