Who Needs An Apple Tablet?

Wilcox can’t win this argument for the simple fact that you can’t tell people what they do or don’t need. If Siegler and Scoble want to spend $1,000 on a newfangled computing form factor, Wilcox isn’t going to stop them. There are people who will buy every new gadget because they love gadgets. There’s nothing craven or wrong about that – some folks are simply compelled to have every new toy. God loves gadgetheads, too.

I, for one, will not buy an Apple tablet, no matter how mind-blowing it is with what I can only assume will be cutting-edge computing sorcery and digital eye candy, such as 3D graphics. I would not by this device if Google made it with Android or Chrome Operating System, certainly not for $1,000.

Why? Because I try to exercise gadget restraint. Spending $1,000 on a computing device that does what my $300 Asus Eee PC does, albeit with a few more digital effects and trickery, is not something I believe in. I’ve never spent $1,000 on a computer, and I won’t start now.

But I speak only for me and only as someone who uses computers primarily to work and pay bills. I will not chastise anyone who wants to refill Apple’s coffers with more coinage for making computing more pretty. I certainly won’t tell people the world doesn’t need the Apple tablet.

I should note that Siegler agonised over the $1,000 pricing rumor in a follow-up post, which doubles as an attack on the Journal’s reportage. Siegler psychoanalysed the $1,000 tablet valuation, arguing that Apple put it out there to analysts and others so as not to shock a consumer world recovering from a recession when the tablet is announced, again allegedly, 27 January:

“It’s in people’s minds now that this is how much it will be, and they can ponder that for a few weeks leading up to the event. That way, if the device actually is around that price, people will have been prepared for it when it’s officially announced. It will put the product’s features back into the spotlight, rather than the price, which will have been already known.”

Siegler’s rationalisation of the $1,000 price, which may seem as insane to economists analysing the recession as it does to Joe Worker who has been unemployed for 12 months, is the classic rhetoric of Apple apologists. Surely Siegler knows that such a device will be a tough sell to the masses recovering from a recession, but here he is, justifying and defending an alleged $1,000 pricing. Apple stockholders also dream of high margins.

Of course, if this Apple tablet proposes to dramatically alter the computing experience as we know it and ends up costing $500 or less someday, I will reconsider buying it or something of its ilk. Scoble noted: “Look five years out and the device that is $1,000 today will probably be $200 or less.” I hope he is right.

Until then, the next device I buy will likely be a Chrome OS-based netbook in 2011, assuming it costs less than $500 and I like what I see when I test it. Until then, for $1,000, the Apple fanboys can have the tablet all to themselves.

And you know what? They will. All hail the Apple cult.