The iPad 2

In My Humble Opinion (IMHO)
#1

The new ipad’s been announced. It’ll go on sale March 11. It’s thinner, faster, has front and rear-facing cameras, video out capabilities, fancy multi-functional cover, 3 axis gyros (gotta have gyros!), comes in any color you want as long as you want black or white (the covers come in different colors though), same ports, same flash capabilities (none), same screen, same 16/32/64gb storage and pricing schemes.

When I checked out the first iPad it struck me as kind of chunky and oddly sized. This one looks a bit more svelte (I like my electronics svelte), although the height and width haven’t changed. I just bought a macbook pro so I won’t getting an iPad anytime soon, but it does look nice. Maybe it’ll be more attractive 'round Christmastime.

Psyched? Anybody gonna line up for day 1?

#2

I really want a tablet, but I am turned off by Apple’s refusal to put industry standard connectors on the iPad. There’s no reason there shouldn’t be at least a USB connector, and probably no reason for it to not have a SD card reader and HDMI out as well. It would be cool to show off my pictures with, but how exactly am I supposed to get them on the iPad?

I’m sure that there are adapters and what not, but that’s a bunch of shit. I don’t want to carry around adapters, nor do I want just one port, nor do I want to pay more money for things that should be standard features. I think I am just going to wait for Google to come out with their tablet version of Android.

#3

I had no idea that there weren’t USB connectors on the iPad. I literally went from “kind of interested” to “whatever” upon reading that.

#4

This blog post (written prior to the introduction of the iPad 2) quotes an anonymous Apple employee as saying that the iPad 2 isn’t so great, but that the iPad 3 (supposedly being released later this year) is really cool. It’s all kind of silly.

(I really enthusiastic about the iPad over the holidays, and told my parents that I wanted to get one but was planning to wait for the iPad 2. But then my mother surprised me with the first-gen iPad at Christmas. It’s very nice and fortunately I don’t see anything really compelling in the iPad 2 that makes me regretful.)

#5

I have a use in mind for the iPad that requires the gyro, accelerometer, and a rear-facing camera, so yeah, I’m happy with the announcement. :slight_smile:

#6

I really want one, but just like the first iPad, I don’t want one enough to actually buy it. I’m thinking of just waiting for a few months and hopefully be able to buy a first generation cheap.

#7

Does it have a keyboard?

#8

Ditto. As per my other Tablet PC thread floating around, another reason I won’t be getting an Ipad. That’s shocking.

I don’t know how it is in the states, but here in Canada the only decent deals on an Ipad are connected to exorbitant 3G plans I don’t want to sign up for. I already have the crackberry, tyvm.

#9

I’m sure that there’s an onscreen keyboard. If you want a physical one, various ones are available that connect via Bluetooth.

#10

If you don’t mind my asking…why? This sort of device doesn’t support writing drivers, so what good is a generic USB port? You KNOW that Apple’s never going to let the iPad turn into the driver nightmare of the desktop OSes.

The iPad can read SD cards, use keyboards, print, connect to cameras, record video (2 only) and produce 1080p HDMI output (2 only) and sync to data all through other means. And if you really, really want USB on it, you can build it: the hardware specifications for the doc connector are fully published, anyone could create a hardware connector and an app to drive it (there are some “science lab” type apps that do this). Not a single third-party has built such a thing…possibly because it’s too new, possibly because there’s no real demand for it.

Why is it so important it have this one specific port type on it? Isn’t the functionality more important than the port? This is like not buying a car because the radio in it has a volume knob instead of a volume slider.

#11

It’s the Universal bit of USB. Rail against the reality all you want, but in this era the expectation of being able to connect one smart device to another, smarter device is standard thinking. The iPad is ostensibly more than a phone, it’s closer to a computer. A USB port is a major part of a computer, primarily because there are 1001 other items (though probably more than 9, come to think of it) that have a USB cable–and conventional wisdom says that these should be able to connect to any type of computer.

MP3 players (i-whatever excepted, I assume), cameras, phones, memory card readers, external storage, etc. All devices that are USB powered and dock-able on almost any other platform, but not on Apple’s special little snowflake.

#12

It’s not the port that’s the issue, it’s the idea of being locked into a proprietary system run by a company who appears to want their users to do things Apple’s way, not theirs. And people think MS is arrogant!

Personally, I use my USB flash drive all the time, so (in my thinking) what good is a computer where I can’t even use the thing? I bring files to work on @ home quite often and I have neither the patience nor the inclination to relearn to do things Apple’s way. Or to rig up a DIY USB port.

The iPad looks cool, but when you get down to the actual “functionality” of it, imho, it seriously comes up short.

#13

Perhaps you should consider a Windows tablet. There are a few out there, and more to come. The Fujitsu Q550, for example, is very similar to the original iPad in size, weight and display size. You also get the added benefit of an active stylus. Though you do lose out on the battery life (you need an extra-large battery to get the 10-hour claimed battery life).

Personally I’m happy with my Fujitsu P1630 convertible tablet (Windows7, 8.9" display, weights 2.2 lb). I bought an iPad when the 3G model came out, but sold it a few weeks later - the lack of a physical keyboard was a huge annoyance. (And the horrible onscreen keyboard didn’t help; Swype may have made it a useful device, but as far as I know, Apple still doesn’t allow third-party onscreen keyboards.)

#14

Yeah a USB slot is definitely one of my requirements and probably the iPad will never have one.

