Christ man, I hate Apple. I’m just pointing out that Apple Records doesn’t really exist as a business entity anymore. It’s purely a paper business as the official managers of the Beatles catalog and that’s it. The Apple Corps logo is slapped on Beatles merchandise as a form of nostalgia.
But even if they were a thriving label that was constantly signing new bands and acting as a major player in the music world, you can’t honestly tell me its OK that they think they own exclusive rights to the word Apple. It’s absurd.
Perhaps some, but I am most definitely in the market for a device like this, and the closedness and missing hardware bits are going to mean I don’t buy a device I had kinda planned to. I want a USB port, not some optional pay extra for the proprietary Apple “camera connect kit” USB dongle. I want a built in SD slot (even microSD). I want a fully capable web browser, which, sorry to say, includes Flash as a mandatory feature atm. And I’d really like to be able to install arbitrary software, as opposed to just Apple-approved stuff, though this alone isn’t a deal-breaker. I would really, really like to be able to have a compose email window or an instant message client open on part of the screen with an active browser window on the rest of it, which means multitasking. I don’t care about the name or lack of camera, though I can understand those who do want a camera for video chat.
So I’ll be waiting to see what Asus and MSI and such come out with. I’m not just ripping on Apple for the sake of ripping on Apple. I really wanted to want this thing, but I won’t be buying it.
So anyone can just take any business name that they want in your world?
You Sir are a Macintosh fanboy of the highest order (Macintosh should give you a Badge or something).
You obviously are comprehension-impaired and I am done with this thread.
There’s no way that wasn’t 100% intentional. It’s not like Apple is embarrassed about the lack of flash: they’re advertising it. They wanted the world, but especially the development world, to know that like the iPhone, the iPad won’t do Flash. So developers, if you want your site to be viewable by a significant percentage of the surfing public, you better use an open standard instead of Flash.
In three years, this will seem like a weird thing to get even worry about. Flash will be dead, an afterthought.
I don’t think so…I just think there’ll be alternatives to flash. There’s a ton of sites where it’s irrelevant (this one, for example), and a ton of others that repackage the content for mobile devices. (m.whatever.com)
Apple can be real pricks when it comes to certain decisions, but they’re rarely ignorant pricks.
Why would they not include flash…folks are saying streaming video and games. Okay, Youtube has shown if a company wants the eyeballs on Apple devices, they’ll repackage the content.
Now games: which usually use a keyboard…how much you wanna bet the keyboard on a iPad/iPhone would be a miserable experience on a flash game? Apple will NOT permit something they have control over to be a bad experience. Eliminating flash takes a RAFT of complaints (it’s slow, it doesn’t render right, I can’t use the CTRL key for fire’, my battery life SUCKS) and reduces them to one: ‘The morons can’t include flash!’ Which folks have demonstrated, they’ll work around, either by going to a different site, or pressuring the site to repackage the content.
The other reason Apple doesn’t want Flash is that probably 90% of their App Store could be ported to Flash, allowing competitors to sell (or distribute freely) product they want a monopoly on and control over.
If it’s already a common word or name and there’s no reason to believe the two businesses will be confused, then yes, you can just take any business name you want.
While I doubt I’ll be buying an iPad, I think the underlying idea behind it is good - doing internet stuff on a device without a computer.
An example I am familiar with is the Squeezebox - it allows me to stream music directly from the internet without having to use a computer. When I first bought it, I realized that I could do everything it could do with my netbook. After having the Squeezebox though, I am not regretting buying it - it is simply a better way to stream music. It can do exactly what I want and expect it to do.
So the idea behind the iPad is good, but having limitations it what people expect it to do is going to be a turn off. The lack of Flash and USB or SD card slots are these type of limitations.
But the concept of this device is great, and I think other manufacturers will offer better alternatives.
The problem is that people are increasingly typing stuff when they are on the Internet whether it’s Facebook, Twitter or just message boards. And this device is going to be horrible for that; perhaps even worse than a smartphone with a physical keyboard and certainly much worse than an 11.6 inch netbook. And while I am sure there will be some cool apps to visit different websites I would much rather have a full flash-enabled browser like Firefox for surfing the Internet.
Some people are talking about using this device for watching movies but again I don’t see the advantages over a netbook. I have seen movie clips on a 11.6 inch Acer netbook and they looked pretty decent. And the netbook has 160GB of storage, a USB port for connecting a portable DVD player and much better software like VLC. Plus it’s going to be really awkward holding the iPad for a couple of hours while watching a movie.
Ignoring the fact that you could set it in a holder, it looks to me like it would be equivalent to holding/reading a book for a couple of hours. I don’t find that activity to be awkward, but YMMV.
I just don’t think that desktop OSes such as Windows work well with either touch UIs or screens in the sub-12-inch range. While you can adjust some things such as font size and taskbar size, there are always UI elements, not to mention third-party apps, that were designed with larger screens and relatively precise mouse input in mind. Things no longer fit on screen, or controls become too tiny to click on comfortably with a mouse, let alone with fat stubby fingers.
The holder would obviously reduce the portability of the iPad. As for a book, IMO they are easier to hold for long periods because of their two halves. I would find it pretty awkward to hold a closed book for a long time. I suppose people have gotten used to holding their Kindles so perhaps it’s not such a big issue. At any rate I am pretty sure I would prefer to watch a movie on a netbook resting on a table rather than holding an iPad.
My first reaction, as most of you here, was also a “That’s it???”
But if you look at it for what it is, a Personal Media Player with Internet access, then it’s not so bad.
The only thing that sucks about it is the fact that it doesn’t support Flash. I think I should have the option of installing it, even if it cuts the battery life to a few hours (instead of the advertised 10 hours). I could forgive this for the iPod / iPhone but not for something that’s supposed to compete with netbooks (hey, that’s what Jobs said).
I may wait until the 2nd or 3rd gen of these devices to make up my mind. I was watching a bunch of CES 2010 videos the other day and there’s some cool ass PMPs coming out in the near future (some Android based as well)
Only this time there’s going to be 15 tablet PC’s, and 20 ebook readers.