As we all know, in Chinese, the symbol for “crisis” is “danger” plus “opportunity.” Keep that in mind when you hear this latest tidbit: the “rear touchpad” on the Notion Ink Adam tablet will be disabled upon shipping because, it seems, the good men and ladies at Notion Ink couldn’t figure out what to do with it. It’s not a crisis, friends, it’s danger plus opportunity.
King Rohan writes:
Right now I have no idea on that. We wanted to do something special, and it seems that its going to take little more time. As a hack you can infact open the device as add as big a trackpad possible and it will just work (with x axis reversed)!
While to you or I would call a product with a disabled or “not yet-enabled feature” “a bug,” to the Adam crowd this is a representation of the magnanimity of the NI team that they would provide us with all the tools needed to future-proof our devices well into the 21st century. Like a stereo sold by Crazy Eddie, some of the features of the NI will not exist until they are unlocked or hacked down the line, which points us to the true audience for this device: kids who like to mess around with their hardware. Nothing bad about that, to be sure, but you’d be hard pressed to make a market based on that small cohort.
Oh well. Hopefully our pre-ordered model is being built as we speak by Rohan and his merry elves.