The Official Tablet Bitter Disappointment Thread

I am bitterly disappointed by the topic of this thread, leaving out as it does so many factors which are bound to be featured in the post-tablet announcement debate:

• Anger
• Disillusionment
• Depression
• Frustration
• Distain
• Ennui
• Gloom
• Dejection

And of course, the big one:

• Failure

Is it possible for them to kick this thing up so it becomes more a computer (albeit a basic one) than the iPhone but acts as an input only device for more processor intensive apps like Final Cut etc.? Especially given the need for more HD capacity and RAM goes hand-in-hand with those uses? I read somewhere that OS X is designed to be modular. Don't understand or know enough if that's true. But if they could do something along those lines, seems it would address some of your gravest concerns.

It is amazing how the vocals are so vocal (boy I remember the screaming about the MBA), and they will be out in force soon. Here is my list:


What do you mean I can surf the net and text and drive at the same time? No multitasking? FAIL!

It is sooooooooooo underpowered, and 53 hours of battery life, good grief! Who can use that? Why didn't they put a reactor in it?

It's sooooooo fugly!

It doesn't have FireWire 800. I'll sit this toy out.

No full-sized keyboard! How do they expect you to write anything on that!

Only 120 GB? I want my entire collection of 50 gazillion videos that I never watch on it at all times. And my entire 50 billion songs. Useless.

My desk can process stuff faster than that!

My Kindle is still alive and kicking... so much for the so-called Kindle-Killer!

Apple's lame attempt to catch up to the Windozerblower mobile virus incubators.

Who did they design that thing for? It doesn't satisfy MY very narrow set of needs. Fail!

The Keynote delayed the first episode of Lost; really bad timing on Apple's part. Oh, wait... no it didn't. Well, anyway, it took up a lot of bandwidth that could have been dedicated to Lost.

How do they expect you to carry it? In a man bag? Fail!

For 200 bucks more you can get a full computer with 23 USB ports, and more bulk and weight to boot.

Nobody writes standing up!

You can't do any real work with that. I don't do ay work anyway, but because it can't run 325 apps at the same time... FAIL!
It doesn't run Windozerblows 72? Deal-breaker.

It's not a REAL notebook.

I could buy 2 Windozerblowser ultra-portables for that much, and spend the next two years keeping them virus free!

I already have an iPhone and a MacBook Pro... why in the heck would I want something that is better than an iPhone and easier to carry around than my MBP when I need horsepower to type brainless Twitter chirps? I! I!! I!!! I!!!! There aren't any other consumers in the world. Fail!

Failnote!

People can only judge failure on their own personal level. If an individual decides a product doesn't do what they want then it has failed in its ability to make the sale to that individual. I'm going to go with i) all of the above regarding your list

a) Doesn't run "full OS X" and is therefore "just a big iPod Touch"

Assume ARM processors, which likely means no OS X apps other than the ones Apple bundles. I have a Mac and an iphone but don't use Apple's iapps so why would I buy it? Assuming the same price as a portable ipod, why buy a slate instead?

b) No OLED screen (we'll just call those first two "The Troubles" in honor of Ireland)

Too expensive but nice. As long as the screen is good quality like the newest laptops, it should be ok. iphone quality and it's poor.

c) Lack of this or that port, or any at all outside of a headphone jack and a dock connector

I want USB for syncing mobiles assuming the slate is the controlling device also for mouse/keyboard use when desired.

d) Fails to deliver on various rumored subscription services

Content will come regardless - Stanza for iphone is an example. This shouldn't be a problem but Apple would do well to take over control. Stanza purchases are a pain.

e) Can't run Final Cut Pro, Aperture, Pro Tools, or various processor intensive Big Apps

That misses the point about OS X x86 compatibility, plus they aren't all heavily processor intensive all the time. Final Cut is very much non-processor intensive when editing in intra-frame codecs. Think of a film director on location previewing some footage. It can be a hardware accelerated decoding. Photographers would love a slate to drop photos onto on location and slide through them and apply basic corrections to know if they need to reshoot.

f) Exclusive cell service via AT&T, aka "Oh God I hate them so much my head just exploded"

As long as they are optional, it's ok. Bluetooth iphone tethering is another route they go down.

g) Doesn't do "video chat" out of the box

It must... and it will because it must.

h) And, of course, the perennial: the pricing is insane and relegates the thing to niche status

It's always higher priced. At least if it's like a netbook, it's worth it because it's like getting a cheaper Macbook. It is to the Macbook what the Mini is to the iMac. Slower, cheaper and more versatile.

