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.
No flash support (Score:5, Insightful)
Which means no hulu.com, espn360.com or fancast.com. Somehow Mr. Jobs is touting this as a feature.
What is the point? (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't this just a big expensive iPod touch now?
Doesn't Create a Need (Score:4, Insightful)
Awkward keyboard usage (Score:3, Insightful)
http://jimasks.me/if-you-could-choose-how-you-would-die-what-would-you-choose-and-why [jimasks.me]
Re:No flash support (Score:3, Insightful)
Bingo. This is a huge problem. Will Adobe even be invited on board to write a plugin? Apple should have sorted this out before releasing this. Even my Nokia E71 supports Flash, for God's sake.
Re:No flash support (Score:5, Insightful)
If you can free TV shows and movies streaming over Flash, why buy them on iTunes?
I don't expect Flash on this or the iPhone anytime soon.
Re:What is the point? (Score:5, Insightful)
Multi-tasking (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No flash support (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:No WCMDA/HSPA or even CDMA/EVDO is a huge miss (Score:2, Insightful)
You can tether it if you want. Or just download stuff to it that you want before you go. It's not really a problem.
Putting cell connectivity in this thing would be the kiss of death. Who wants to pay for ANOTHER cell contract?
Re:No flash support (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Doesn't Create a Need (Score:5, Insightful)
This entire presentation seems a little disappointing. Really, it looks, acts, and feels like a giant iPod Touch. Whereas the iPhone and iPod really created a need , I don't see that this substantially innovate to make it a must-have. It doesn't seem to improve on anything so substantially that it is an obvious choice. Maybe I need to see a few more videos, but I don't see this pulling serious market share away from Kindle's targeted market segment.
Yes, quite.
Last time I saw a /. commenter speculating about the future of Apple's latest new thing, it read something like this:
Raise your hand if you have iTunes ...
Raise your hand if you have a FireWire port ...
Raise your hand if you have both ...
Raise your hand if you have $400 to spend on a cute Apple device ...
There is Apple's market. Pretty slim, eh? I don't see many sales in the future of iPod.
~LoudMusic
I prefer to take the 'wait and see' approach.
Re:No WCMDA/HSPA or even CDMA/EVDO is a huge miss (Score:2, Insightful)
If you need another device to make it mobile it is not really a mobile device is it? Anyhow, how do I tether it? Do I need to buy this AND a iPhone?
Re:No WCMDA/HSPA or even CDMA/EVDO is a huge miss (Score:5, Insightful)
Universities and colleges all have strong wifi coverage
wait for Rev. B!
Apple will sell millions.
Re:No flash support (Score:3, Insightful)
On the plus side, maybe this will start to pressure sites like Hulu to find a better way to handle things.
Also, I bet the 10 hour battery life is based on some decent hardware-accelerated h264 decoding. Watch video in Flash and that number goes out the window.
Re:No flash support (Score:4, Insightful)
I rather have Apple kill Flash. Flash is a piece of shit. HTML5 is the future.
Re:No flash support (Score:4, Insightful)
Flash can be made completely secure by sandboxing it at the OS level. If iPhone can't do it, it's a problem with its OS, not with Flash.
Re:Doesn't Create a Need (Score:5, Insightful)
Given that the Kindle's target market is book readers, I don't think tablets like this will have much effect. It's more of a laptop replacement than a book reader; eInk is way more readable, and requires charging far less often. Yes, multiple single-purpose devices can get bulky, but then, I was already carrying around my books anyway. If I wanted a laptop, I'd look at the iPad as an alternative (just like I'd look at a netbook), but if I want to read books and newspapers, I'll stick with paper or eInk.
I'm not saying it will fail, I'm saying it will take market share from laptops far more than eBook readers.
Premature (Score:4, Insightful)
Steve Jobs is still on stage in the middle of announcing this thing. Couldn't the Slashdot article have waited until they've finished announcing all of the features?
Re:No flash support (Score:2, Insightful)
Cheap flash (the other kind) devices and PC BIOSes eventually supporting booting off them were what killed floppies, not Apple.
Re:What is the point? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's more than just an iPod touch that won't fit in your pocket...it's also an underpowered netbook with no keyboard. It's the worst of both worlds!
No no no! It has a faster processor than the iTouch, better resolution that iPhone, and some nifty new features to make up for the lack of keyboard... Iit is more like a Nexus One that won't fit in your pocket!
Re:No WCMDA/HSPA or even CDMA/EVDO is a huge miss (Score:3, Insightful)
Do I need to buy this AND a iPhone?
No, you need to buy this and a phone not locked to a network that hates tethering.
Re:What is the point? (Score:1, Insightful)
And LCD screens are poor for serious reading
You just go on believing that.
I have tried a bunch of eInk devices and they are complete junk. I have been waiting for a mainstream LCD-based electronic reader.
is late (Score:5, Insightful)
What was wrong with the oft-rumored "iSlate" moniker?
"Ip ad" doesn't mean anything in English. "Is late" meant Duke Nukem Forever for several years.
Re:No flash support (Score:5, Insightful)
Will Adobe even be invited on board to write a plugin?
Hopefully not. I don't know of any products with worse security records than Acrobat Reader and Flash. It's time for Flash to just go away. Fortunately, unlike FF, Safari does support h.264 which will surely be supported by hulu et al. eventually.
Re:Taking Jobs at his word (Score:4, Insightful)
I know you're joking, but it makes more sense in context. He's saying that there's no point in creating a new class of devices unless it actually does something better than the existing classes of devices. So if the iPad doesn't do *something* better than both the iPhone and MacBook, then they wouldn't be releasing it as a product. That doesn't mean that Macbooks and iPhones won't continue to do other things better.
So their hope is that the iPad will be better for reading ebooks (for example) than either the iPhone of MacBook, but the MacBook may still be better for general computing and the iPhone will be better at being a cell phone.
Re:What is the point? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:What is the point? (Score:3, Insightful)
http://www.archos.com/products/imt/archos_7/index.html?country=mz&lang=en [archos.com]
Archos has had these little multi-media things going for a couple years now. That one isn't quite as big as the iPad and it's probably short a few features here and there on things like Multi-touch...but it has wifi, hd video, hd sound..and it costs 350 instead of (what I'm hearing) 800 for this thing.
It wouldn't be an Apple product if it didn't cost way more than comprable hardware though.
Re:What is the point? (Score:5, Insightful)
There are lots of things that a iPod Touch with a larger screen would be useful for, like web browsing, book reading and movie watching.
