Apple's "iPad" Out In the Open 1713
Reader oxide7 is one of the many to note that the heaviest speculation is mostly over (still waiting on the price, though) about Apple's anticipated new device (though there are surely plenty of questions about the device's hardware capabilities and the scope of its software and content marketplace): "At an event in San Francisco Apple released its anticipated iPad.'[It's] Way better than a laptop, way better then a phone. You can turn it any way you want. To see the whole page is phenomenal,' said Jobs." The (0.5") skinny: 1.5 lbs, multitouch, up to 64GB of flash, 9.7" screen, and a 1Ghz "Apple A4" chip (more about the A4 in Engadget's developing story). The iPad is closer in concept to an expanded iPhone (OS and all) than a miniaturized laptop, though it doesn't have quite as much connectivity as you might expect, with no 3G connection built in. (You'll have to make do with 802.11n, Bluetooth, and tethering.) Live coverage is ongoing at gdgt live, Engadget, and Gizmodo, as well as various others. Update by timothy, 19:58 GMT: Got the 3G part wrong; 3G is indeed an option. Prices run from $499 (16GB flash, WiFi but no 3G) to $829 (WiFi and 3G, 64GB flash). Should start shipping in 60 days (WiFi only), in 90 days for 3G. Surprsingly, no built-in camera.
Re:No flash support (Score:5, Informative)
Yep, this picture (http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2010/01/apple-creation-0128-rm-eng.jpg [blogcdn.com]) pretty much spells it out.
The fact that they didn't even try to hide this during their usually precise demo of the product is surprising.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:No WCMDA/HSPA or even CDMA/EVDO is a huge miss (Score:4, Informative)
Just buy a Verizon mifi [verizonwireless.com] and tape the fucking thing to the back, jesus christ. It's big enough.
Problem solved.
Re:No flash support (Score:5, Informative)
I think it likely has as much to do with the impact of Flash's unquenchable thirst for CPU cycles on battery life.
Re:No WCMDA/HSPA or even CDMA/EVDO is a huge miss (Score:4, Informative)
they do have 3g. just announced
Error in the article (Score:5, Informative)
"There will be models with 3G support" according to Steve Jobs, so saying that it doesn't support 3G is just a bit, um, wrong.
3G Data Plans (Score:4, Informative)
Notes from watching streaming event.
3G Wireless w/AT&T
$14.99 for up to 250 MB per month
$29.99 for unlimited per month
Discuss?
Re:No 3g? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Extra things you'll need (Score:5, Informative)
But it doesn't.
I use a 1.2ghz Pentium M tablet PC running XP tablet edition (Less than $350 with a new battery). Why? because I can annotate PDF files, take notes with one note (PLEASE we need a OSS version of that app) and then at the end of the meeting I can simply email all of it via my corperate email. Those two apps are the killer apps most people that use a tablet professionally need. I can annotate the customers blueprints and send them and engineering a copy, Plus my notes in one note are easy to organize. All on something that costs less than this thing will even in it's el-cheapo form.
Re:Error in the article (Score:5, Informative)
AT&T (per usual)
$15/mo for 250 MB or$30/mo for unlimited
Free use of AT&T Wi-Fi hotspots
Uses GSM Micro SIMs and will work with any GSM provider that has these cards, all models are "unlocked" and not bound to a carrier
Pricing announced (Score:2, Informative)
Unit is to start at $499 for 8Gb, $599 for 16Gb, or $699 for 32Gb models
3G enabled units $130 more
Data plans (with AT&T) are 250Mb/month for $14.99 (surely they mean Gb?), or unlimited for $29.99
Re:price? (Score:5, Informative)
Nope.
Wi-fi versions are $499, $599, $699 for 16/32/64GB versions, respectively.
3G versions are $629, $729, $829, respectively.
Re:No flash support (Score:5, Informative)
Youtube serves up an H.264 version of the video to your iPhone. Not all videos are converted yet (google is massively numbercrunching behind the scenes to convert older ones). If the phone meets a video with no H.264 version it just says "cannot display movie at this time" or something like that.
You can use ClickToFlash on Safari in 10.6 to tell the Youtube site to serve the H.264 iPhone version to your browser instead of the flash version too - much nicer.
