I may be wrong (I frequently am about Apple) but it wouldn’t surprise me if the iPad lasts as long as the floaty-screen iMac, which got similar oohs and aahs when first released but then rapidly plummeted into obscurity due to inherent limitations and unpleasant superficiality.
When people learn that I’ve been carrying my iPhone in my pocket with no case for two years they always want to inspect it and I would describe their reaction as downright hostile. I suspect this is because every iPhone case ever made is fucking hideous and deep down they realize this and are jealous of my devil-may-care iPhone free balling lifestyle. I’ve seen a lot of people with broken iphones/ipods and I have to wonder what the hell they did to them. I’ve dropped mine from desk/table height so many times and it’s in pristine condition.
I’m debt free. My idea of an adult toy is an airplane, not a functionless pie plate that displays pictures that can’t be directly downloaded without additional hardware.
Microsoft already figured out the case issue and will certainly have a camera and connectivity to other computer devices. They might even throw in a clock. As for your plan not to use it as a computer, you don’t have a choice.
Once the toy aspect of the Ipad fades it’s an oversized Iphone without the phone.
I agree.
On the other hand, there are several things I imagine using a netbook for, which would be much, much worse on an iPad. Such as:
[ul]
[li]Writing and editing long documents[/li][li]Writing and editing code[/li][li]Writing long e-mail messages[/li][li]Taking notes in meetings, lectures, etc[/li][li]Giving PowerPoint presentations[/li][li]Carrying entire iTunes library when traveling[/li][li]Backing up or offloading digital camera images[/li][/ul]
It just goes to show that it’s an apples-to-oranges comparison, not a question of which is better.
It’s too early for sour grapes. We first need to see how many other people take advantage of the 14 day return policy for that.
It reads as though Magiver is talking about the stand usage aspect of the case, but if the iPad needs this function, so does anything else with the same form factor - maybe it’s a criticism of the form factor? - in the context of interactive use at a desk.
This doesn’t quite match my experience of netbooks (I’m typing this post on one) The screen size has been the only noticeable limitation of this one - performance is not particularly different from other Windows machines (granted that may not always compare favourably with the user experience on a Mac, in some ways).
I just don’t think it’s useful to pit the iPad against netbooks (that’s not a dig at you personally - Steve Jobs started it). The user experience on an iPad may be great, but it doesn’t have half of the functionality of a netbook - it’s not really a fair comparison in either direction.
So you only get one toy? In all your years on this round spinny thing it’s never occured to you that other people may have different needs?
Functionless? Really? Spare me the hyperbole .
The white elephant in Microsoft’s room is: They created an interesting future tech demo and now people are clamoring to have them deliver…but it’s incomplete. It’s full of ‘if we flick this way, it could do that’ stuff that looks cool, but it’s missing the rest of the UI. ‘I take these pictures’ and they magically appear, I flick in this direction and a browser pops up, if I press and hold and squiggle and the tech demo magically knows what to do.
It’s like the windows devices that came out right after the iPhone did, they looked pretty, until you realized it was just a pretty launcher screen on top of windows mobile 5 or 6, which really were crappy OS’s. If you wanted to look at a document, you fell through the pretty and hit Mobile Word. The iPod killer ended up being a pretty case, with a pretty shell, over the same crap, and it wasn’t an iPod killer.
I have great hopes for Windows Mobile 7, and I like a lot of what I see in Android…just not enough to pry me off my iPhone. And by the time one or two devices (Droid, Nexus One) get to where the iPhone is, Apple moves in a different direction.
Let me be clear: These devices, on a laundry list comparison, are better, more pixels, more camera, Flash, less ‘lock in’…but where the rubber meets the road, battery life, or application integration, or app store, or ??? they’re either not as compelling, or not BETTER than the iPhone, and I’m already pretty happy with the iPhone.
Mark my words: Courier will be incomplete, if it exists. It’ll cost more money, it’ll have great big gaps in the experience you don’t see in a 2 minute piece of fiction on youtube. If you’re lucky, they’ll build it on Windows Mobile 7 Series Mobile 7 Windows, and it’ll sell a tenth the number of units the iPad does.