Re:Hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
Its a convergence device. As such, its designed to be a better netbook than the Kindle DX, a better eReader than an EeePC, and a better portable media player than either.
Its not a better netbook than a dedicated netbook, or a better eReader than a dedicated reader (though, of course, Apple will try to sell it as being better in both these roles than the existing competition.) And maybe not a better portable media player for most uses than an iPod Touch. But Apple's bet is that the perceived price/utility it will provide is better than any of dedicated readers/netbooks because it does a good enough job in all three roles to be a one-stop multirole device.
Re:No flash support (Score:3, Insightful)
So let me get this straight: No one is complaining about this, except for the people who are?
He's saying that nobody who knows better is bitching about it.
It's like me bitching about how I won't use Linux because it doesn't have any useful apps for me. Linux users would think I'm a tard.
Re:price? (Score:2, Insightful)
Almost $850 for what amounts to a Hi-res iPhone without voice service? Pass.
Re:Extra things you'll need (Score:4, Insightful)
Let's see: so in essence what we have here is an iPod Touch with a 10" screen, and still pretty skimpy storage space.
Plus, it's only useful if you jailbreak it, once people figure out how to do so.
Yeah. I get the feeling this is gonna fly like the Macbook Air did. Give 'em 48 hours and people will wonder what the hell Apple was thinking.
So far some interesting points (Score:3, Insightful)
- Takes advantage of the huge amount of available iPhone apps, at least the ones that have sense to be run without phone.
- ePub [wikipedia.org] format for ebooks. Still can be DRMd (and probably with a format that makes it incompatible with other viewers?) but at least is an open format.
- Capacitive touchscreen, what about accuracy? will matter in such device?
- The presentation seems to be more about apps than about device
For a mobile device, still takes the desktop approach of storage (of movies, apps, books,etc), instead of the cloud one. Google could get the edge over them if moves to their cloud the most used parts of that functionality with Chrome and CHromeOS in ANY computer, not just tablets (if manage to calm down people worried about privacy and ownership of that content).
Re:price? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:No flash support (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Extra things you'll need (Score:3, Insightful)
If you already have 3g, why would you want another wireless contract? Just tether it to the one you already have.
No contract need for 3G! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What is the point? (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't this just a big expensive iPod touch now?
Depends on how you spin it. I look at it as an eBook reader with an awesome web browser, GPS, WiFi, 3G, local storage, a MP3 player and access to the thousands of apps in the app store. Which, personally, is exactly what I've been waiting for to hit the market to handle my eBook and casual browsing needs. I'm sure I'm not alone here.
Re:No flash support (Score:4, Insightful)
Flash video nowadays is H.264. (Older Flash video is H.263.) If Flash Player can't hardware-accelerate H.264 video playback, that's a defect in Flash Player.
Yes, it's a defect in the Flash player, and it's one of the reasons why using Flash video players might not be a great idea if you have a viable alternative.
As far as DRM, I'm sure Apple would be willing to work with studios to make sure their content is protected if it meant they could get free (ad-supported) streaming to the iPad and Apple TV.
Re:No flash support (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually it's worse, because there are movies that I know are new videos and are in h.264 format and are NOT being served to the iPhone.
I'm surprised more coverage hasn't been brought to bear on this.
True (Score:5, Insightful)
This is exactly what happened when the iPod was announced: slashdot dismissed it as derivative while Apple quietly reinvented the freakin' walkman. One thing Apple generally gets right is marketing. There may be nothing technologically revolutionary to most slashdotters in the iPad but the fact is it's already shaken up the consumer world even before it was officially acknowledged as an existing product. At the Consumer electronics show in Las Vegas this year the upcoming Apple tablet was a bigger topic of excitement than any device that actually existed at the time -- Apple didn't even go to the convention and yet they managed to have a significant presence there. They have been very successful in the hype department without even spending a dime on advertising. Technological merits aside they will sell a boatload of these.
Re:No WCMDA/HSPA or even CDMA/EVDO is a huge miss (Score:4, Insightful)
The deal with AT&T is the biggest news. Holy hell that's fucking awesome.
$15 for 250MB
$30 for UNLIMITED DATA.
No contract.
I bet you just have to activate it on a iPad, then put it in any phone that will handle GSM and use VOIP for unlimited data and minutes for $30 a month.
AT&T will try and lock it but I imagine that we can get around that rather quickly. I'd consider going back to AT&T for that price.
The iPad is a Platform (Score:5, Insightful)
Most people here don't see past their own noses... Myself, I like the iPad except for the fact that Apple decides what I can install... but that's the whole point.
The iPad is a platform, not a device.
Most people just want stuff to work, and don't want to care how. Most of the time, so do I. I don't want my stove in the kitchen to require a friggin manual to do basic cooking even if I could patch it to boil eggs 15% faster I never would be bothered. It's the same for regular people with all tech, computers included. People don't want to know the details, they just want to tap on a movie/book/app/whatever, confirm their transaction, and have it all just work.
The iPad can run iPhone apps, and the SDK is available now. App developers will be falling over each other to be first with new apps taking advantage of the larger screen.
I'm very tempted, but still skeptical I'll buy this myself. The closed platform is an issue for me. But most people couldn't care less about what they can't do on a device like this, if they just can do all they want. Freedom is great, but how many of us have truly bothered to go under the hood in our games consoles for instance? I can do all I truly need with our Wii even if I can't run SCUMMVM. Hell, I don't even have time to play all the games I've bought.
The iPad will be a great example of good enough technology. "The internet", in your lap, on this amazing looking little device. With movies, books, music and apps to boot. Joe and Jane Average are gonna think it's great.
Re:It has 3G. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:No flash support (Score:5, Insightful)
Flash is proprietary I'd like to see it fade into oblivion. Maybe the iPhone and iPad will be what it takes to get people considering HTML5 instead of Flash.
YouTube now has an HTML5 beta, and some other streaming sites as well.
Re:Doesn't Create a Need (Score:3, Insightful)
This entire presentation seems a little disappointing. Really, it looks, acts, and feels like a giant iPod Touch. Whereas the iPhone and iPod really created a need , I don't see that this substantially innovate to make it a must-have. It doesn't seem to improve on anything so substantially that it is an obvious choice. Maybe I need to see a few more videos, but I don't see this pulling serious market share away from Kindle's targeted market segment.
Yes, quite.
Last time I saw a /. commenter speculating about the future of Apple's latest new thing, it read something like this:
Raise your hand if you have iTunes ...
