Apple iPad announced
- Thread starter Dresden
- Start date
If Google finally gets to buy On2 maybe VP6/7/8 will become more widespread (unless Google has other plans with this acquisition, like just wanting the talent for something else/new etc., Apple & PA Semi style).
See! Told ya it was magical!
I'll wait and see how the 2nd gen turns out. There is an article on Ars where one of the writers/editors said could make the best portable comic book reader. I can see that. It does have a colour screen, so it would be better for comics/magazines and textbooks than an e-ink reader. E-ink still wins by a landslide when you're talking about novels and literature.
I guess we'll see how people use this thing when it's actually available. The "large" screen may be enough to change UI functionality for lending itself to different applications than the iPod Touch.
I guess we'll see how people use this thing when it's actually available. The "large" screen may be enough to change UI functionality for lending itself to different applications than the iPod Touch.
And that describes how large a part of the market today? 98%?
When I started in computing, introductory courses in their use were all programming. Usage of a computer implied that you programmed it to do whatever task you needed done. This changed with the personal computer revolution, and somewhere around the end of the 80s, the norm had definitely changed to most people using ready-made applications such as WordStar, Lotus 1-2-3, and so on to perform mostly administrative tasks.
Today, computer use centers on consuming already created content, but the desktop OSs don't really reflect that, rather it is functionality that is tacked on just like any other application.
The iPod Touch and iPad however, are organised with media content consumption as the core. Listening to music, watching films or photos, browsing the web, playing a game, even reading books and papers - all of these are a tap of your finger away, on a device that is always on, always connected and eminently portable. And quick and easy ways off getting all kinds of commercial content to the device is available out of the box.
Note the difference vs Apples OSX Macintosh products. They come with software for organising and editing the photos you take, the movies you shoot, it comes with software for making music and possibly web pages. For a nominal fee, Apple supplies software for writing, making presentations and even crunching numbers. For a somewhat less nominal fee, they provide professional versions of their creative software, web tools et cetera. The Mac platform is centered around creation, and the iPod/Phone around consumption.
Now look at sales numbers - last quarter Apple sold 3.36 million Macs and 30 million iPods and iPhones.
Between looking at those sales numbers and licking your finger and sticking it into the wind to see where the public is heading, how would you design an iPad? As a shrink and redesign of a personal computer, or as a more capable media player and web browser?
But the iPod Touch and iPhone can do all of the same things, and in a more portable form factor. I'm not going to listen to music on an iPad while riding on public transit (bus, subway). I'm not going to get an iPad dock for my car. I might bring it on the train or plane to watch a movie. It seems like a device that's good for carrying around the office, or around the home, so you can consume your content without sitting at your desk, or dragging the laptop around. But it doesn't seem like a good device to bring with you when you're going out somewhere. If I own a PC, and an iPhone or iPod Touch, how useful is it to own an iPad? If I already own a laptop and an iPhone or iPod Touch, how useful is it to own an iPad? To me, the device is ALMOST something I'd look into.
Edit: Basically they're saying this occupies the space between laptop and smart phone, but it really doesn't. It's almost identical in feature to smart phone, with little to no overlap to the laptop space, in terms of functionality. People will find uses for it, but it's not what I was looking for.
Edit: Basically they're saying this occupies the space between laptop and smart phone, but it really doesn't. It's almost identical in feature to smart phone, with little to no overlap to the laptop space, in terms of functionality. People will find uses for it, but it's not what I was looking for.
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Clearly you don't spend much time on international flights
Yes, I watched many seasons of Sopranos or BSG on and Ipod Touch, but a bigger screen would have been nice. As I've said, they are video-skype only short of letting me leave my laptop and Ipod home for my trips to Asia. Shame.If you look at the closest competition - say the Archos 9 - it gets half the battery life and is too weak for any gaming.
