I didn’t sign up for one but I did cave in to temptation. I stopped by the Apple store this evening and picked one up. Sweet!
All this is true. While I imagine it’s possible to use an iPad while only occasionally borrowing someone else’s computer, it sounds like a real pain in the ass to me.
By the way, both my wife and I were unimpressed by the launch of the iPad and had no interest in buying. BUT I stopped by the Apple Store late Saturday just to take a look. And of course I bought one. My wife gave me a ton of shit for being so suggestible and wasting all that money. About 15 minutes later, she sent me back to the store to pick up one for her. Heh.
I pre-ordered mine… But couldn’t wait…this post typed on my new iPad.
This will be the real test for whether the iPad is a success or not. As with the iPhone, there are a lot of folks out there who just don’t know what the iPad is good for. As they get a chance to play with them (hopefully in a better environment than a packed Apple Store), they’ll either “get” what it can do for them, or decide that it’s not useful (or not useful enough).
I’m already seeing a lot of secondary “I’ve got to get one of those” from people who a week ago were calling it “a useless oversized iPod touch that can’t be carried in your pocket.” As with the iPhone, those folks–rather than we early adopters–are going to make or break the platform.
Can I plug my portable hard drive into it and copy my movies, music, and ebooks onto it so that they work when I browse to them?
Can I plug it into my computer and copy my movies, music, and ebooks onto it so that they work when I browse to them?
No
Yes
(And I wonder how may refurb netbooks will be bought by people that just need a computer to sync to? 
)
Sucks
Easily? And by easily I don’t mean creating websites, uploading content to vendor websites, or other crazy means. Something like ctrl-c and ctrl-v type of transfers.
That depends. It’s ABSOLUTELY a Piece of cake to get movies, music, and books on the device if you use Apple Approved Methods to do so (iTunes + $$$)
Taking the free/cheap route takes a little effort
Music’s not such a big deal, but movies are getting easiser to pull over (AnyDVD + Handbrake on the PC works well, Handbrake and Ripit work pretty well on the Mac)
iTunes takes a little getting used to, but once you do, it’s perfectly adequate. Most complaints I’ve heard are from folks that used it for a day or two and gave up on it. It really pays dividends to clean up your library before pulling it into iTunes, then let iTunes keep track of everything.
Sorry, I was talking about what I own already, not what they want me to purchase just to view on their device. Avi’s, WMV’s, MPG’s, MP3’s, jpgs, txt, pdf, pdb, etc. I want to just copy it to that unit to watch/listen/read it.
I can do that easily on any pc based platform. Even my old palm that I use as an ebook reader I can hook up as a drive and copy any books (in the pdb format) into the appropriate folder and it will show up in the ereader program. No messy imports and farting around with unwieldy programs. Just copy and paste. Done.
Can it do it?
Yes, but via iTunes, NOT via a folder structure.
With a transcode (which several free apps make pretty easy), yes. Mp3’s jpgs and the text formats should work just fine. It’s the video that’ll need h.264-ing…There are a few plug-ins for the Mac that make pretty much every video play, but I doubt Apple will allow or permit a DiVX or Xvid player in the app store. The whole world seems to be mpving to h.264/mp4 so that’s not a BIG deal…but like I said, the most pain-free is to pay the Apple tax.
The free transcoders work great for stuff that’s already ripped off a DVD…Handbrake works pretty good on DVDs that aren’t popular with the Bittorrent set. If you get a DVD with aggressive copy protection, you’ll have to pony up for software to rip it…but that’d be the case for the PC, too.
If you want to handle your file management with drag and drop, itunes can provide that, I know there are other alternatives, but I haven’t researched them. I’m happy with iTunes.
I think you can change my vote from a no to a very very likely.
Just wait until you need to update the software (which requires a computer with an internet and iTunes installed).
Or worse, something goes wrong and you’re told to restore the device to factory settings or it craps out and can only be restored to get it operational again. Then it is “Oops, I haven’t copied anything to a computer - I guess I just lost everything”.
You’re a mean one chim-er-a
You really are a heel
I’m a senior. I can probably get free internet somewhere. No problem, I’ll use earthlink to get going, then I’ll do the dastardly deed.
I’m the artistic half of an iPhone developer team, and I actually have a work-related app in mind for the iPad–but it needs an outward-facing video camera to work, similar to that of the iPhone 3GS. So I may be holding off from buying for now.
I’d like to say that I’ll wait until the kinks get worked out and wait for the second release, but I went and bought one yesterday. I honestly didn’t expect it to be this wonderful. However, my iPhone drops into my back pocket without a second thought, so it’ll still be my ‘go to’ device. Since I’m going to pop for the 3G version when it comes out, I bought the cheapest one (the $500 16 GB model).
Surprisingly, I’ve spent much of the time remembering how much I used to draw back when I had time on my hands.
Man, it’s embarrassing to read the fawning coverage of the iPad in much of the media. Newsweek’s cover asks the question: What’s great about the iPad? They answer they give is “Everything” and below: How Steve Jobs will revolutionize reading, watching, computing, gaming- and Silicon Valley"
If Apple’s PR team had managed to rent Newsweek’s cover for a week, they would hardly have put something so obsequious.
Having watched a bunch of videos I am still not convinced about this device. It appears better than a laptop for a few things but considerably worse for a lot else. In particular I don’t see myself using this for regular web-surfing which would be my no.1 use. Given the staggering levels of hype I think it will be successful at least in the US. However Apple’s hype machine isn’t nearly as strong in the rest of the world so I doubt it will that successful elsewhere.
Linux user. Will likely get one once a few generations are out. I don’t need to be an early adopter. I like my current tablet PC (Motion Computing), but it’s heavy and can be slow.
It may or may not help you, but there are a couple of apps in the App store now: the “Camera-A” and “Camera-B” pair, and a universal standalone called “Camera for iPad”. These do the same trick as the Scrabble game does for tiles: make use of a nearby iPhone’s camera over Bluetooth as though it were a built-in camera on the iPad.
Obviously this lacks a certain, uh, economy, but if you happen to have iPhones around already, it’s kinda slick, and I think they only want a buck for them. (The A/B one needs an iPhone 3GS, the “Camera for iPad” works with the 3G, as well).
Would it really have been that hard to give the thing a fucking USB or FireWire port? So you could, you know, plug in a camera.