There was a gap in the laptop lineup between the Macbook and MBP for the MBA. There was a gap below the iMac for the Mini.

Right now, there's a big gap between the ipod touch ($399) and Macbook ($999). People have been trying to fill it with OS X netbooks ($299-399). What's really needed though is for Apple to do it right. $699 is right in the middle and is no way a good price for a cut down model but still acceptable for a netbook device. I'm hoping more $599 tops.


So is the iphone and it's an amazing device but I don't use it as much as I feel I should due to the price simply because there's nothing to use it for with the apps on offer. Occasionally something comes along that I use it for an hour or so a day but it loses appeal quickly. The one use that I've found that I want to use it for is reading ebooks with Stanza. I've even purchased books from the online store (over 3G). Switch to night-time mode and it's easy on the eyes and lasts a while.

That's one less use I don't need a big ipod for. What I do need is a device I can sit on the sofa with a sort out my photos and music and it can't be a slave device to my main computer. It doesn't need to be a Mac to do that but it's easier on Apple if it is.

Why can't I replace the battery?

Apple is artificially tying the battery to the proprietary iTablet hardware. This is monopolistic, anti-competitive behaviour and is probably illegal under the Sherman Tank Act. It is definitely illegal in my country!

IANAL but I bloody know what I'm talking about.

Illegal under the Sherman Tank Act.

Points for creativity!

oh so clever!



I'm not saying I won't buy it with iPhone OS, but I so HOPE for a "real" OSX
I could care less about the type of screen (well... it's gotta be color, and I don't want a CRT )
Ports also don't matter... I get the impression it's going to be meant to sync with another "real" computer so 802.11n would work fine for that. The whole idea of a tablet is to be portable... why would I want to plug crap into it? (ok... maybe a single USB for downloading from a camera? (of course an integrated SD slot would work fine for that too.)

If I sit on it by accident and it breaks, EPIC FAIL! Let me see if I find a pic for that.

HA! Great thread. Let's keep the whining strong and focused people.

You can't SMELL textbooks on the Tablet*

*Watch CNBC video if you haven't

Thought you'd like it!

Ireland, oh Ireland, where art thou?

I forgot to take it out of my shorts before diving into the pool... It's not waterproof? It's not idiot proof? FAIL!

If you can fit it into your shorts you're too fat to fit the pool.

120GB is might big enough...but 128GB SSD for a $700 device? I'm thinking that's not likely as flash. If it is a HDD I would expect 160GB like the classic. Still a tad small but good enough for photo and movie storage for a trip.

Hmmm...maybe they'll include a SDHC slot. Kinda make sense for camera stuff.

Yah yah...this is a sarcastic thread not intended for actual discussion. But seriously, pick your sarcasm targets a little better too.

If it's reasonably affordable and decently powerful, I'll look forward to the day when I can hack it and drop linux on it :-), solving most of the issues in one swing!

It would be a little unwieldy to take photos with unless the camera twisted like the one on the Sony Clie, but that isn't Apple's style.

You can import directly from your digital camera, though, with an adapter.

I like the case they have for it that turns into a stand.
http://www.apple.com/ipad/design/

i just wanted new MBP's to come out

Me too. I really need one too but I don't know if I should wait or just get one now!

multitask, that's the real weak point. no camera.. use a real camera. no keyboard. you have the embedded option.
no mouse.. use your fingers! but not being able to crop info from the web and place it in a pages document sounds stupid. closing one app to do so, open the other, paste and save, close, open again..
if its so impressing should be able to at least do that. Not asking for this gadget to handle AI or PS, but if i can use numbers and pages, at least to be able to have one doc of each app open at the same time.
reading a book, and want to search for something online?
close it.. and open safari. sucks!