In all seriousness, the international road warriors of the world would love a properly done "Ipad"
Two years ago I toted this on every trip:
1x GSM phone for China, Thailand, etc. with email
1x phone charger
1x 3G phone for Japan
1x phone charger
1x PSP to kill time on the flights
1x PSP charger
1x iPod color to listen to music or watch vids on a tiny screen
1x usb cable to charge ipod
1x laptop for email/skype once I got there
1x laptop charger
2x books to read
(and of course noise canceling headphones)
Today is better:
1x UMTS phone that works everywhere with wifi and email
1x phone charger
1x Ipod Touch for vids and tunes and games on the plane
1x usb cable to charge
1x laptop
1x laptop charger
2x books to read
With a good slate/pad whatever I could get down to:
1x UMTS smartphone
1x slate
1x charger + usb to charge phone
That's a HUGE drop in weight and hassle.
Like I said, Apple missed the mark...and nobody else seems close either
Two years ago I toted this on every trip:
1x GSM phone for China, Thailand, etc. with email
1x phone charger
1x 3G phone for Japan
1x phone charger
1x PSP to kill time on the flights
1x PSP charger
1x iPod color to listen to music or watch vids on a tiny screen
1x usb cable to charge ipod
1x laptop for email/skype once I got there
1x laptop charger
2x books to read
(and of course noise canceling headphones)
Today is better:
1x UMTS phone that works everywhere with wifi and email
1x phone charger
1x Ipod Touch for vids and tunes and games on the plane
1x usb cable to charge
1x laptop
1x laptop charger
2x books to read
With a good slate/pad whatever I could get down to:
1x UMTS smartphone
1x slate
1x charger + usb to charge phone
That's a HUGE drop in weight and hassle.
Like I said, Apple missed the mark...and nobody else seems close either
True, and as I already indicated, for me the iPhone is the preferable form factor. However, if I had a greater interest in movies/shows or in books, that balance would have shifted. (Indeed, the improved browsing and pdf-viewing alone may make the sale as it is.) Or if you sometimes input a lot of text, or whatever else that actually benefits from the increased screen real estate or computing horsepower.
My main point was that Apple knew exactly what they were doing when they designed the iPad as a more capable iPod, rather than a touch interface Mac.
I think you misunderstood me here. When I say "scale down" I mean that PC technology* has found it's way into increasingly smaller devices because those devices either got more powerful with time or feature sets have been slightly reduced. (*I know that PC technology is a bad expression to begin with, but I cannot think of a better.)
ChromeOS and Android are actually examples of just that. They are just customized Linux plattforms. They allows you to port desktop Linux applications to an Android phone with little effort, as long as features are supported, and vice versa.
iPhone OS on the other hand is not customized OSX. It's an OS of its own, that has a similar kernel as OSX and implements a subset of the OSX APIs and even shares some source code with OSX, but it's not just a customized OSX. And that means it cannot just burrow a feature from OSX easily, while Android can burrow from linux, because it is linux. You may say that this is not important, but look how long it took Apple to implement Copy-and-Paste on the iPhone.
And iPhone OS will have a limited life span. I'm pretty sure the next, next-next or any future macbook will not run iPhone OS, but the next-next-next-iPhone may very well run a full blown OSX. By that time owners of iPhone OS based devices will be fucked because they (probably) will be unable to run the new OSX applications.
I could easily go on here for a while, but I guess you catch my drift.
Oh, and by the way: Windows 7 is not a scaled up 3.1 or DOS. It's an ancestor of VMS, which was a minicomputer OS.
I guess because I'm a heavy music consumer, the iPod Touch seems like a better product to me. I can put it in my pocket and walk down the street with it, go to the mall, go to the gym, listen at work. I can't carry an iPad with me to listen to music. The iPad would definitely be better for video, but if you're at home you generally have a TV that would be better suited, most times (maybe you have a shared tv and want to watch something your spouse doesn't want to watch). I'm not going to be watching movies at work, so that's a no go at the office. I'm not going to watch videos when I'm out, and if I go to a friends place they're likely to have their own setup, so no reason to bring my iPad. I can see it being useful for travel, like you suggested. Sitting on the train, in an airport, at the hotel, or the passenger seat of a car.