Raise your hand if you have a FireWire port ...
Raise your hand if you have both ...
Raise your hand if you have $400 to spend on a cute Apple device ...
There is Apple's market. Pretty slim, eh? I don't see many sales in the future of iPod.
~LoudMusic
I prefer to take the 'wait and see' approach.
Nothing could live up to this hype.
I never played around with iphones when they came out. Got a touch because I was told it makes for a good ebook reader. Bought it with little more to go on than that. Therefore I'm pleasantly amazed at how neat of a gadget it is. If I spent two years reading up about how it will make my old palm pilot look like banging two rocks together I probably would have been a lot less impressed.
Personally, what I wanted to see was an ultra-thin hybrid. The same sort of instant-on and always-available you get with the iphone and touch coupled with the larger screen, bigger battery, more ram, and a keyboard. I would have wanted to see something that folded shut as thin as the Air and you could then rotate the screen around and close it with the keyboard now providing the back of the device.
What's the difference between that and a PC tablet? Same difference between the iphone and windows mobile. Mobile has too much shit running and is trying to be a desktop OS in a phone. The iphone OS was a rethinking and redesign of what a phone OS should be and is thus very friendly to use, not resource intensive and none of the legacy issues of a desktop or laptop OS. We've seen people dicking around with netbook-optimized OS's but haven't seen anything trend-setting hit the market.
What I was hoping we'd see is something that seems as far beyond the current generation of laptops as the current generation is from 90's laptops. My first laptop experience was with 95, shitty dual-scan screen, underpowered and embarrassing. Couldn't even get out of its own way. Modern laptops kick so much ass compared to that but the hardware requirements are a bit insane when you stop and think for a moment. W7 wants 2 gigs just to run at a decent clip?! No, maybe a laptop doesn't need a full-featured desktop OS, or at least not every laptop should have it.
Re:Extra things you'll need (Score:5, Insightful)
Because the article was written when neither the price nor the 3G feature were announced yet. Apparently slashdot wanted to be quick to report the iPad, so they did not care to wait for further details.
Mac system requirements (Score:3, Insightful)
According to Apple's tech specs [apple.com] this thing requires OS X 10.5.8 to sync to a Mac, but WinXP is okay for a PC.
What the hey? I've got an older Mac that syncs fine with my iPod nano; can anyone explain why Apple would alienate all their own OS X 10.4 users?
Re:What is the point? (Score:5, Insightful)
Hmmm. The thing about the iPod is that the killer features is the integration of iPod/iTunes/iTunes store. The devices are nice of course, but each part of this triangle has significant limitations.
The key is that they all work together to support use cases that consumers find convenient and valuable. That's why "iPod Killers" never kill. You have to get all three pieces, and that is hard especially the store end of things.
Now Amazon nailed it with the Kindle. The Kindle is not the best eBook reader, but Amazon + WhisperNet + Kindle work together better than anything anybody had ever seen before. You can make a better eBook reader, but what you really have to do is to make sure that whole source to use chain has no serious mistakes in it (like not having enough books to sell, having lousy battery life, or having DRM so restrictive it interferes with the primary use of the devices).
So you can't look at this device and say "meh", because it has never been the best device that wins. It's the affordable looking system that offers a convenient solution for something consumers value that wins.
You're going to have to see the whole thing in action to know whether this is "meh" or not. I suspect it may be, but I'm not shorting Apple stock yet.
Re:What is the point? (Score:3, Insightful)
Where did you see this?
I won't ever buy it if I have to pay for *two* *unlimited* data plans, when I already pay for one.
Re:What is the point? (Score:3, Insightful)
This is probably a stupid question, but marketshare of what? Does the tablet industry even really exist yet? You're right about Apple, but I thought they generally waited until there was something to capture. Neither the iPhone nor iPod created a market, they just took over what was there.
What's actually there to take right now in the tablet space? Or is the tablet market is bigger than I give it credit?
Re:What is the point? (Score:1, Insightful)
Yes, but is it better than the laptops and Kindles that people already own? I don't see anything there that justifies spending another $500. It certaintly isn't going to replace my laptop.
Re:No flash support (Score:3, Insightful)
I rather have Apple kill Flash.
I'd rather have Google kill Flash. Apple's motives are likely to be more sinister.
That said, in this day and age, lack of Flash support really is not an option for a device, the primary function of which is web surfing, like it or not.
Re:Extra things you'll need (Score:5, Insightful)
Slashdot's color commentary on important Apple announcements over the years:
iPod - "No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame."
iPod mini - "Nobody is going to buy a 4GB external drive for $250."
iPad - "It's just a useless iPod touch with a bigger screen. What were they thinking?"
Ok (Score:3, Insightful)
Let's see. Web browsing, sure though lacking Flash is an issue. Lot of Flash sites these days. Not saying it is a good thing, but it is what it is. Book reading, not so much. For one, the battery life is fairly short compared to most readers. With a Kindle or a Nook, you are talking weeks of battery life, not hours. LCDs also aren't as nice as eink (or real paper) for long periods of reading. Plus you aren't going to get good outdoor performance. You need a reflective screen for that, there's no way you can crank the brightness enough on an emissive screen and keep the battery life useful.
Watching movies? Maybe, but of course Flash is how one watches movies online that is right out. 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.
Re:Extra things you'll need (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly my thoughts, they've done the Tablet PC without including the pen, the reason that Tablet PCs are so useful.
Our Uni publishes all the notes online as PDFs, i load up aforementioned app and annotate right on the notes. But i can also insert extra pages, copy-paste and insert diagrams. My logic coursework and having the ability to copy/paste/edit previous lines, as well as doodle without wrecking it is so much more useful than a pad of paper. The brilliance of a Tablet PC is the pen, not the fact you can poke it.
My 3.5 year old Tablet PC has a 1.7Ghz Pentium M with 1GB RAM and is now running Windows 7. It blows the functionality of this thing out the water.
Re:No flash support (Score:5, Insightful)
YouTube and Vimeo already support it. Replacing Flash is much more than a "marginal enhancement."
But hey, you're welcome to live in 1999 forever and stick with HTML4. It's what Adobe wants.
Re:No flash support (Score:4, Insightful)
Something the world DIDN'T need... (Score:5, Insightful)
...was a bigger iPod Touch.
I stick by my earlier statement that the name makes it sound like digital Kotex. However, it mus be noted that Steve Jobs may have his first Edsel on his hands.