.....

Yeah, I was really expecting it to have a camera. ichats on the sofa seem like a good thing in theory. I don't know anyone who does webcam chats these days though and I get a bit tired of developers forcing camera use - like in Burnout Paradise where it takes your picture after every race.

A number of good things came:

iPad name, which I like
10" IPS screen - good for photos
iwork apps at just $10 each
Apple controlled book store
$499 price to start is not too bad for an IPS display

The bad things are:

no pressure sensitivity so won't replace a wacom
no above-surface gestures - it's all smudgy screen time
just iphone apps + Apple's apps - it's ok but it's not great when I have those apps on my iphone already and am not impressed with them
just a single 1GHz CPU, no multitasking
second data tariff - optional and no contract but still not that great when I'm already paying for one
not a controlling device - you still have to sync it with a Mac so it is a secondary device unlike a netbook which can be a primary device

Unlike the iphone, this isn't a device I already need so while I think it achieves what it sets out to do, I just don't really want one. It does browse photos on an IPS screen which is something I really wanted but I want it to manage my music/photo collection, not just have my Mac manage it with iphoto/itunes and sync a small subset of those images across for viewing. The reason being that this still forces me to sit at my computer (unless I VNC to it). If it syncs the changes back it's better but I still don't use iphoto because it wastes too much space by duplicating things and is not that stable.

If it was x86 OS X, at least I could customize it to fit into my own way of working. The way it is now, I have to change my own habits to fit with what Apple decide and I don't need that. It'll make a cool second hand or refurb purchase as it's better value than an ebook reader and great for taking on holidays to watch movies and browse but it's not a compelling purchase.

The inclusion of iWork is the deal-maker for me. This thing could be killer for presentations.

Steve never said so... but... do you suppose it will sync via MobileMe ???

Another good question. I'd have to say yes, since there'd be no reason why it would not.

The VGA dock only has 1024 x 768 output, which I'm a bit disappointed by. This means no 720p on a HD projector and also carrying the adaptor and dock with you. Plus, you'll have to sync your photos via iphoto first before being able to put them into presentations. Same with movies I'd bet. A proper filesystem browser is easier for media handling IMO.

The specs are here:

http://www.apple.com/ipad/specs/

No widescreen kinda sucks to be honest. I hate cropping movies or risk wasting screen space. 720p on this device would have been ideal.

I've seen the specs (and posted them to another thread). I guess I'm not bothered by XGA, since that's what I've been using with my projector anyway. As for syncing, I'm assuming that a document created by iWork on the Mac will sync to the iPad. Any reason to believe it won't?

I copy you on carrying all those cables, etc. I hate that, but it's something I've got to do already with a laptop.

Yeah, I think you'll be able to do that but there's a keynote app for the iphone that Apple could modify to let you actually run the presentation on the phone:

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Apple...s-101405.shtml

Then you'd just get a video output device like this idea:

http://www.engadget.com/2009/11/10/s...ideos-empties/

or better this idea even though it's a bit sluggish:

http://screensplitr.com/about/

I'd say pocket-based presentation beats tablet one.

No Blu-ray = FAIL...

Seems kind of kludgy to me, especially since Keynote Remote is only intended to remotely control your Mac in presentation mode. I'm still waiting to see how all these pieces fit together, but the clear advantage (of several) to having Keynote on an iPad is the ability to edit the presentation, not just run it. Now, if you can also control it with an iPhone or touch (and why not?), so much the better.

Here is a "real" Apple tablet....
http://www.axiotron.com/index.php?id=modbook
http://www.axiotron.com/index.php?id=modbookpro

yah, it's a little odd they went with a 4:3 format. i'd have expected a 16:10 device that's close to the golden ratio but maybe that ended up too narrow in portrait mode.

1024x768 is native to the panel so I'm guessing that rescaling all the images to 720p was a little beyond whatever they're using as the GPU on the A4. I'd expect 720p on the next rev.

Which is kinda a dilemma. Do I go for rev 1 and then rev 3 or do what i did with the iPhone which is rev 2 (3G) and then rev 4 later this year?

