iPad Will Beat Netbooks With "Magic" 1010
entirely_fluffy writes "In a talk intended to woo investors, Apple Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook said the iPad will win over potential netbook buyers, but not because of specs or features. No, Cook said, the iPad's magical properties will seal the deal. 'The netbook is not an experience people are going to continue wanting to have,' Cook said, according to Macworld. 'When they play with the iPad and experience the magic of using it ... I have a hard time believing they're going to go for a netbook.'" Another thing that would help would be a camera and a $100 discount, but hey Magic is cool too, provided they have enough mana.
Sorry Netbook wins still (Score:2, Informative)
NetBook > ipad
Why
1: netbook has actual keyboard
2: netbook is a actual pc Ie it runs windows or linux
3: netbook can multi task
4: nebook can be had for as cheep as 200$
5: netbook can close to protect screen.
I can keep going but sorry netbook is a real system, the ipad is just a oversized iphone.
Re:$100 discount? (Score:4, Informative)
Apple already beat all estimations on what it'd cost. I think everyone on /. was estimating around $999 (as was everyone else on the net). All of the closest competitors are around that price point.
Why not just ask for it for free?
A camera would be nice.
Freescale has a similar device that they're targeting for the $199 price point. The Smartbook [freescale.com] comes with a camera and USB ports, and is a 7" touchscreen tablet.
Re:"Magic" is a good term for great UI... (Score:1, Informative)
Hey, dumb ass, they have a keyboard dock; nevermind the on-screen one. I use my iPhone for SSH and remote desktop applications and it works just fine. Not the same as my MacBook Pro, but very handy in a pinch. The larger iPad would certainly be a step up for this application.
Re:Hunters.. (Score:2, Informative)
What I like about the iPad:
* Surprisingly low price
* Runs iPhone OS apps
* Larger screen than iPhone/iPod touch
* Video out
* Bluetooth (e.g. can use bluetooth keyboard)
* iWork
* 3G and unlocked (no contract)
* Very slim form factor
* 1/2 the weight of MacBook Air
* 10 hour battery life and 1 month of standby
Re:"Magic" is a good term for great UI... (Score:1, Informative)
there is a vnc client for this? how will it work without keyboard? I don't think it will work, sorry.
There are several very good VNC clients for the iPhone/iPod touch. Yes, with on-screen keyboards.
No reason to think they wont be enhanced to make use of the iPad's larger screen.
Re:The magic of a black box (Score:5, Informative)
Umm, because I can watch them just fine on my iPod Touch?
I was watching highlights of Olympic Hockey last night on it, from NBC's Olympic site. I've watched YouTube videos on it. No problem.
Or are you suggesting that Apple is going to remove all that functionality when the iPad comes out?
Re:Hunters.. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Sales? (Score:4, Informative)
They'll probably also carry them at Best Buys and other places that also sell Apple hardware.
Re:Hunters.. (Score:4, Informative)
* Multitasking
* FreeDOS
* Android
* *BSD
* OpenSolaris
* Doom
* Quake (well, original Quake with software rendering)
* Apache
and on and on, but I really wanted to get "Multitasking" in there.
Re:Hunters.. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The magic of a black box (Score:1, Informative)
I recently got an ipod tocuh myself, and it's a nice device. The gestures work great and for the most part the UI is well thought out. I did run into some glaring problems with it the first hour out of the box. First, I couldn't even turn the thing on before hooking it up to a comptuer with itunes running. At least give me the option to do it later. The second thing I wanted to do was go download some apps and see what people have been coming up with. It took me about an hour to figure out how to get an appstore account set up without having to use a CC. During this process, the device froze up a couple of times. This isn't the type of thing I expect from a device that's supposed to be top of the line.
The only thing I can compare the store experience to is XBox Live. I think subscribing to XBox live took me a total of about 5 minutes and after that I was up and running installing games. And that's really what I expect. I shouldn't have to do a web search to find out how to do something simple like download a free app from the store.
Re:Hunters.. (Score:4, Informative)
The hell are you talking about?
When it was first announced it was announced WITH the price, and the general reaction, here and other places I looked, was "wow, that would be nice if it was $300".
Re:That Explains The Updated SDK (Score:5, Informative)
The thing really sounds like what most people want for a computer.