Re:Extra things you'll need (Score:4, Informative)
Exactly. Apparently this one costs $499. And it doesn't even have 3G (afraid of Nokia's patents?). Thats a major letdown for me, as I have cheap unlimited 3g and it would be perfect with a thing like this.
And the device is completely closed down like iPhone - if you want apps, you need to buy them from App Store.
I was waiting for the announcement, but meh. Not for me. I'll just wait for Courier [gizmodo.com].
Re:What is the point? (Score:4, Informative)
I wonder if it could work with a Bluetooth keyboard
There's a dockable keyboard.
Re:3G Data Plans (Score:2, Informative)
Re:3G Data Plans (Score:2, Informative)
latest draft of the spec (Score:2, Informative)
Here [w3.org]. It's not like this is GNU Hurd or something.
http://www.apple.com/ipad/ (Score:5, Informative)
Not seeing it on the front page, but it's all up here.
Re:Extra things you'll need (Score:3, Informative)
Yeah summary mislead me.
"So $499 for 16GB of iPad," Jobs explained. "That's our base model. 32GB is $599, 64GB is $799. 3G models cost an extra $130. $629, 729, and 829 with 3G."
$130 extra for 3G. Geez.
multiple SIM cards (Score:5, Informative)
I know this comes as a surprise to US users, but in many countries, you get multiple SIM cards on the same contract for no or little extra money. Put one in your phone, one in your reader, one in your laptop, etc. Nice, eh?
Re:No flash support (Score:3, Informative)
I assume you mean the QuickTime player because h.264 is just an encoding method, not a content player. Flash Player 9 supports h.264
Apple spec site is up (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.apple.com/ipad/ [apple.com]
--
I wasn't seeing this on the main apple page. Store hasn't been down today.
Re:price? (Score:4, Informative)
It's unlocked, which means it's unsubsidized. The 3G data plan is pretty cheap.
Re:Wifi tethering with Android or Nokia, of course (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, turns out it comes in 3G versions as well, so you can use it directly.
Re:It has 3G. (Score:2, Informative)
Wow, second post to say that, moderated up, and yet completely clueless. 3G means UMTS (if it accepts a SIM, which this does). UMTS is the standard that, everywhere outside the USA, mobile operators are frantically moving away from as they roll out HSPA (3.5G), which provides an order of more speed, or in some case LTE, which is another order of magnitude beyond that.
It also made me chortle a bit to see the prices that Steve Jobs was saying were a 'breakthrough' in pricing for data access. I didn't realise how overpriced data traffic was in the USA. You'd think that companies charging that much would have enough money to roll out HSPA...
Re:price? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Pricing announced (Score:3, Informative)
Re:It has 3G. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:iTouch on steroids (Score:3, Informative)
Re:No flash support (Score:4, Informative)
I highly doubt Hulu or anyone else will ever support H264.
You mean except for the fact that Hulu currently does use H.264? Same with youtube?
From Hulu's about page:
Leveraging the H.264 capability of the new Flash Player
Re:No flash support (Score:3, Informative)
I highly doubt Hulu or anyone else will ever support H264. By the time they start to move away from Flash, there will be something else on the horizon.
You can watch YouTube videos on a Palm Pre because YouTube videos are also encoded in h.264 (the Pre doesn't yet have an Adobe Flash player).
Re:Doesn't Create a Need (Score:4, Informative)
My wife's netbook is half the price of the cheapest iPad, and it can play Hulu and Netflix Instant View.
Re:So far some interesting points (Score:3, Informative)
This device is severely limited and would do a quick faceplant if it were not Apple. I don't say this as a troll; Apple creates a marketplace for their devices, and that's what makes them great.
This device NEEDS a dedicated app store to make it useful. There's nothing valuable written for touchpads right now - no decent OS support, no decent touch oriented apps, nothing. MS has been very lax in their support of touchpad devices because they've been chasing other things. WinMobile still thinks most people use a stylus on a PDA. They've ignored finger-driven phones for two full code cycles already. Most apps are desktop based (or laptop), so they're driven my mouse/pointer interaction. This iPad doesn't have a keyboard, so kb shortcuts that power users are used to are out the window. The lack of a WM app store means that practically anything you buy for a WM device is going to be $20-$30 per app from a 3rd party. It's hard to get a good stable of apps for less than the price of the phone!