Being a tablet fiend I really want one but I can see a lot of rough edges being polished off on the next version. Maybe I'll get the cheaper WiFi one with less memory and replace more often.

Shame. But that's really in the stylus. Without wacom's patented passive stylus tech you'll have to use a bulkier active capacitance stylus...one that does BT to boot. Possible but you sure wouldn't want to lose many.


that's still a tad error prone except for very coarse gestures.


The apps looked great actually. The extra screen real estate makes email on the iPad work even better than the iphone.


That 1Ghz CPU looks like it's working better than a reference 1Ghz A9 design based on the teh snappy of the apps. Should be interesting what PowerVR GPU is part of the SoC or perhaps something else. No one knows at the moment if the A4 is single or dual core.


Not sure what they could have done different except maybe offered iPhone tethering. Oh wait.


Yah..it would have been nice to sync the iphone to this but with only 64GB max it's really just a secondary device with some extra storage for photos. Still, the App/Music/Book store on this is much more usable than on the iPhone simply because of the extra screen real-estate. Good enough that you probably only need to sync to make sure you have everything backed up.


I'm sure someone will jail break it.


Whether it's compelling or not depends on how well it works. You're average smartphone prior to the iPhone wasn't all that compelling either and I can't remember if there were iPhone naysayers or not but that turned out better than expected.

This merges several epic fail categories (MID, UMPC, Tablet, eBook reader) and spins a new take with aspects of all of them. Something Apple is very good at doing.

It turns out it's a branded Cortex A9 SoC with a MALI GPU:

http://www.brightsideofnews.com/news...-the-gpu!.aspx

Don't know if it's dual or single core 1GHz though. I suspect single core for power consumption and heat.


You can't manage your collection though. If you buy music from itunes on the iPad and then keep syncing to your main machine, sooner or later you will have to sort out your old music and apps and so be forced to sit at your main machine doing these tasks anyway.


But the iphone itself was compelling from launch, the iPad isn't. The iphone showed manufacturers how a phone should work. The iPad doesn't show how a slate should work, it shows how an ipod touch works on a big screen.


The reason they failed was the UI and cost. MID computers cost as much as a full laptop but did touch interaction badly and ran unoptimized UIs.

The tablets were heavy devices with poor quality touch screens and a stylus.

eBook readers don't do enough tasks for what they cost.

Apple had all the ingredients to make a great slate device even using the iphone OS - they just had to do one thing and that was make it a master device. If that meant using a 1.8" 160GB hard drive and adding two USB ports, that's what they should have done. As it stands, it's a third-level purchase like the Kindle, with the phone and computer taking spots one and two in varying order. Once people get to two, they generally have enough tech. Hence why 3 million people bought ebooks last year and 30 million people bought netbooks.

Apple had the chance to destroy the netbook market but what they showed just isn't enough to do it. They may be able to turn it around as the dock accessory lets you use USB and iphone OS 4 could have multitasking and a filesystem browser but I doubt they can make it enough to dampen the popularity of the netbooks.

What is the point of a file system browser on a device like this? Why is multitasking important? I keep hearing about the importance of both, but so far haven't seen the rationale explained for either one.

The browser is important to be able to easily open PDFs without having to figure out which App Store app lets you wirelessly sync and open them and it lets you sort those miscellaneous files where you want. It's also important for uploading to websites - say you want to insert a .gif into a forum post but can't hotlink it from the site it's on, you download it, put it on tinypic.com and insert it in the forum post.

Multitasking is so that if you have an ebook reader app and you buy ebooks from Amazon, you don't have to reinitialize the ebook reader every time you jump between it and the browser. Plus you can listen to Spotify in the background while you do it. It means that if you have waited for a minute for a large web page to load over Edge and switch to a few apps, it doesn't refresh the page and start loading all over again.

It doesn't have to be major multitasking but the Palm Pre can run 50 active cards side by side and it's so cool to see it playing NFS Undercover, switch out to another app quickly and jump right back into the game without starting the level over again. It's not necessary but it can be done and Apple's competition is doing it fairly well with few adverse side effects.