Aside from iPad cases, you aren't likely to find a wide range of useful iPad accessories, thanks to an ever-increasing number of innovative apps and features.
Electronics accessories have always been a kind of "micro-market" surrounding the world of computers and gadgets. For every one Apple, HP, or Blackberry, there are literally hundreds of accessories designers and manufacturers, ranging from the predictable to innovative, and from cheap to expensive. It is, to be sure, a parasitic industry that relies on a fresh, steady stream of new gadget wizardry to stay afloat.
However, over the past few years, gadget users have shied away from investing in accessories.
While cases continue to be a mainstay of gadget and computer users, other more quirky external accessories are losing traction in the consumer electronics market. This is particularly true with iPad accessories. Even though iPad cases are flying off the shelves, few other external iPad accessories have come to the market that have really made their mark with neophyte iPad users.
Taking a quick look around the online marketplace, you find the same level of quirkiness that you'd find with any other set of electronics accessories. For
instance, there is the iPad chair, which evokes comparisons to Captain Kirk's command chair on Star Trek. Modeled after lesser-priced inflatable iPod and gaming chairs that interface the audio and sound portions of your gadget experience with the furniture itself, the iPad chair comes across as an overpriced Lazyboy recliner with a tacky iPad holder affixed to one of the arms. Sure, it might be more technologically advanced than the portrait I'm painting of it here, but all in all it ranks as one of the iPad accessories you'll look at but never buy.
iPad accessories can get quirkier than this, however.
The iPad finger stylus, for example, effectively neutralizes the one feature of the iPad that makes it truly innovative: gesture control. This iPad finger stylus is indeed clever in that it works with the touch screen of your iPad by transferring the natural electrical pulses from you hand. However, the disturbing prospect of gripping an alarmingly life-like, "fully functional" (the designer's words) finger and perusing your iPad with it begs the question: do you want to be seen in public using a dismembered finger to work your iPad? Or better yet, what do you have against your own fingers?
Thing from the Addams Family would be crushed.
But perhaps the most excruciatingly ridiculous and over-engineered addition to the pointless iPad accessories market is the hands-free iPad bookstand. From my own perspective, there is probably no other position where the
iPad is most easily held, gripped, and used than while sitting up in bed. And yet, someone out there has spent a lot of time, money, and metal coming up with this hospital-grade monstrosity for affixing your iPad in just about the most cumbersome position possible for using a tablet gadget. Sure, it's a sturdy, unflinching design, constructed of metal and sporting a myriad of clamps, bumpers, and support beams. Practically speaking, this is one of the only iPad accessories that you could reasonably put yourself in traction with, following some unforeseen iPad disaster.
Oh, to imagine the blood rushing out of your fingers as you strain to read your new ebook!
So you might ask, why so many flops in the iPad accessories market? The answer is simple: accessories are quickly being replaced by apps, thanks to more emphasis on what's inside and less emphasis on external accessories that used to make up for what the device itself couldn't offer.
Add to this the improved ergonomics of mobile gadgets - protective housings, smaller sizes, and improved aesthetics, and pretty soon gadget users realize that they don't necessarily need a bunch of useless iPad accessories to enjoy their tablet experience any more than they already are.
The one bastion of electronics accessories that will never be outmoded is the case industry. No matter how hardy and rugged gadget cases may become, users will always seek to cover up their beloved iPhone, iPad, Blackberry, or laptop. The iPad, in particular, demands a solid iPad case, since it is a larger device that is often gripped with only one hand, leaving the other to operate it.
Aside from that, anticipate a steady flow of iPad accessories to grace the consumer electronics market over the years to come. Just don't expect too much from them!
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