Seriously, the ASUS Eee PC T91MT gives you more of a computer for a bit less than the cost of this iPad (I chuckle every time I read or type that). REAL applications, REAL OS (not a "gadget" os), REAL everything! It's a tablet and a netbook at once. Approx $450 gets you 32GB SSD, 1GB RAM, and Win 7 all in a small package with a proven processor underneath it all.
$50 more get's you less drive space, an unknown amount of RAM, and a gadget OS running on what appears to be a 2010 version of the Cyrix MediaGX processor.
Steve needs to take some time off and rethink this one.
Re:What is the point? (Score:5, Insightful)
Steve Jobs: "a Netbook is the worst of both worlds! [it only lasts for 10 hours and doesn't fit in your pocket] however our iPad is the best of both worlds, it lasts 10 hours and won't fit in your pocket!"
Why would anyone want an iPad if they already have a smartphone, when they can buy a kindle (for less) to read books, arguably the only thing it does better than a smartphone?
But don't worry, soon there will be about 4.5 million brainwashed followers out there handcuffed to their iPad wondering how they lived without the thing they had no practical use for before they bought it.
Re:No flash support (Score:4, Insightful)
There's a big difference between the display device and the content.
Re:Extra things you'll need (Score:5, Insightful)
What gets me is the price step up for the memory ...
To get +16 GB the price increase is $100
To get +32 GB the price increase is another $200
So basically, we are talking $100 per 16GB of flash memory, when I could buy a 16GB USB dongle for any other device for $10 ???
And the $130 extra for 3G ? A lot of mobiles don't cost that, and have a hell of a lot more than 3G built in.
As usual, another iRipoff, and the fanbois will lap it up ... fucking mugs.
I have karma to burn, so do your worst, it won't change reality, only the visibility of this comment ...
Re:What is the point? (Score:4, Insightful)
Isn't this just a big expensive iPod touch now?
Yeah, my thoughts exactly. I was expecting the thing to have a different take on ebook readers. I'll stick to a kindle/nook with its eink and the smaller profile..
I'd actually go for an iPad to tell you the truth. I have a kindle and I like it... for what it is. But I have a ton of PDFs and videocasts (all work-related) that I can't use on my kindle. All that stuff I have to carry on burned DVDs and thumb drives. Having them, and watching them in one of these thingies would be so convenient.
Considering that I paid over $300 for my kindle when it came out, I think this is a well-priced gadget... for what it is. Whether I can afford to for almost $500 right now for one of them, though, that's another thing :)
Re:Extra things you'll need (Score:4, Insightful)
The parent comment is right in that a lot of people will probably buy the thing, 'cause it's new and shiny and Apple made it. But it's an obviously inferior device as I see it.
(Now if only Asus will replace my $320 lemon eeePC now that I've mailed it in for repair for the fourth time...)
Re:Disappointing. (Score:4, Insightful)
This thing would have been far more appealing to me if it ran a customized version of OSX...
He wasn't building it for you.
OK, snottiness aside, it probably would be much better for the geeks out here (and maybe a few professional Mac users out there) if it did have a full OS X running on it. On the other hand, most people don't give a rat's ass about what OS is on their computer. What they care about is (a) can it do what I want; (b) if it can't do what I want right now, can I easily get software that lets me do what I want; (c) is it easy to use; and (d) is it not a PITA to maintain/keep stable. The iPad, as a closed environment with a ton of apps and good enough connectivity (OK, good enough connectivity if you get AT&T to get it's act together) provides that. Most people won't care what OS it runs. And, in fact, as a device that converges music playing, e-book reading and movie watching I think he's hit the entertainment-oriented market he wanted to hit.
And for those who want a full-featured OS, there's still the Mac.
Re:gay (Score:5, Insightful)
And it is over hyped. First by every blogger out there, then by Apple.
There is NOTHING new here, and much that has been left out.
Apple has run out of ideas, and have taken to eating their young. This thing will kill off the iPod Touch sales in a heart beat, especially the low end wifi version.
It might server for Grandma who can't quite figure out that laptop thingie you gave her last year with all those buttons and stuff. The only time she uses that is when you call her up and ask her if she got your email last week.
Its a huge disappointment if you ask me, but this time next year they can add a front facing cam, a mic and maybe Grandma can talk to the grand kids over it.
Wait till next year.
Re:I CALLED IT. (Score:3, Insightful)
Overpriced for you. Products are not over-priced if they sell well, which apple products appear to do.
Re:With that weak processor? (Score:4, Insightful)
Really? I didn't know it was still 1968. All this perfectly fluid multitasking I do every day on other kinds of computers must be some sort of dream.
Re:What is the point? (Score:4, Insightful)
Not with an LCD screen it's not an eReader. There's a world of difference between an eInk display and a backlit LCD. The LCD can do so much more, so much better, but eInk still takes the cake for readability and power consumption. Which is why the Kindle goes 2 weeks on a charge vs 10 hours.
I did notice that they compared the $500 (min) iPad to the $280 Kindle, instead of the $489 Kindle DX. That's natural, as the DX has the exact same size screen (9.7") as the iPad, so the comparison wouldn't be quite as stark.
Re:Multi-tasking (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, since it has no native GPS chip (i think a bad move, but hey, there will be another model in 8 months...), then what are you missing? media streaming? Apple has already admitted an iPod/iTunes app plug-in model is in the works for iPhone OS 4, so Pandora streaming while editing docs should be a non issue... Outside of that, c'mon really. It;s 64GB for $830 at 10", or for $899 you get a 13" macbook... WEhat would you choose if you were a power user of a device (lets face it, a power user looking for multitasking is going to want 3G and 64GB and not be happy with the 16GB $499 base model).
Honestly, Apple is dead on in the market segment, and they're right, multitasking is irrelevent. So long as i can use it while it's syncing, and i get an iPod plug-in system, Safari already background downloads, iPod already backgrounds, notifications work, e-mail is allways on, it's not a phone... multitasking is not required. there is no use case.
Disappointed. (Score:3, Insightful)
1. LED backlit screen. This seems strange given the existence of PixelQi and mirasol type LCD displays. Not being able to read this outside really makes it useless as an ebook reader. Oh, and also the 10 hours of reading time is simply pathetic for an eReader.
2. No camera? What happened? This is very disappointing.
I must admit I have, in the past, thought it would be cool to have a large version of my iPhone to view movies in bed or browse the web before going to sleep, but honestly it is not worth the $500 price tag without the 2 features above.
