Drivers for Windows, perhaps…drivers for X86 Mac…maybe. Drivers for an ARM derived custom processor (What the iPad has)? Probably not.
Apple wants an experience that ‘Just Works’. That one of the reasons why they lock down so much. They want you to have an appliance experience where you don’t get blue screens, odd errors, and hardware that works - then STOPS working.
You are mistaken. they left the USB port off for several reasons, only one of which was “We can make $30 by selling folks an extra dongle.”
I thought the idea of having everything come through their site would ensure that it worked on their devices. Seems like the ideal solution. Just like every other program they sell.
Why are people afraid to admit that this is intentional because it makes you go out and buy version 2 when it comes out next year? Eh, not that I have a problem with that as it isn’t my money to pay for version 1.
‘New Improved Ipad! Now with USB connectivity*’
*special USB adapter $79.95 at your local Apple store.
That is not the way drivers are installed - on Windows or OSX (I wrote the installers for many drivers). Both OS’es include dozens if not hundreds of drivers (on disk and not installed) to be installed when needed.
I’ve talked to a couple of people lately, and I can see doing all the the below within the pretty reasonable battery life, either on a trip, or at home;
1> Read a book
2> Listen to Music
3> Play a Mindless game
4> Surf the web
5> Watch a Movie
That’s not even including many of the other, shorter tasks I could imagine using it for in between these tasks, such as updating a calendar, checking email, catching a podcast, etc, etc.
Oddly, while I will watch a movie on my TV or read a physical book, I’ve never had any interest in doing those tasks on a full-sized computer. However, I can imagine doing them on an iPad.
Well, I can’t speak for anyone else, but my decision is based on getting a new job that offers a computer credit. Since I recently bought a new computer, I’ve no need for one. Essentially, this iPad will be free, except that I will get all the whistles and bells because it’s already so damned cheap for me.
Also, since the whole “Apple locks down their software” is such a common criticism around here, I want make it very clear that that is not a minus, it is a plus. The last thing I want in a computer is programs designed by amateurs crapping up my OS.
The reason it is done that way is so that ‘plug and play’ will work. Remove it and we are back to the ‘olden days’ of manually installing drivers before a device can be used. This has proven to be very, very difficult for the typical user. Automatic downloads of drivers from the net can (and is done), but obviously that will fail when not connected to the net.
Device drivers are just one of those difficult, complex things that confuse users and break computers. IMHO, to give the iPad the stability it has, Apple has avoided making it a general purpose hardware device that requires add on drivers.
This is such BS. Apple offers a camera kit that allows you to plug your camera into a USB port that plugs into the dock connector.
If device drivers are such a nightmare and that’s why USB was left off the iPad, why aren’t these drivers a problem when connected via the USB+dock connector? How does the USB+dock connector deal with all those different brands of cameras out there? Could it be that they have, gasp, found a way to make things work despite all the hand waving and hair pulling going on in this thread about those dreaded device drivers?
If the USB+dock dongle is able to connect any camera to the iPad, and if the “magic” that enables that is in the dongle, couldn’t that USB-to-dock circuitry be put inside the iPad, so that you don’t have to carry an extra dongle around? Then, to the outside world, it looks, Presto!, like the iPad has a USB port.
Of course, Apple kept USB out so they can make some money. Nothing wrong with that, but please let’s not pretend that it’s based on some grand “pure” design philosophy.
I believe there’s a good reason for leaving out a camera. Apple wants this thing to be ubiquitous, and to be in a lot of public spaces. A camera could get it excluded.
For example, many schools are now forcing kids to put their camera-equipped phones away during class, because teachers have been caught on video doing too many embarrassing/incriminating things. But Apple wants to put these on school desks to be used during class. Therefore, no camera.
I was recording my daughter’s recital, and decided to just record all the kids and give a disc to her teacher to give to the other parents. But I started collecting a lot of dirty looks from parents, so I shut my camera down. I guess no one wants their kid’s bad singing to become the next Youtube viral video. So you can imagine how people might feel if you’re reading your iPad, and from their perspective you’re aiming a camera at them…
As for a forward-facing camera, I think it’s possible that the most comfortable position for videoconferencing is with the thing flat on a table, and then your head will not be in the camera frame anyway. To accommodate the various angles people hold the device at, you’d need a camera on a ball swivel or something, and that adds thickness, complexity, and weight.
As for the system being closed, that’s true. But that’s because Apple wants to maintain control of the user experience. That way they can optimize it and make it great. People love the responsiveness of the iPad, but they also want it to multitask and work with 3rd party hardware drivers of unknown origin. Maybe you just can’t have both. You start introducing stutters and delays into the UI, and suddenly the whole pattern breaks down and the device loses its magic. Multi-tasking would use batteries faster, and lead to situations where an app running in the background might run the device battery down while you think it’s idle.
Apple is one of the few companies willing to make these kinds of hard design choices for the sake of the user experience, and that’s why their products have such great UIs. Other manufacturers build their products from a list of feature requirements that’s as broad as possible so they can get all the marketing bullets in. The result is usually a compromised device that does a lot of things competently, but nothing fantastically.
Almost every smarthphone has a camera nowadays. There aren’t many places where smartphones are banned altogether. Besides why should the average iPad user have to suffer because of the small number of people who can’t use cameras. I doubt schools would ban camera-equipped iPad’s anyway. You could put software on it so that it makes a noise whenever a photo is taken and if it’s front-sided it would be hard to use surreptitiously anyway. Video conferencing could be useful for school students as well, perhaps for interacting with long-distance tutors.
