So, the release date a little more than 2 weeks away. Despite my initial skepticism, I find myself getting more interested in this little doodad. I have some general questions (confession: I have never owned an iPod, I’ve always used other brand devices.)
3G or not 3g? That is the question. The cost is higher for 3G, plus the monthly plan cost. Other than everywhere-web, I think I could get along with wi-fi only. How about you?
Battery. I understand that if the battery goes, you need to send the entire unit to Apple and they will replace it with a refurbished unit. Is this accurate? How long would you expect the battery to last under normal use? This seems like a bad business model to me, but again I’ve never had an iPod.
Early adoption? If you’re getting one, are you going to pre-order, or wait to see what the general consensus is when it hits the street?
The 3g is data-only (ie, it is not a phone) and it is not carrier locked to AT&T. Meaning that if your carrier is T-Mobile, you could put a T-Mobile SIM in it and get your data plan from them.
“Refurbished” isn’t entirely correct for Apple replacement products. They don’t take Billy-Bob’s iPhone/iPod/iPad, clean it up and send it to you. Returned products are stripped down for parts and new replacement (“service”) units made from tested-good parts.
I look forward to all the whining about people who drop them and then find that the warranty doesn’t cover accidental damage any more than your vehicle warranty covers you driving into a tree.
All speculation is speculatory, as I don’t forsee being an early adopter.
Yeah, I do as well. I don’t need another data contract or bill coming into this house. For the things I see myself using an ipad for, using it outside of a wifi area isn’t one of them.
I’d think pretty good. My iphone keeps a charge all day long, and I use it constantly.
Nope. My dad’s getting one, so I’ll see how he likes it and go from there. I’ll be quite content waiting for the 2nd or 3rd generation.
Without the 3G, you also don’t get the GPS. But my reasoning for 3G is this: if you turn out not to use it, you’re only out $130, a trivial amount over the life of the device. You can buy data cheaply in small increments, so it seems reasonable to have the capability.
I’ve got an original iPhone, and a first-generation iPod touch. Both have over 80% of their original battery life. I gave away my first-generation iPod (~2000 era) a couple of years ago, the new owner says it still has over half it’s battery life. People like to whine about the non-replacable batteries, but I’ve only ever seen one to fail over time (a “Flash Drive” era Shuffle). They are, occasionally, bad out of the gate (i.e. they’ll fail in a week or so); Apple will replace those with a new unit.
I don’t think that’s strictly accurate; supposedly the T-Mobile GSM uses one of the 3G bands that the iPad does not have a radio for. While the iPad isn’t carrier-locked, I think that as a practical matter in the US AT&T is your only option because of the radio bands. Overseas you’ll have more choices.
I love the device, and would get one if only it had a camera for video chats. I just can’t fathom why Apple left that out. It seems so obvious, and Apple is all about their integrated cameras.
I said I wasnt going to get an iPhone until it had been out a while, so I could gauge reactions to it. I made it a day.
I imagine something similar will happen with the iPad for me.
Since it’s mostly going to be an “occasional” device, I dont think the 3G is necessary. I have my iPhone everywhere, so If I *must *have email/internet access there’s that. There’s not many moments in the day when I’m away from wifi, anyway.
The e-book thing doesn’t particularly excite me, or using it as an e-mail or web device.
What does excite me is the iWork applications. Those have some really innovative interface ideas in them of a quality that I haven’t seen since the first generation of the iPhone. It’s worth watching the hour and a half long intro video to see that part.
Also, this will be an amazing Home Theater interface. A whole world of interface devices will arise with IR flashers, RS-232, X-10, HDMI and other things to allow this device to be the centerpiece of a home media system. If it seems like expensive overkill, price out a Crestron system.
Whenever a new device appears, it causes a flowering of new ideas. For instance, imagine an iPad as an accessory to your home computer, so you could push something off that fixed screen and onto this portable one like in the scene in Avatar.
I can see this as being an astonishing music creation and composition device. For instance, there are things like the Jazzmutant Lemur or the Yamaha Tenori-On are more expensive than this, and and software for the iPad will blow those away.