I think I'll just stick with my iPhone, thanks. "Nice-to-haves" do not make product demand.
Games (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:gay (Score:4, Insightful)
I completely agree with you. This whole thing just asks for "fail". The whole thing is completely unintuitive, has the same closed approach as iPhone and doesn't have any technical or usability options one would think would be good. Missing a pen too.
And no, I do not want to buy every single software from an App Store that I would like to use. I want there to be freeware and shareware programmers, and I WANT TO DEVELOP SOFTWARE MYSELF. Even Microsoft's tablets are more open than this. Give me choice.
I won't be buying this. Ridiculous prices to pay even more for the software. It's funny to see what will come out of this. This will most likely be a slap on Apple's face and they will fall back to earth from their cloud castles.
Re:Extra things you'll need (Score:5, Insightful)
Kind of amusing that you're bashing a $500 device when your $320 netbook has been in for repair FOUR TIMES. People always rail on the interchangable battery thing, but I've never carried spare batteries for ANYTHING I've owned. If you're on the move, do you really want to lug around a couple extra pounds? They list 10 hours of battery life including video playback, which, judging by my experiences with a 1st gen iPod touch, is believable.
This thing is more a web-surfing super eBook reader than a true netbook, but in my opinion, it looks awesome. No, it's not a hacker's dream come true mega-portable computer, it's a "normal" person's digital media device. It's for eBooks, music, photos, the web and email and it's designed to do those tasks in a sleek, sexy, simple manner.
This happens with every Apple product announcement. People speculate and expect it to have every feature under the sun, cost next to nothing and be 100% open source, cure cancer, make coffee and have its only environmental by-product be rainbows. Sorry, people, this is the real world. This product looks awesome for what it's designed to be. It's not going to replace your netbook for hacking perl on your favorite geek project and it's not supposed to.
Re:No flash support (Score:4, Insightful)
Wait a minute. You mean that people who don't like particular features or limitations of a product probably won't buy it?
You might be onto something here. All those stupid customers at the drive through who keep driving off because you wouldn't leave the onions off their burger probably weren't going to buy it anyways!
Re:What is the point? (Score:3, Insightful)
It's also an eBook reader with a traditional LCD display that burns your eyes as you stare at it for hours, as opposed to all the actual eBook readers that use e-ink displays which are frontlit, like paper, or a book.
I already spend most of my waking hours staring at an LCD screen in darkened rooms so I personally see this as a bit of a red herring. (I do read an awful lot of "conventional" printed books, but if I read outdoors in bright sunlight I get headaches already... so not being able to do it with a book reader is no loss for me since I do most of my reading in the evening.)
Typical techies and gadget freaks (Score:5, Insightful)
After reading the comments here and on Engadget, it just confirms that your average techie doesn't know a great new product when he sees it. So many people seem to be complaining that it doesn't have some certain deal-breaking hardware feature, yet they haven't even noticed the most important innovation: The software. The greatest part of this device simply flies over the head of so many people here because they have no understanding about what makes a computer great to use.
iPad Alternatives (Score:3, Insightful)
You know, a lot of the UI features of the iPad don't look that revolutionary. Looks almost like a variant of Moblin to me. How hard would it be to create a Linux desktop manager that duplicates the functionality of the iPad? Shoot, it wouldn't even be that hard to go several features better (multi-tasking, daylight-readable screen, video camera, etc.)
It's great that Apple has put their vision out there, but it looks like when all is said and done, they're betting on their media tie-ins to keep their dominant hipster status. The special sauce doesn't seem to be in the software or the hardware of the iPad.
So, while Apple is busy trying to wrangle exclusive deals with Big Content, other smartbook vendors and the FOSS community can be busy analyzing the design choices of the iPad, and dreaming up an even better vision.
Re:iPad? Really? (Score:3, Insightful)
What an unfortunate name.
Nintendo got away with using Wii (urinate, pee, tinkle, piss, whiz).
Re:Extra things you'll need (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:With that weak processor? (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Motorola 68000, 8MHz seemed to handle pre-emptive multitasking just fine. Ah, progress!
Re:No flash support (Score:3, Insightful)
Anything that improves the chances of Flash disappearing from the web *IS* a feature.
Apple obviously thinks about this the same way, although likely for different reasons than I do.
They care because they don't control Flash, for technical as well as political reasons; technical: they cannot make it 64 bit, they cannot fix crashes caused by Flash as they can with pretty much everything else in OS X, etc. Political: they don't like someone else to have control and receive licensing fees over something that central to the user experience).
I care because Flash is the only "real" remaining proprietary extension that is pretty much required to experience the "web" currently, if at least you care about A/V on the internet (Youtube etc.). Pretty much everything else can be used without paying royalties to anyone just to use the technology.
Re:They killed their own baby. (Score:3, Insightful)
The market for the Air is executives and frequent travelers who need something small to take notes on, edit spreadsheets, power projectors, and kill plane time, all while looking cool.
i'd disagree, for the reason that you simply cannot do anything more than the simplest data entry with a touch screen.
1. it's a very small keyboard
2. you don't have physical button edges which means you *must* look at every key you press
3. the on-screen keyboard severely hides the display when it's up
4. you are either standing with the device typing with one hand and holding it with the other, or sitting down with it on your lap with the entire device flat, keyboard and display which puts the display at an awkward angle making it hard to see (along with the keyboard, which is on the display as well).
Re:What is the point? (Score:3, Insightful)
Something without multitouch is not "comparable".
I buy devices for what they do, not how much silicon they need to accomplish it. Same reason we get hours and hours of gameplay from the Wii, and my PS3 has been sitting on a shelf, not even plugged in, for most of the last year; the PS3 is way more powerful, but the games I want to play are on the Wii.
Excellent for me (Score:3, Insightful)
It's an excellent device for me.
It will do 80% of what I usually carry my 4(?) yo MacBook-Pro and my eBook-Reader for.
I will be able to leave both at the hotel or at home and do most of the stuff on the iPad / the customers machines and if I really need the power I can still Remote Desktop to one of my company's machines.
iBrick? (Score:5, Insightful)
My thoughts exactly. The advantage of the Ipod is that it's small - making portable devices bigger? That's what people call a "brick". Yet it lacks the advantages of similar sized devices, most notably netbooks (proper keyboard, open and full computer OS).