I don't buy the multitasking and battery life argument either. My Nokia smartphone has multitasking and excellent battery life. It's true that open apps can sometimes consumer a bit of battery but I can always close them down if I am running short of power. Ultimately I would prefer devices which treat me like an adult and give me choices. That's all the more true of a device which is competing with netbooks and laptops which run full-fledged operating systems.
Because there was an an installation method, or more likely, a driver that beat the device to your computer via Microsoft, who spends a TON of money on driver certification.
Because exposing a single useage (FAT32 filesystem support and looking for a /DCIM folder full of jpegs) is an entirely different thing than enabling a port that can also be a charger for devices, a printer/fax/scanner/chipper-shredder, a game controller, an internet connected vibrating dildo, a pencil sharpener…
Just because y’all don’t THINK it should be that way, doesn’t mean it ISN’T.
Apple wants a dead simple, always on, no worries about charging, viewport to the internet and a few very specific things. They Don’t Want it to be a computing replacement, Even If You Do. It also doesn’t mean it CAN’T be a computing replacement for certain edge cases, it just means they don’t want to devote the manpower to supporting it that way.
And as a company that’s now #3 in market capitalization behind Microsoft and Exxon, I can’t say it’s a particularly BAD way of doing things.
You don’t think that’s the eventual plan, do you?
I think there’s a major reason why 3G is a value-add cost, and I suspect the 16 Gb base, camera-free, 3G free iPad will sell a TON to the medical and educational industries, and probably everywhere else a vertical application could be needed. (Yes, I remember the last debate about this, I suspect an iPad can’t be auto-claved, that won’t keep it out of the medical industry.)
I wrote a large response to this and realized that I really don’t care enough to get into it. If the device works for you, then fine. If you want to claim the device is magical even though it doesn’t do basic file browsing and transfers, plug and play, and even have the ubiquitous USB port like the equivalently priced netbook, which will do essentially all the functions of an Ipad and more, then I think this turns into a religious discussion.
I have a MacBookPro. It’s got an ‘I’m a PC’ sticker and a bunch of little Linux penguins on it for camouflage.
Why? Because I got tired of being blindsided by people saying I was stupid for spending all that money on a Mac. I’d then find myself drug into a two hour religious discussion I didn’t want to participate in.
Finally, I just said “Listen, do people by Alienware computers?” answer “yes”, response “Well then they spent more money on a computer than I did and they bought a PC.”
The same kind of silly debates occur over game consoles and firearms, fabric weaving and wine. Anything that’s cost constrained - that is, you don’t have enough money to have one of everything, has this kind of debate.
The iPad isn’t for you? That’s okay, but if it IS for someone else, that doesn’t make them less intelligent, it just makes them different.
I was curious about how expensive a PC could be and I found this: Velocity Micro Raptor Signature Edition.
Base price: $4699. You can spend another $1000 to upgrade (??) the video card. I didn’t go through all of the other options, but it seems that you can spend a few more thousand dollars on a system that you use to play games.
$500 for an iPad is a lot of money if you don’t want one, or you want one but you don’t have $500.
It’s not a lot if you want one and you have the money.
I’m getting one, as soon it becomes available in Canada. BTW, I use a PC at home and at work. I own an iPhone and an iPod Nano.
No customers have had a chance to try this, but I would expect anything but a camera will result in an ‘unsupported USB device’ message when you plug it in. I am not an expert on cameras, but there may be a universal, generic driver to access any camera (perhaps the same as access to memory card) - but other device manufacturers may not have adopted a generic driver model.
Yep, there is space to do that, but for some financial reasons, they chose not to do so. Also because of the inevitable ‘why is my device unsupported’ support calls - which will be easier to understand when you plug a printer into a ‘camera adaptor’.
Personally, on those rare moments when my wife lets me use her iPad, I don’t want it encumbered by wires hanging out it - it is a portable device
I think you didn’t capture the full essence of what they’re saying: You say “If you want to claim the device is magical even though it doesn’t do…”
What makes this a religious debate is that people are saying: “I claim the device is magical precisely because it doesn’t do…”
It’s one thing to aknowledge lack of features as unfortunate but
Needed to keep the price down
Needed to get the product out on time (ie due to triage)
Needed to increase the success of the next version, which will include some of the missing features
Desired in order make some extra money from selling accessories.
All those are legitimate reasons.
But some people are making this a religious debate because they are explaining lack of some features as
Great for the user
The result of some deep strategic thinking (eg “no cameras because of classrooms”)
It’s like the lack of 3G in the original iPhone. People were saying “it’s a power hog, it’s a good thing it’s not in the iPhone. Steve Jobs wants you to have a long battery life”. But then, a year later, 3G was in. I don’t think 3G chip technology advanced by leaps and bounds in that one year. Basically, it looks like Apple left it out of the first version either due to triage or to make the next model appealing.
Look, I will quite likely buy an iPad. But I aknowledge that the missing features (camera, USB, Flash, multitasking) are in fact missing features. Just because I can live without them because of the overall value of the device doesn’t mean I need to start explaining every missing feature as part of some grand plan of pure UI philosophy.
There is: mass storage (FAT) + DCIM (and a couple minor variants). The camera connector is NOT a universal USB connector (for all the reasons above), it’s a specific-purpose camera connector, and hence doesn’t have the device driver problem (because Apple provides the universal camera driver on the iPad).
