Why I'm Returning My Apple iPad ($AAPL)
In the past 48 hours I've gone from boycotting the Apple iPad, to purchasing one, and this morning I'm bringing it back to the store. While I can explain my initial justification for purchasing the device, I should state that I could just as easily justify …
Context & Ripple Effects
The iPad's April 2010 launch has produced a running argument rather than a consensus verdict: ReadWriteWeb mapped the backlash against the device back in January, and today al3x staked out a moderate position on its closedness while paidContent argued the tablet actually strengthens Amazon's hand in books. This post is that argument in miniature — one writer cycling from boycott to purchase to return inside 48 hours.
The pattern has a lineage: the same publication cycle carried Business Week's 2007 case against buying an iPhone, where principled objection to Apple's terms coexisted with desire for the hardware. The return decision is the newest data point in a recurring tension between what the iPad is and how it is sold.
First-order effects
- Apple absorbs an early return on a device still in its first sales week — the buyer's stated reasons, not the refund itself, are what circulate publicly during the launch window when perception of the product is being set.
- The buyer recovers the full purchase price under standard retail return policy, converting a $499-plus commitment into a free two-day trial of a product category with no established track record.
Second-order effects
- Every publicized return hands ammunition to the alternatives camp: paidContent's same-day argument that the iPad reinforces Amazon's Kindle position gains a concrete example of a customer walking away from the tablet.
- The openness critique that al3x addresses head-on becomes the swing variable in purchase decisions, forcing Apple to defend the closed App Store model not just to developers but to buyers articulating why they walked out of the store.
Third-order effects
- If the boycott-buy-return cycle recurs across the user base, Apple's gatekeeper leverage over software distribution stops being a developer-side controversy and becomes a measurable drag at the point of sale — the same friction documented in the 2007 iPhone resistance.
- A market where consumers publicly litigate their own purchases turns early adopters into de facto critics, raising the reputational cost of a constrained first-generation product and pressuring vendors toward faster iteration or more open terms.
The trend: Consumer computing decisions around Apple's closed platforms are increasingly made publicly and on principle, with openness — not price or specs — emerging as the deciding variable from the iPhone through the iPad.