This may sell okay to some Apple fans, but the hype over this is absurdly ridiculous and disproprtionate. I only hope it will return to normal coverage (as happened with the Air - funny how we never heard about that again, after netbooks appeared on the scene). Or I fear it may turn out like the Iphone - free advertising in the media, including daily Ipad stories (or more), even if it turns out to be one of the lesser seller tablets, compared to tablets that never get any coverage at all.
Re:No flash support (Score:3, Insightful)
HTML5 is nice, but if you think it can do 1% of the things Silverlight can do, you're not an engineer or have never actually looked at Silverlight.
Re:True (Score:5, Insightful)
Notice that they spent about three times as much convincing you to buy stuff as they did designing it...
Worthless statistic. A device only has to be designed once. If you sell millions of them in a hundred different countries over several years of course your marketing is going to grow large.
Re:What is the point? (Score:2, Insightful)
There is a large segment of the book reading public that do not care about battery consumption. They read at home or where there are power outlets. For them, LCD is superior to eInk in just about every way.
The market will decide which is superior. But the Kindle is the target competitor, not the iPhone or any full-powered laptop.
Lame (Score:3, Insightful)
So, it's got wireless and I don't even know if they make Nomads anymore. But: no handwriting input, no web cam. Lame.
Re:The iPad is a Platform (Score:2, Insightful)
Most people just want stuff to work, and don't want to care how.
Flash will not just work.
Re:Extra things you'll need (Score:3, Insightful)
These are my sentiments exactly, but remember that you and I are not the target audience here. Apple sells fashion accessories, not electronics. People will buy one of these (the most expensive one no doubt), just to impress their friends. Yes, there may be some people who genuinely need the features offered by this (although I cannot think what features these are off the top of my head), but the majority will be buying just for the sake of owning the latest and greatest.
P.S. If you ever build a time machine and happen to run into me circa 2001 deciding not to buy Apple stock because the iPod is an overpriced, locked down piece of crap that no one will ever buy, slap me. Hard.
Re:What is the point? (Score:4, Insightful)
Except, e-ink displays are reported to be easier on the eyes to read, because they are a reflective surface and not an illuminated one.
Having read books on my computer screen, the only advantage is that it scrolls relatively smoothly. Otherwise, my eyes felt like they'd been sucked out Gollumn-style after 4 hours of reading. I'd much rather read on an e-ink display, even if I were near an outlet. I am also unlikely to try and read in the dark, where an LCD screen would be more visible.
Re:No flash support (Score:3, Insightful)
Where by completely secure you mean that they can do anything inside the sandbox that you do not explicitly disallow, including the potential of storing data for later execution, communicating with the outside world, modifying other things running in said sandbox later, etc.
There's ways to mitigate many of these things, but they're not simple. The point is sandboxing itself is not the fix-everything tool, it's one of several ways to mitigate security issues. Another one is to reduce the attack surface area, and that has a much higher chance of real improvement.
Hmm, bragging about a lack of knowledge? (Score:3, Insightful)
Sarah? Sarah Palin, is that you? :-)
Seriously though, EVERY profession thinks outsiders are fools. Cops call civilians "sheeple," plumbers and mechanics think people who don't turn a wrench all day are suckers, doctors routinely think of themselves as God Almightier.
If you're not a computer geek and don't like Unix, then why are you hanging out on a forum called "/."?
Apple Announces new iShackle (tm) ! (Score:3, Insightful)
Dateline: Wed Jan 27th 2010, San Francisco: 10:00am
Not since their release of the iWaterboard "enhanced interrogation"
playset (tm) has so much excitement been generated over a new Apple
product. The new iShackle (tm), demonstrated by Steve Jobs on an
anti-DRM protester on stage at a packed San Francisco event this
morning, takes customer lock-in to a new level. "With the new iShackle
(tm), content companies will literally OWN their customers", said Jobs
in front of an ecstatic audience. "No more pesky choice, no more
confusing options, just pure, simple, buy this or ELSE corporate power". As
expected, fans were completely delighted with the new Apple product.
"I can't wait to buy the new iShackle (tm) and take it home and put it
on !" said one excited member of the crowd. "Steve says I never have
to take it off or think about other products EVER AGAIN !"
Not everyone was pleased with the announcement however. A Microsoft
spokesperson said, "We've had the Microsoft zOBEY software for 2 years
now, this isn't a new concept. Apple once again copies the market
leader." Sales of the Microsoft alternative have been poor however,
except for Microsoft employees, who have had use of the software
mandated in their employment contracts since Steve Ballmer announced
the product at a marketing event in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba in 2007.
Re:What is the point? (Score:5, Insightful)
I understand. I happen to hate the iTunes store. I much prefer Amazon's MP3 download service. It meets my needs. I don't much care for the way iTunes wants to steer me to the latest episode of popular TV shows. I have no interest in that, and I always feel like I'm fighting the software to get it to do what I want.
But one thing I've learned after decades in this business is that you can't design products around your own preferences. I've seen that approach fail time and time again. I've even seen the same guys make the same mistake more than once.
It doesn't matter that I hate the iTunes store. Steve Jobs would be an idiot to design products that cater to people like me, because we're lousy, cranky, critical customers and cheapskates besides.
Re:Typical techies and gadget freaks (Score:5, Insightful)
Why would anyone get an iPhone if they've got a Moto Razr and an iBook?
Why would anyone get an iBook if they've got a Dell on their desk?
Why would anyone get a Dell on their desk if they've got a terminal at work?
Why would anyone need a terminal at work, if they've got a punchcard machine three halls down?
That person may not need one "right now," but in a year or two they might either decide that they convergence device (of which I'm generally skeptical) either does the job just as well as a batman utility belt of other devices, or they may go for it as a lifestyle item, to replace their old gadgets. Or who knows, they might NOT have an iPhone and a Kindle... and let's face it, a lot of us don't.
Re:What is the point? (Score:3, Insightful)
Except that you have no flash, no adblock and no ability to load another web-browser which competes against Apple because their store policy won't allow it.
Reading in direct sunlight is going to be next to impossible. No information as yet on whether it is possible to load your own content onto there.
Just so long as you're happy encoding all your movies from XviD into Apple's preferred format. Want another media player that supports that codec? No sorry, Apple won't allow it. Fingers crpssed you don't get the infamous "Invalid Public Atom [google.co.uk]" Quicktime error as Apple still haven't got around to fixing that one yet.
Finally the $499 one has only 16Gb which isn't going to leave you much space once you've loaded up some music, books, pictures, applications and movies. Better suck it and upgrade to the one with more memory. Ouch.
It's sexy kit, but flawed in a lot of ways.