Sorry, but I have to disagree. It comes close to being what most people want. However, most people want the full internet and lack of Flash on the iPad prevents that. Most people want to be able to install any program they might choose in order to do task XYZ and unfortunately, that's just not happening with the way the iPhone / iPod Touch / iPad are locked down. Look around the App Store sometime, most of it is utter crap (I have an iPhone and love it, but I can count the number of worthwhile apps on my fingers). Most people also want to be able to easily copy over movies, pictures, and other files - the iPad only allows that for pictures (with the SD reader attachment). The hardware of the iPad is great (well, most people would also like to have a webcam), but the software side of it being so locked down hamstrings it.
Re:Hunters.. (Score:3, Informative)
This is hilarious.
When it was first announced, everybody and their dog figured Apple would charge closer to $1000 for the base model, and now it's hundreds of dollars overpriced at $499.
This is hilarious.
The RDF is so strong the zealots don't even remember that the price was announced along with the device.
Apple intentionally leaked over the top rumors in an effort to throw off speculation about the price and to keep competitors guessing.
Re:Hunters.. (Score:4, Informative)
the problem is that many of the things you are listing as features are things that have been available on netbooks since they were first released and are simply assumed to be there on any portable computer ...
* 3g and unlocked? any computer is 3g and unlocked if you buy the 3g service from AT&T
* iwork? openoffice is available on any computer and almost every platform
* low price compared to what? it's 2x that of a netbook
* larger screen than iphone / itouch? netbooks have had 10" screen standard since they were released. also, their screens are 16x9, the aspect ratio of ever modern view device
* can use bluetooth keyboard? many netbooks don't have bluetooth, but they have USB which is much more versatile and obviously can be used to connect wireless keyboards and mice along with anything else you can imagine
* all netbooks have VGA out and can drive an external monitor. ours can go to 1600x1200 beating the ipad's 1024x768
* modern netbooks have 8+ hours battery life (ours quotes 10 hours)
Re:Hunters.. (Score:5, Informative)
The hell are you talking about?
He's talking about all the rumors saying it would be "less than $1,000", which means $999
When it was first announced it was announced WITH the price, and the general reaction, here and other places I looked, was "wow, that would be nice if it was $300".
No, the general reaction here (and some other places) was that it's a big iPhone, and it would be nice if it was a tablet MacBook. Criticism that it would be a good product at $300 wasn't to be found anywhere. The 32GB iPod touch costs that much.
The only criticism that mentioned anything about $300 was that netbooks cost that much, and are "more capable". Where the iPad $300, those people would have just said, "for the same price, I can buy a netbook that is more capable", as their argument really isn't about the price, but about wanting a small device that runs Windows, Linux, or Mac OS X, which the iPad most certainly is not (and for good reason).
Re:Hunters.. (Score:4, Informative)
You clearly do not speak from experience. The built-in apps cover all the basics (just like any standard Windows install). There are plenty of free apps, and there is *NO* more need to "buy all these stupid little 5 dollar apps" on the iPhone than there is to "buy all these stupid little $30 apps" on Windows.
But even that's a bit of a red herring. There's nothing wrong with paying for something which provides you value.
As for being tethered to iTunes, you can run an iPad completely without using iTunes, including buying apps, syncing contacts and bookmarks, buying music, TV Shows, movies, renting movies, the works.
Re:Hunters.. (Score:3, Informative)
You've got it completely wrong when you say they don't make computers (or devices) for most people. That's *exactly* what they do. The thing you're getting confused on is the price (and specifically, the price of the Macs). The problem is that cheaper computers are pretty crappy, and that crappiness (construction, parts, performance) are *not* a benefit for most people, it's just a tradeoff to have a lower price.
As for them being luxury, aside from certain Mac-only features (like the unibody cases, glass trackpads, etc.), the only things that are "luxury" about Macs are their components and their prices.
Their components are on the higher-end of the spectrum (Core2Duo as opposed to AMD or CoreDuo or Pentiums, etc.), FireWire 800, etc. Even their graphics processors, which get a lot of flack for not being high-end, are better than the average you'll find at Best Buy or Fry's.
Their prices are not luxury in that you overpay for what you get, their prices are pretty much in line with what it costs to buy the same features from competing PC makers.
So, when it all boils down, the only luxury really is that you can't buy a truly low end Mac. Even the Mac mini, at $599, is faster than the average PC sold today.