This will be the killer app for some areas like medical charting. Drug companies will give these away to doctors for the opportunity to have their drugs listed first on a prescription writing app.
When someone creates an app to tie this into a Yamaha digital mixing board, the sound for a concert will be able to be tweaked or even mixed from a single seat, rather than a 12 foot wide area at the back of the hall. Freeing those seats up will pay for an iPad in a single show.
The problem with that is the lack of interface ports.
There is NO usb port. Only a headphone jack and the dock connector port. Although they do list on the tech specs page “Support for 1024 by 768 pixels with Dock Connector to VGA Adapter; 576p and 480p with Apple Component AV Cable; 576i and 480i with Apple Composite AV Cable”, so I suppose it wouldn’t be beyond the realm of possibility for them to come out with a USB hub that connects to that port.
Doesn’t support writing on the screen, which limits some potential uses like signing reports or the prescription writing app. But I’d say give it another 3-5 years and we’ll be seeing that.
I think one of the benefits of the size is that they might actually be able to include a physical manual in the box. The iPhone manual is something like 160 pages, and I’ve heard any number of complaints from people that they don’t give you a printed copy.
Everything I mentioned would work with WiFi, BLuetooth or 3G. Home Theater interfaces definitely should not be tethered to USB ports. Besides, you can use something like this to provide one.
That’s why I’m buying one on day one. I already have about five iPhone apps that have literally changed my music-creating workflow - except, “if only they were BIGGER and I could use both hands…” - that means that day one, the thing is already rocking my world. And yeah, once music-minded apps created explicitly FOR it start arriving, stuff like the Lemur is instantly obsolete. Incredibly exciting.
I still can’t imagine having the Internet without Flash. The only thing I do that doesn’t require Flash is this message board, and one of the split offs. (Well, I guess you can count Youtube, now, too.)
Meh. I use my iPhone enough that not having flash is the website’s problem, not mine. Other than flash-based games, I’m not missing anything (other than Hulu).
I’ve been using computers since the Altair, and have been paying close attention to innovations in operating systems and applications ever since. The iPad looks like it has the potential to inspire programmers to produce truly new types of applications, like the Amiga (the Video Toaster, Mandela) or BeOS (Radar 24) or PenPoint.
As much as I like the idea and politics of Linux, it has yet to be a fertile ground for new categories of applications, instead being the place where programmers build free versions of existing Windows and Mac applications.
Mind sharing which five apps have rocked your musical world?
If the iPad does nothing more than kill Flash, it will be a win in my book. Every single FireFox crash I’ve ever experienced is traceable to Flash.
My big issue is that you couln’t do any of those at the same time. Say you’re in a chat ,and then want to look at something on the web…oops, sorry, chat is over. You have to close the Safari page when you’re done with it, and then load chat back up again. It may seem like only a minor thing now, but will you be saying that when you have to do it fifteen times in an hour?
Unless they, at the very least, integrate some sort of way to have chat overlay in top of other windows, then it’s a really big thing. Hell, they still haven’t let people respond to texts without closing the current program and loading up the messages area on an iPhone (natively, third-party apps can do it, but maybe only for jailbroken phones?) so I doubt they will ever add that functionality.
One question, though: If someone already owns an iPhone, and therefore already pays for a 3G data plan, do they still ahve to shell out another monthly fee for the data plan for this, or can do they some sort of combo thing where you can only use AT&T’s 3G, but you don’t pay the monthly fee, or just have a smaller fee attached to yor AT&T bill, like a family share plan type of thing?
Unless they’re offering a deal they haven’t admitted to, yes. But note that while it’s a “monthly plan” (you buy either 250MB or “unlimited” with a 30-day timeout), it’s not a contract – you can just buy it the months you need it. That will make it very attractive to some folks, and be effectively just another monthly plan to others, depending on how much off-Wifi access you need. Looking at my iPhone AT&T usage, it looks like the 250MB plan will be way more than enough for me on most months, assuming I do my media loading on Wifi.