It's Apple, so there's a single interface. That will get the accessory makers to make this thing connect to everything we already use (like the iPod is to car stereos...every heard of a Zune native interface on an mass produced aftermarket head unit?) By getting really good apps on this, people will find it useful, if not ideal. And ideal isn't what people want - they just want good.
Don't get me started on the cloud, though. I don't live in a major metro area, so finding 3G outside of my town is a bit dicey. That means 60-90kbps data rates, and I'm not going to get anything useful in realtime over a link like that. And if I don't pony up $360/yr (or tether my $1000/yr phone plan), I'm stuck with no cloud resources at all when I'm out of a wi-fi hotspot - which is practically everywhere. You can still use the cloud if you have local storage; you can't work off-cloud if you don't.
Re:Extra things you'll need (Score:3, Informative)
The iPad supports 3G.
Re:Is that an OLED screen? (Score:5, Informative)
Here are the full specs: http://www.apple.com/ipad/specs/ [apple.com]
Re:Multi-tasking (Score:5, Informative)
It doesn't.
Re:No flash support (Score:2, Informative)
It will dock with a keyboard.
Re:No flash support (Score:1, Informative)
I don't know of any products with worse security records than Acrobat Reader and Flash.
Wait.. let me think hard... very hard.. Microsoft Windows? Nope, it was not hard at all.
With that weak processor? (Score:4, Informative)
No, Jobs won't allow his new baby to stutter, and multi-tasking is just asking for a less brilliant user experience. 1GHz on an ARM is going to be necessarily limited in horsepower, and dividing that between several apps is going to lead to poor input response. Besides, he doesn't want to hear you complaining that your 10 hour iPad only lasts for 2 hours because you left your folding-at-home app running in the background. :-)
I'm kind of amazed it doesn't have a gps. Google maps is going to suck.
Re:True (Score:1, Informative)
Please show me exactly which flaws were fixed when compared with a graph of the sales records (preferably logarithmic, to help see detail in the early days), because I have this feeling -- well, more exactly a strong and precise set of memories as a person who was gifted a first gen. iPod and also held shares of Apple back in those days -- that you are completely full of shit with your revisionist history. Apple stock lagged the release of the iPod, however the iPod crushed the competition rather quickly and the later rises in sales was part of an overall major increase in mp3 player sales. The first gen. iPod was in some ways better than the following few generations -- in that it had the clicky-wheel to provide tactile feedback, and firewire which made it a good portable hard drive.
Re:True (Score:5, Informative)
Re:gay (Score:5, Informative)
Pluses:
Re:Pros vs Cons (Score:3, Informative)
No HD Video (1024x768)
Actually, it does output 720p via a "Dock Connector to VGA adapter http://www.apple.com/ipad/specs/ [apple.com].
It can even output the video and show something completely different on the unit's on-board display...
Re:No flash support (Score:5, Informative)
Re:What is the point? (Score:4, Informative)
better resolution that iPhone
Actually it has a WORSE resolution than the iPhone (132ppi Vs 163ppi), the screen is just bigger, but not as sharp.
Re:Ok (Score:3, Informative)
There's also the question of how you get non-online movies to it, doesn't appear to have USB or SD card the like so you have to transfer everything wirelessly from your desktop and then save them on the small internal memory.
One of the accessories for the iPad is a SD card reader - I would assume that this would allow you to access music, movies, ebooks, and documents stored on the SD card.
Re:Error in the article (Score:3, Informative)
more importantly, NO CONTRACT REQUIRED. One month you turn it on, next month you can turn it off, then on later. Activates from the device itself. Also like that it's OPTIONAL. (since it can also tether with an iPhone).
Re:Extra things you'll need (Score:3, Informative)
The mobiles don't cost that because they're subsidized (I'm assuming US here). The iPad's data is contract free, and so it basically contains an unsubsidized 3G card, and so costs more.
Re:price? (Score:3, Informative)
But the iPad is unlocked out of the gate -- no contract and no provider lock-in. Whether or not AT&T gets a cut, these data plans create interesting competitive price pressure.
Re:Disappointed. (Score:3, Informative)
Video of an early prototype from CES using the PixelQi screen with a touchscreen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zy9fPc1yGSU [youtube.com]
Re:What is the point? (Score:1, Informative)
All of us wannabe geek with CS graduate degrees and years (13+ in my case) of IT support and management experience, respond with a firm, "STFU."