But you're right when you say that, for some people, Apple doesn't make products for them. Those people are mainly just those that want full control and customizability of their product. However, most people really don't want that. *Not* because (as a lot of critics say) that Apple users are stupid or lazy or blinded by the shiny, but because most people both can't really take advantage of such features, and their user experience would be degraded by the added complexity. Even a large portion of those that *do* complain, and *would* take advantage of such features, find the current situation with the iPhone not that bad (re: background apps (the iPhone does, contrary to popular belief, multitask, and it does so very well) and third party app installs).
But for those that really can't abide such limitations, I don't begrudge them at all. The iPhone (and iPad and iPod touch) both clearly does not meet their needs and is not targeted at them. What I *do* begrudge is when they extrapolate out and think that their experience and desires are anything remotely resembling the norm.
Re:That Explains The Updated SDK (Score:1, Informative)
RedTube and PornHub already have mobile versions for their sites. Works fine on the iPhone, they even support swipe for paging!
err...
I mean, what are you talking about?
Re:Hunters.. (Score:2, Informative)
TO start with, USB was developed by Microsoft amongst other company's according to Wikipedia, ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Serial_Bus [wikipedia.org] ) so I'm not believing that they led the charge of it.
Apple replaced their own external bus (ADB) with USB with the 1998 introduction of the iMac. At that time, USB was extremely uncommon on PCs.
As for your other 'facts', they would take a lot of effort to figure out the truth, and with you blunt mis-understanding of USB alone makes me lean towards you talking whatever you feel without wanting/needing facts.
In other words, your ignorance is so vast, that you don't feel the need to replace it with actual knowledge?
Since the Core2Duo was made in 2007, and most PC makers use the i3/5/7 chips that are new and faster... that would be considered trailing edge
No, trailing edge is Pentiums, AMDs, Celeron and depending on how you want to look at it, Atom. Core i3/i5/i7 are very recent chips, and Apple *DOES* sell Macs with them. And Core i3 is pretty much irrelevant in this discussion as it's inferior to many Core2 processors (as are some i5's, even, but not to anywhere near the same extent).
What I was saying wasn't that Core2Duo is cutting edge, but that it's not "trailing edge" by any means.
Mini DisplayPort are Apple tech, so thats more of a 'force upon' then leading edge ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mini_Display_Port [wikipedia.org] ) Similar to how a lot of Sony products use a Memory Stick. Its not forward thinking, its forward 'pushing'.
Mini displayport is an open standard. Memory Stick is closed. But the point isn't that MDP, or any of the other features I mentioned in that paragraph are something that I expect to be common on other computers, but that these are things that Apple is doing to move their own technology forward, which is anything but being on the trailing edge.
Saving more then $700 for a faster laptop over the Apple... I don't see how your last claim works... But please keep insisting it does :)
A few things to note:
1. The MBP most likely has a better screen (color, contrast, etc.), is thinner and lighter, has FireWire 800, has a more sturdy build, etc.
2. The processor you selected isn't notably faster than the Core2Duo, if at all.
3. You deliberately chose a configuration of the Mac that includes Apple's excessive RAM and HD prices. You're better off to buy them yourself aftermarket.
If you take a standard configuration Mac, match it up feature-wise with a PC, you will generally find the Mac either similarly priced, or even notably cheaper.
Which brings me to another important point, I stated "generally", being able to find a counter-example does not negate that. There are often delays when Intel comes out with a new chip line to when they show up in a Mac. For the iMac, Core i7 came pretty much right away, for the MacBook Pro, there's more of a delay. But once the MacBook gets a Core iX cpu, you can be sure that it won't be the i3 on their high end, and that it will be priced similar to, or less than, most PCs of similar feature parity.
Now, that's not to say that everyone is going to like the features offered by any given Mac model, or that there aren't cases where the Mac costs more, etc. But I'm not arguing about that. For things like customizability, PCs offer far more options, and if that's what you want, go for it! For example, Apple doesn't offer notebooks that are only 1/10th of an inch less thick than *TWO* MacBook Pros stacked atop each other. They also don't offer notebooks that get less than 7 hours of battery life (rated, of course, but Apple's ratings tend to be significantly slower to reality). Regardless, the MacBook Pro will run for *at least* twice as long as the heaver, thicker, and marginally faster (except for GPU) Dell you listed.