But if the rumors are true, Windows Mobile 7 doesn’t have Cut and paste or Multitasking. Hmmm.
Useless pieplate, indeed. (And I say this wondering if a $300 Android tablet will be how I get my introduction to Android) I’m a sucker for tech, long enough that I’ve owned a LOT of half-baked stuff. The iPad isn’t half-baked.
It is not that I can’t afford many toys, but I only want one that I have to lug around with me. I don’t want to show up at a place and find I left my resume on the one at home. Or my pictures, or music, or video, or what have you.
As I’ve said in other topics, I’d be quite happy if Palm got their heads out of their asses and created a LifeDrive with a phone. No frickin keyboard, but bigger battery!
I’d totally love to have one. But I’m not going to buy one, but it’s just so damned expensive. I already have a netbook and an iphone, so it’s just not an expense that I can justify to myself.
The missing features and my dislike of Apple’s way of doing things help reinforces that decision, but are totally secondary considerations. You can do a lot with $700.
For the most part I agree with you. Those are the things I have a laptop for. I don’t think netbook are best for taking notes in lectures and meetings though. They are pretty obtrusive. The clicking of the keyboard is as annoying as someone texting on their cellphone while your talking. OTOH, I don’t have enough experience with the iPad to tell you how well that works out. I think with a stylus, it would be ideal for taking notes. I could easily carry it from seminar to seminar just like I do with a notepad. I guess whether or not you can carry an entire iTunes library on it or not depends on the size of hard drive you get.
I also think that eventually the iPad could replace the scientific notebook. I’d just need a chemical proof case for it.
something like a Ziplock bag maybe:p
My subtlety was lost. I’ll tag it next time. :rolleyes:
What would be really very useful is a phone the standard size of an iPhone or a Storm or a droid. Just a phone, but in reality it is a full-fledged computer that you can dock to a regular keyboard and monitor, as fully functioning computer. That way you could have your computer with you at all times. AT home yo just plug it into your docking station.
Steve Jobs’ opinion of the stylus:
“It’s like we said on the iPad, if you see a stylus, they blew it. In multitasking, if you see a task manager… they blew it. Users shouldn’t ever have to think about it.”
He must still be sore about the jokes people made about the poor handwriting recognition on the Apple Newton.
The iPad has a capacitive touchscreen, by the way. It’s not designed to work with a stylus.
The iPad doesn’t have a hard drive, and even the most expensive model only has 64GB total. Most netbooks use 2.5" hard drives; I believe the largest 2.5" drive (with standard thickness) currently available is 640 GB.
I just don’t see it. I already use a tablet PC for some of my research projects, but I primarily use the stylus for input. It would be difficult to input all the information with a touchscreen. Microsoft Courier could be viable for this use though.
Also, capacitive touchscreens only respond to bare skin (or something with similar electrical conductivity and capacitance), so you can’t use it while wearing gloves.
Well, the whole ‘it’s not a phone’ thing just got shot to pieces yesterday when I ran into someone using it as a phone using the TruPhone application.
Yes. Considering the battery technology that is already been developed it’s just a matter of time before a device can be fully recharged in 2 minutes. Chip technology will eventually replace hard drives. I’d like to add to this scenario by including an OS that is programed on a chip. You turn the computer on and it’s instantly running.
for those like me who see a computer as a tool first then the fun factor of an Ipad is the icing on the cake, absent the cake. It’s a niche that should exist above small notebook computers and not below them.
Which is like Skype only without the camera.
The jury’s still out. How much storage do you need with cloud computing and pervasive wireless broadband? If everything’s stored in the cloud, then it doesn’t matter what you use to access it; tv, watch, PADD, or optical display.
Of course he’s right. For most things the stylus is awkward. Using your fingers to navigate and type is much better. Handwriting recognition is miserable enough to be useless. OTOH, the only one that needs to recognize my chicken scratches is me. There is simply no way to write without a stylus. If you want your notes to be converted to text, then obviously this wont work. Since most notes in chemistry are pictures and symbols, it’s really not useful.