Is this thing good enough to bring to a meeting, or a classroom for taking notes? I'm doubting it, but we'll see. Hunching over a device lying flat on a table to type just doesn't seem convenient or comfortable.
Is this thing good enough to bring to a meeting, or a classroom for taking notes? I'm doubting it, but we'll see. Hunching over a device lying flat on a table to type just doesn't seem convenient or comfortable.
Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.
Legend
Yes, that was the point. It's not a PC, it's an early entry into the book/multimedia market with the intention of Apple being first past the post and in control of the media sales of the market. It's a new form-factor for consuming electronic media - all DRM'd to the Itunes store.
Note that it's a way for consuming media, not for creating it. PC's and Macs will still be needed for that.
Oh, and by the way: Windows 7 is not a scaled up 3.1 or DOS. It's an ancestor of VMS, which was a minicomputer OS.
LOL. I hated VMS. No, actually I loathed VMS. Actually had a professor who bought a VAXstation when he could have bought a DECstation that would have run circles around it all with beautiful Unix.
I understand your point and I guess I didn't understand how little OSX is in the iphone OS. I figured the iphone OS was to OSX as android was to linux...but then there's a good example
Linux in it's early derivatives was nothing like it is today - it scaled up to being Un*x effectively.But anyway, engadget has a snippet on an MSI Tegra2 Android tablet coming out in the 2nd half...I can hope.
Needed is a big word. Independent app developers may supply a lot of functionality, some of course depending on how accessible the dock connector will be for extending the hardware capabilities of the system. But Apple is definitely not pitching it as a general creative tool, no.
That's just semantics .... a large part of what you refer to as OS X is essentially an equivalent of X Windows/framebuffer + GUI libraries on Linux.
You can easily run POSIX layer apps on a jailbroken iPhone (including SSH,Apache etc) just as you could run them on your Mac so in that regard it is no different than your average embedded Linux platform.
If you want to talk about GUI and not being able to run OS X apps on the iPhone then it is no different than with embedded Linux – you can’t run generic X based apps on a Linux device without the X Window system ( there are quite a few of them) nor you would be able to run QT embedded based apps on a Linux device based on X/GTK combo etc ..etc..
Netbooks in their popular form at the moment are basically fully capable (if slightly slow) windows machines. This doesn't compete with that, it competes with the original form of netbooks ... the EeePC type netbooks, but those have pretty much died out.
Tablets do make a lot more sense for the eeePC level hardware, cheap and long battery life and because of the lack of keyboard people are more easily convinced to stick to stuff which runs well on that format (of course this being Apple cheap doesn't enter into it for the consumer).
My ideal netbook\tablet would have a detachable keyboard with it's own battery pack and a tablet which could be attached to it in either screen inside or screen outside orientation. So if you do screen inside you have a netbook, if you do screen outside you have a thick tablet with longer battery life, if you detach the tablet you have a thin tablet with normal battery life. Like Touchbook.
All in all, I'm disappointed ... I thought Apple was going to push the boundaries a bit technologically as well not just trying to push the boundaries of the height of their margins :/ (Which are ridiculous.)
Tablets do make a lot more sense for the eeePC level hardware, cheap and long battery life and because of the lack of keyboard people are more easily convinced to stick to stuff which runs well on that format (of course this being Apple cheap doesn't enter into it for the consumer).
My ideal netbook\tablet would have a detachable keyboard with it's own battery pack and a tablet which could be attached to it in either screen inside or screen outside orientation. So if you do screen inside you have a netbook, if you do screen outside you have a thick tablet with longer battery life, if you detach the tablet you have a thin tablet with normal battery life. Like Touchbook.
All in all, I'm disappointed ... I thought Apple was going to push the boundaries a bit technologically as well not just trying to push the boundaries of the height of their margins :/ (Which are ridiculous.)
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