Re:The iPad is a Platform (Score:4, Insightful)
There have been a few times where I've seriously considered plunking down some cash and getting a Mac Mini to use as my primary desktop at home, for the sole reason of having a nice fluid well-engineered interface and set of tools for my increasing interest in web development.
But if this is the direction that OS X is headed down, I don't want any part of it. I suspect that Apple is trying to get to the point where the desktop version of OS X (as we know it) will eventually be available only to developers while the locked-down iPhone/iPod/iPad OS will be the standard on all of Apple's consumer-level hardware like laptops and desktops.
Re:Typical techies and gadget freaks (Score:3, Insightful)
Same problem with Iphone. Oh it does not have Trillion pixel camera, super processor, FM Radio, whatever?
Besides the user interface It is the integration of hardware+software that apple can achieve. It flight around other hardware with more bells and whistles but poorly integrated and with poor UI.
Just check Nokia.
Re:Typical techies and gadget freaks (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually you don't get it, the software is what makes this device nothing more than a giant iPhone. Which is absurd.
Re:What is the point? (Score:5, Insightful)
Have him email it to you. Or FTP it somewhere. There's plenty of ways to get things on your iphone/touch without syncing.
It is mighty stupid to have to email a multi-megabyte file when you hold the phone in one hand and the USB cable in another. On my planet such a product would be reviewed as "poorly done."
Re:iPad Alternatives (Score:4, Insightful)
And, in the end, the deals with Big Content will *still* make the Apple product a million times more successful than the open community's version can achieve, even despite superior feature sets. This thing's not for doing work on; it's a media consumption device (web, streaming movies, streaming tv, ebooks). I suspect the best use of the App Store on this machine will be semi-portable gaming since the iPad doesn't have the in-pocket portability of the iPhones and iPod Touches. So yeah... if this thing succeeds at all, it'll be thanks to Apple's ability to get its customers to hand over money to Big Content via iTunes, and the associated love that Big Content has for Apple.
Re:No flash support (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:No flash support (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What is the point? (Score:4, Insightful)
For them, LCD is superior to eInk in just about every way
For them, LCD is superior to eInk in just about every way except for reading. You obviously haven't used eInk. It's like advertising HD movies on a SD screen, no one can tell the difference until they actually try it.
Re:Extra things you'll need (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not sure if the potential of this device is immediately apparent. Wait for a couple of years for the apps to be developed. I don't see any real reason why this device cannot outperform current tablet PC's. Firstly, what is to stop you from using a stylus? What is stopping application developers from creating apps that allow annotation of PDF files or that duplicate the functionality of "One Note". If the market demands such functionality, will the market not deliver it?
Furthermore, what makes you think that software such as "One Note" is anything but a niche market for certain professionals? And do you really need to be able to scribble ugly handwriting on the screen? Aren't there better ways of inputting text? I suppose the market will decide.
Anyways, my opinion is that this is an embryonic platform. Once HTML5 starts to take over, the Flash issue will be less of a concern. And with HTML5, you will be able to do things with a browser that you probably couldn't imagine.
Apple A4 (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow, I'm a bit disappointed :) Yes, with the iPad a bit, but more so with the idea that this is Slashdot and barely anyone has thrown a spotlight on the Apple A4. This is an ARM, high performance, low power CPU with integrated graphics, and more importantly the first piece of processing silicon coming out of Cupertino. Regardless of how much i like the Intel Atom, i think this will be a viable competitor on the ARM front. Too bad it is under lock and key with the iPhone OS :p
Re:Multi-tasking (Score:5, Insightful)
I dunno man, sounds like your trying to convince yourself, not us. To say that there aren't *any* use cases is just silly. How about skype calls while using another app? There's a case right there!
Having used an iPhone and and Android phone I can tell you that multitasking is a nice feature to have. And the iPhone notifications are a joke compared to what you get with android (especially for IM and VOIP clients).
The only reason iPhone/iPad doesn't have multitasking is because of battery life issues and RAM limitations. To say "oh you don't need those things" is just being an apologist.
Re:What is the point? (Score:5, Insightful)
Haven't we had tablets for years already though? I remember seeing them in the mid 90s. Sure, this is thinner and lighter and maybe the interface is better than Microsoft's tablet OS but is that really going to sell it?
The fact that you can't run more than one app at a time means it can't really be used as a computer: who would settle for having to save their document, quit the word processor, load their browser, load a bookmark, makes some research notes (presumably on paper since you can't run a note taking app), quit the browser, load the wp back up and re-open the document? It's not even a very effective clipboard replacement because you can't just flick between different pages as your workflow requires.
So you can't really do much desktop computing on it. It's too big to fit in your pocket like a smartphone. In fact it's too big to easily type on like you can with a smartphone too, since your thumb can't reach all the keys but you still need to hold it.
Re:gay (Score:5, Insightful)
Cue 2010. Remember how everyone said it was much easier to develop applications for the iPhone OS rather than Android because all iPhones had the same 320x480 screen resolution? Now Apple launches iPad, with more screen resolution, and they have two backwards compatibility modes. One where apps run as a tiny rectangle in the middle of the device, another where everything is upscaled, maintaining the same application resolution.
Uniform hardware specs are so much better. Right?
Re:True (Score:4, Insightful)
I agree that Apple gets the marketing right, but I think that's not what Apple really gets right. What Apple really gets right is making products that are simple and not annoying to use for the masses. Compare the original iPod to its mp3 playing peers. Until Apple made the iPhone and the iPod Touch, no other player came close. That and the iTunes store tie up, and Apple really got it right. It makes marketing the damn product easy. How memorable are the iPhone ads. In fact, how many ads do you know where all someone is doing is showing you what the device can do, easily? Imagine such an ad for the Sony Ericsson W960i http://www.sonyericsson.com/cws/products/mobilephones/overview/w960i [sonyericsson.com]. The phone has many of the features on an iPhone, but even Sony Ericsson would not be caught dead demonstrating it on TV.
The technology is important, but isn't everything. Making it work for people is more important than any ingenuity that went into making the product
Re:No flash support (Score:3, Insightful)
Seek help, your reality is 60% distorted [wikipedia.org] and it's spreading fast.
It's not a feature, it's a bug.