Overall I am not too impressed. Apple did the basic things everyone was expecting like a dual-core processor and cameras but little else. The basic UI still seems very bland and iPhone-like and I would definitely expect more on a tablet. At the least I want to customize my screen with the widgets that are useful to me. This works well enough on Android phones and I don’t see why it can’t on an iPad with all that screen space. After all Macs have widgets.

I will give Apple credit for keeping the price low. 500 is a reasonable price for the basic model and so far competitors haven’t been able to match that price. Still there is no point paying a low price for a product I don’t want. I will wait for the Android tablets to fall in price which will happen soon enough.

At the moment the Android tablets have better hardware and Honeycomb provides a better UI. The iPad has a lower price point ( for the bare-bones model) and more apps. I expect before the end of the year Android will increase its hardware lead, match or beat the price and narrow the gap for apps. That’s when I might jump in.

#15

I don’t use the iPad as the computer. My computer has my music library, video library, and picture library. When I come home at the end of the day, I plug my iPad into the computer, where it syncs and charges. The computer keeps my master address book and calendar. The iPad has Bluetooth and WiFi to connect to the Internet or to peripheral devices like keyboards.

The lack of a USB port (or parallel port or RS-232 port or…) doesn’t affect me at all.

#16

I think that’s exactly why Apple doesn’t put a USB port on the iPad. If they did, people would expect to be able to connect all manner of peripherals to it, and Apple doesn’t want to support that. So, no USB connector, no arguments. You just can’t do it.
Your real argument, I think, is that you ought to be able to connect all manner of USB devices to your iPad. If you think that, then I think you shouldn’t get an iPad, because you’ll probably be unhappy with it - you have different expectations. After all, it’s just a big iPod Touch (or iPhone) and noone’s seriously complaining that you can’t connect your thumbdrive/printer/etc to your iPhone. That’s because no-one expects that you should, and so no one cares. Nobody expects that you should have a USB slot on your Nintendo DS either.

The best description I’ve heard of the iPad is that it’s primarily a media consumption device - it doesn’t replace your computer, unless all you do on your computer is to consume media on it. I think editing text documents (long work documents) on an iPad, keyboard and mouse style, would be completely annoying and downright painful. Then again, editing a document on a DS wouldn’t be much fun either. Apple shouldn’t make it easier for your to torture yourself, but should instead make it easier for you to do the things which the iPad shines at - watching movies, reading emails, surfing the web, playing iPad games, that kinda thing.

#17

The iPad does some really wonderful things - the new Garage Band looks freakin’ sweet, as does iMovie; plus, hello Netflix. And I’ll be the first to admit, that the reason Apple has won the tablet race so far, is that by and large, what works, works really well. This is the paradigm Apple has set - lock down the device, and tightly control everything running in the software stack from soup to nuts, and you can control the user experience to give the perception of better performance. And I do think if Apple put a full size USB port on the iPad, aside from looking horrible, it would lead to potential confusion - “why isn’t my mouse working?”

But the fact is a micro-USB port takes up a tiny slot, is nearly ubiquitous on all other mobile devices for data transfer and charging, and few peripherals use a mUSB connection, which minimized the risk of confusion, yet Apple refuses to make that allowance - that’s kind of annoying, and there’s really no need from a design perspective. Now, instead of one charging/data cable, I’ve got to have two - and another wall wart, since at 10W, the iPad won’t charge from a standard USB port or wall charger and needs it’s own special white, chunky, cutesy little adapter. This kind of crap gets old quickly if you travel a lot.

And the lack of an SD card is clearly just profit-mongering - a $100 premium for 16GB more flash? I’ve got a fast 16GB MicroSD card that I got for $25, and turned my 16GB Android phone (a Samsung Captivate) into a 32GB model.

Plus, Apple locks down their filesystem so that you can’t even really transport a file on the damn thing, let alone attach a non-media file to an email. If for instance you’re working on a laptop offline, and wanted to transfer an Excel file to send from the iPad - why should the iPad need to be able to open a file just to let me send the damn thing? I should be able to either transfer it over Bluetooth (but iOS doesn’t support Bluetooth EDR), or pop in an SD card, click Attach, and browse to the file location. But I can’t and that buh-lows.
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But dammit, Garage Band looks so damn awesome.

#18

I vote for Garage Band!!! The iPad = laptop without keyboard subtract the computer features, add on the mobile features, subtract anything innovating, add $500, subtract nothing, add tax, subtract worthy, add Garage Band… You my friend, have won! I can’t wait to buy my iPad, I’m going to play Frisbee with it.

#19

Amen and what I hate is when you say you want these things (and Flash, btw) and the Apple fanboys tell you that you don’t really want those things.

#20

You don’t really want those things (especially flash) :wink:

No seriously, when the word “fanboy” gets thrown around you know you’re not going to change minds about this. There’s a famous quote about iPods - “No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame.”

Sometimes, though, what you think you want is not what you really want. Consumers are notoriously bad at knowing what they want - see the Walkman.

I’m not saying that you don’t know what you want. You don’t want the iPad - fine. But you (and I’m including Apple fanboys here) don’t understand why other people want stuff that you don’t want, and apparently, someone is wrong on the internet and needs to be corrected (hi kettle).

Apple most certainly hasn’t got it all right - notfications, frankly, really suck. And that, IMO, ought to be one of the core competencies of the iPad, given the amount of bouncing between IM/email/etc you do on the iPad.