Re:No flash support (Score:2, Informative)
Re:What is the point? (Score:3, Informative)
Advanced > Subscribe to podcast... > enter RSS url.
Next question?
Re:No flash support (Score:2, Informative)
Here [daringfireball.net]
Because Flash is so widely used and commonly loaded, it crashes more than anything else on the mac, according to Apple's crash-reporting data. It's one of the stated reasons why apple made Safari load plugins seperately from the main application in 10.6 (the other being 64-bit compatability), because they crash so much. And the most used, most-crashy one is Flash.
Re:Extra things you'll need - drive size/cost (Score:2, Informative)
You can be sure that the solid state drive in the ipad isn't just a USB stick - it would wear out too soon as those cheap USB sticks are made from Multi level cells and typically there is a 10000 write cycle lifetime per cell. It is very likely that the ssd is a full blown drive of the single level cell type...with a 1000000 write life per cell
Re:What is the point? (Score:2, Informative)
I wonder if it could work with a Bluetooth keyboard
There's a dockable keyboard.
and a Bluetooth keyboard... so, yes.
Re:True (Score:4, Informative)
You're kidding, right? (Score:4, Informative)
$130 is the standard price for just about any 3G add on to a netbook/laptop (at least that's what Dell charges, and I think that may be only with a plan purchase). $4/GB for a reliable SSD seems to be about retail, about $3/GB at discount, Dell charges $5.10/GB for an SSD in their laptops. This is closer to $6.75/GB. Not really a huge premium over another integrator, given that this is a "hot" product.
You should be. indeed, be modded down as troll. I'm about the last person you'd find defending Apple, but the pricing really isn't far off from what should be expected. Feel free to argue about how annoying it is that you can't add the memory yourself, or change he battery, or that they didn't bother to include 3G/GPS out of the box. You could say they did, and for less than the rumored $999. They just offered a cheap, stripped down version like Dell does. You know, for the metrosexuals who are out of a job right now.
Re:No flash support (Score:3, Informative)
Really? So you have never heard of Microsoft and Windows.
Re:Something the world DIDN'T need... (Score:2, Informative)
I guess this is the old thing about forgetting the failures and celebrating the successes. NeXT, iPod HiFi, G4 Cube, etc.
Re:What is the point? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:iPad? Really? (Score:1, Informative)
Your video has been yanked (as expected). You mean this one?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8eF0y0IfpPU
Re:What is the point? (Score:1, Informative)
"The display resolution [wikipedia.org] of a digital television or display device is the number of distinct pixels in each dimension that can be displayed."
Like it or not, that's the definition. PPI/DPI/pixel density/etc refers to what you want, but resolution is raw pixels.
Re:No flash support (Score:3, Informative)
You mean use WPF? No thanks, HTML5 + Canvas can do an awful lot, check out the NES emulator, or the 3d Rendering, or GPS and mapping, etc. And remember, for millions of us, Silverlight can do nothing as we are unsupported.
Re:Extra things you'll need (Score:3, Informative)
Not to rain on your parade, but...
e-ink is much better in direct sunlight than backlit screens (especially if they are shiny)
Re:What is the point? (Score:2, Informative)
Nah, "synergy" was a mid-90s buzz-word. Nobody buys synergy anymore.
We in the hipster computing community have moved onto newer buzz-words. What we want is a "cloud computing" turd*! And we'll settle for nothing less than that! Everything else you said was pretty much dead-on, though. I can't believe how many people are obsessing over this iPad even though it was a total let down, by nearly all expectations.
* Today, that is.. Tomorrow we'll pick up on some other meaningless marketing term and demand it whether it makes sense or not.
"And one more thing! With the iFece, your shit literally will not stink! It's the Apple-lovers dream!"
Re:What is the point? (Score:3, Informative)
Actually it has a WORSE resolution than the iPhone (132ppi Vs 163ppi), the screen is just bigger, but not as sharp.
Actually, it has a better resolution [wikipedia.org] than the iPhone (1024x768 vs 480x320) but a larger dot pitch [wikipedia.org]. Don't try to correct someone unless you're sure of the terms being used.