Amagod Appul event!!11

[D-Base]

No USB port (you need an adapter, included but just a PITA and something else to lose)
No Flash support in web browser

That pretty much throws me off, not that I have the money to buy it anyway LOL...

How can maintain my pretty farm without flash support

 

[andysayshi]

Yeah it will be totally THE device for people who just want "something" for browsing a lot.
It's not like there is quite a lot of flash .. everywhere


Sounds like you are talking about a netbook
The iRemovePaddingFromMyPurse wants to do everything .. and can't do anything. I see a market for the kindle. It mainly does one thing - but it is very good at this. Where is the iPlot very good at? In terms of that iPhone interface? Well if you want to pay that much money just for an interface on an otherwise inferior device .. and talking about that .. iTunes is still the only media player that frequently crashes on me on certain mp3s .. probably I should have bought them from the store to prevent that .. mybad .. DOH.

Again, sounds like you have no concept that this device is not aimed at you in any way. You like computers and you like using them. This device is designed for people who just want to do specific, simple tasks without any of the shit that goes with a computer OS.

Compare the process of installing a game purchased online on a Windows netbook vs an iPhone/iPad.

On the netbook:
Go to website. Find game. Buy game. Enter card details. When approved, go to download page. Click download. Windows ask "Run or Save file?" You don't want to lose the file, so you choose "Save" and specify a folder destination. File downloads. Open Explorer window and navigate to Downloads folder. Double click on zip file to unzip. Run setup. Installer runs. Say yes to 3 or 4 security messages and contract acceptances. Wait for game to install. When it finishes, click okay. Close Downloads explorer window. Go to Start Button, Programs, Game folder, Game. Click to run.

On an iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch:
Open App store. Find game. Touch the "purchase" button. Enter iTunes password. Wait for install. Touch icon to run game.



That's a simple example of why this device is ideal for people who don't want the clutter of a computer OS. They just want to get simple, everyday tasks done, with a lightweight, simple-to-use device.

Kindle? A 10" Kindle with 4Gb of RAM costs US$489, it's black & white and supports PDF display with no zoom capability.

A 10" iPad with 16Gb RAM costs $499. And the iPad is full colour, plays music, video, YouTube, web-browser, runs apps and games (many free), shows maps, is a word processor and presentation machine, supports PDF, Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Pages, Keynote, Numbers, Quicktime, Mpeg4, MP3, AAC, AIFF, TXT, RTF and many more. Third party apps offer support for dozens of other formats including WMV, DivX, etc. Provides video and audio outputs for external monitor/TV, VNC control of other computers, photo storage, viewing and slideshows etc etc etc

Kindle??

 

[Corny]

well with a kindle i can at least take notes for the documents.

and a decent psp or nintendo ds is quite a lot cheaper for games
the iPad is nothing but an expensive toy.

 

[andysayshi]

^ Much the same criticism was given to the iPod. And the iPhone.

None of the devices you've mentioned do all the things the iPad does. Kindle does one job well but that's it. PSP and Nintendo DS do one job well, and the games cost a fortune.

The iPad isn't right for you or me, but I reckon they'll sell 2 million easily in the first 12 months. Maybe more.

 

[Corny]

Well even many macheads are not really happy with it. We will see

 

[andysayshi]

I think the iHype thing has got out of hand - it's actually working against Apple this time. Speculation got so over the top that the reality couldn't live up to people's imaginations. People were expecting more than what they got.

But once the dust settles, I think this will be a nice little earner for Apple. I might even buy the iPad 2.0 if they add some stuff.

 

[hotatlboi]

Disappointed that this is an iPhone/iPod tablet rather than an OS X tablet, I may have been interested in the latter.

 

[maxpowr9]

Basically a swing and a miss for Apple. You can't hit a homerun every time on new products.

My biggest gripe with tablet PCs is their durability. They notoriously break easily. I know Apple has a good handle on touch technology but I could see screens getting cracked/scratched easily and people then complaining about the image quality. I just can't picture a giant otterbox around this thing either for protection. Given the price tag, I doubt people would be willing to buy a new one if it breaks.