Re:What is the point? (Score:1, Insightful)
Thats because your just not thinking far enough ahead. Trust me, I use to be the same way until I bought an Asus T91. (In every way superior than the iPad just FYI.) I originally bought it as a toy. Something to read books off of (cheaper than a kindle overall). Then I started doing other things, web surfing, email, movies, hulu, war driving, etc. Eventually I transitioned over to it 24/7. I use to carry both this and my laptops (Asus 1000H and a larger HP desktop replacement, it sucks so I wont say its name) This thing never leaves my side. Im now nearly 100% (Non desktop related) on this thing.
Think about it. To check a webpage, you have to, Unpack your laptop. (Optional) Plug it in, Start the thing up (Granted, these 3 can be quick, very quick) find a flatish surface, then load up the page. This thing, you just hold like a clip board and bring up the page. With Bluetooth, added internal Antennas and a G3 unit, Its even started to replace my phone. Sure its big, not exactly something you can slip into your pocket. But considering I use to always carry a laptop or two with me, Plus my phone (Non smart...) and an Mp3 player (see previous as to why). This is great.
My only complaint.. screen is irratingly small sometimes, and the battery life pales in comparison to my Asus 1000H (Which gets 12 hours, extended battery).
Re:Extra things you'll need (Score:3, Insightful)
Wow, Apple managed to invent the netbook only a couple years late for several hundred bucks more! Jobs' comments said that he wanted to establish a new class of device between smartphones and laptops. It's as though he was unaware that there's been such a category for years, and that it costs a lot less than $500, and that it doesn't lock you into one manufacturer's control so hard you can't even change the battery yourself.
Um, no. Apple's very aware of netbooks. They're also very aware that people don't want them. What they want is low cost and portable. Until now, netbooks were pretty much the only product to fit that bill.
Contrary to popular belief, people don't simply choose the cheapest item. If they did, there would only be one model of iPod, one model of HP notebook, etc. The iPad costs more than the base model of most netbooks, but it's also going to be exceptionally more useful for most people.
I'm highly confident that, placed side-by-side, people will prefer the iPad over any netbook. Specifications geeks, floss geeks, and people who need some particular program may choose the netbook, but the average person? Forget about it. The netbook is a dead end.
Re:What is the point? (Score:4, Insightful)
Hmm, I don't know. There's a difference between "running" an more than one application at a time and "having an application open". The iPod Touch does allow many applications to be "open" at a time.
In other words, as it stands right now on my wife's iPod Touch, she can go into an application and do something, then hit the HOME button and go back to that application, and nothing is lost. Nothing has happened with that application since she hit the HOME key (it wasn't running) but all the web pages she had open were still open, or whatever game she was in went back to wherever she left off.
I think (but I don't have one, so I can't say for sure) that you'll be able to pop from your word processor to your email and back without actually having to save your document and close the application.
This isn't as convenient as having the application actually running (as in, start some long process and go off and do something else while it finishes), but it's a far cry from the application totally terminating and having to be reloaded from scratch. My wife constantly hops back and forth between Safari, Facebook, and Gmail, and each app comes up exactly the way she left it.
The iPod Touch does it just fine - I'd have to imagine they'd carry this capability forward to the new iPad. If you have the applications you use most frequently on the same page (and this thing is big enough to hold a LOT of application icons on the first page!) you can switch between them with two clicks (home, then the app icon you want).
As far as form factor and typing, I'm not sure but I think I'd prefer this type of layout. Assuming, of course, that I could hold it like a clipboard while standing and use 5 fingers of one hand to type, or set it on a desk for brief heads-down typing.
I'd still prefer an actual hard keyboard for mass text entry, but I can see the form factor being handy for casual use. Especially if I could get some sort of decent keyboard and still have the capability to scribble out drawings interspersed with the text, this would be a major boon at meetings.
The trouble is, no one has gotten the interface right. I remember seeing the experiments with tablets in the 90s, and the technology was NOT ready at that point. I don't know if it is now, and I don't know if Apple has it right, but based on my experience with the iPod Touch I'd say they've come the closest anyone has so far.
Re:Typical techies and gadget freaks (Score:3, Insightful)
"nothing more than a giant iPhone"... OK. The size difference is a GOOD thing. Yes, the iPhone web browser is amazingly good, but it's SMALL. No way I'll sit there and read a website I care about, unless I'm pretty much desperately bored. The iPhone calendar is very useful, but it's SMALL. You can't see an entire day's activities, and certainly not a week- or month-at-a-glance with any meaningful content. Photos on the iPhone are handled well, but they're SMALL. More like passing a stack of drugstore prints than actual photos.
On the other hand, carrying my laptop for things like that is overkill. And the bulky form factor dictated by a keyboard just makes it worse.
THAT is where the iPad comes in handy: something that's simpler, significantly smaller, and a better form factor than a laptop/netbook, but with a large enough screen that I can see an entire day's worth of activity, I can read a web page basically as large as on my laptop, and I can see photos that are the size of photos. And read a book that's the size of a book: not the size of a deck of cards, and not the size of an old-school atlas.
So even if it were ONLY a giant iPhone (iPod Touch, really), it'd be a good and desirable device. But as far as I can tell, it's more than an iPhone/iPod in several ways, and it has untapped potential that we'll see more and more of in the next year.
Re:What is the point? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The iPhone just might (Score:5, Insightful)
So for your game aggregation sites, you have embedded flash. For educational or lightweight application use you have HTML/DOM/JavaScript with maybe embedded Java or Silverlight, and for the rest of the web you have HTML/CSS. I like this option.
Re:No flash support (Score:3, Insightful)
Stop imagining things. Flash works and is widely used even on the desktop. It's easy to sandbox Flash because it usually doesn't do anything other than display stuff and make HTTP connections.
These objections are even more silly on the iPad/iPod where applications are so isolated from each other anyway and where there is so little user data other than commercial audio and video.
Other personal data should be encrypted anyway, in which case sandboxing becomes even more effective. Of course, Apple doesn't. When Apple plays so fast and loose with security anyway, Flash is really the last of your worries.
Apple needs to add full sandboxing and data encryption to all their systems. After that, discussions about theoretical risks from Flash become academic. And unless you are intrinsically opposed to executable content (do you browse with JavaScript off?), Flash is no worse than JavaScript, Java, etc.
I don't like Flash as a technology, but to object on it the grounds you do is silly and stupid.
(Also, your understanding of sandboxes is rather faulty, but that's really not the point here.)
Re:Oblig (Score:2, Insightful)
Who cares about a Nomad or an Archos? I've NEVER seen or even heard of someone with them. Maybe there's a reason neither of those has any buyers?
You ridiculous posts making no sense. Lame.