As Corny pointed out, this is just an expensive toy. The Mac addicts will eat this stuff up. Apple was much better off making a mac netbook than this paper weight. You will be surprised how fast that 16GB gets eaten up on a PC. A two hour movie is about 1GB right there. Hell I can even buy a 16GB memory stick for $60.

 

[Corny]

Apple's proprietary A4 chip runs the thing, so users are locked into Safari — and everything else Apple or Apple "approved."

I think that is exactly the plan.
An "easy" multimedia device that finally can do everything (somewhat .. ) and THEY control what is available on it.
Just look at the whole appstore approval policy debacle ..

 

[Audio Tech]

^ i believe the kindle is thinner and lighter .. ah well it's just an ebook reader .. but this is also just an ipod


awesome!

oh wait .. i have a laptop already .. and it can even receive tv signals.
and the display is even bigger ..



for what? there is nothing new here

I consider it an appliance. I don't always want to lug around a whole computer. I like to read. I'd like to walk around my house and even sit on the throne while browsing the net. For what it IS, I think it's great! Yes, I KNOW it's a big iPod, but I can't read books and web pages too comfortably on the iPod.

Think Star Trek pad.

 

[Corny]

Neither can you in the iPad .. back-lit displays are not really easy on the eyes.

And yes there are uses for tablet pcs - see star trek (or stargate .. and there they even have real ones). But the iPad is not designed for any of them

 

[andysayshi]

That's everybody's big eBook criticism of the iPad - "backlit displays aren't easy on the eyes". And yet 90% of computer users spend all day everyday looking at LCD monitors.

I've read dozens of eBooks in the Stanza app on my iPhone and I haven't gone blind yet.

 

[Corny]

^ I use an LCD yes. But if I am in for some long-time reading I hate reading on an LCD. Every university script or similar I print out because I'd want to kill myself after reading for an hour or so on the LCD

 

[andysayshi]

^ Maybe that discomfort comes from the form factor of a desktop/laptop PC being an inappropriate tool for long periods of reading. What YOU need is a lightweight, flat device that you can read books from while you're lying on a lounge chair. While you're reading, it could play you some music. Or you could take a break and check your email, and read the news. Or do a bit of gaming.

But where would you find one device that did all that?

 

[Corny]

What YOU need is a lightweight, flat device that you can read books from while you're lying on a lounge chair.

None of those "lying" poses in this video looks comfortable AT ALL. More like people are trying hard not to break their wrists.

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g92Yg79Of1s[/ame]

Oh .. and by the way, I can do all that perfectly on my laptop. It doesn't even weigh much more than the quite heavy iPad But it still got a LCD ..

 

[andysayshi]

Here's a great piece by Scottish technical writer Fraser Speirs:

http://www.macworld.com/article/146038/2010/01/ipad_future_shock.html?lsrc=rss_main

The Real Work is not formatting the margins, installing the printer driver, uploading the document, finishing the PowerPoint slides, running the software update or reinstalling the OS.

The Real Work is teaching the child, healing the patient, selling the house, logging the road defects, fixing the car at the roadside, capturing the table's order, designing the house and organizing the party.

Think of the millions of hours of human effort spent on preventing and recovering from the problems caused by completely open computer systems. Think of the lengths that people have gone to in order to acquire skills that are orthogonal to their core interests and their job, just so they can get their job done.

If the iPad and its successor devices free these people to focus on what they do best, it will dramatically change people's perceptions of computing from something to fear to something to engage enthusiastically with. I find it hard to believe that the loss of background processing isn't a price worth paying to have a computer that isn't frightening anymore.

That's what many just aren't getting. Is it locked down, restricted, perhaps even limited? Yes. But the reason for that is clear. It's really easy to use, and it does what it says it does, without you needing to install a driver or close a background application to fix it.