Quote:
Originally Posted by
Carmissimo 
If you want a full-function computer, they make those. They're called laptops. They work rather well and people like them. There was no need for a re-imagining of that mature, well-thought out form factor.
This device will be very good for what it is designed to do. Kudos to Apple for not making the mistake of trying to get the device to awkwardly perform tasks for which it's not suited.
That's the sort of foolish path the competition has travelled on and look where it got them.
Keep in mind that price is a big factor in all of this. I'm sure Apple could have imbued this device with some very revolutionary technology but then the price would have gone north of $1,000 and absolutely no one would buy the thing. What would be the point?
I think you've missed my point entirely. I have a computer. I don't need a laptop because that's a fully functional computer that you can carry around. What I want is a mobile that I can sync with my main computer and use to create and peruse documents of various types. Basically a second computer much like a netbook.
The iPhone allows for that, except for the "creation" part, and excepting the small size. What I was expecting here (and I don't think by any means I am alone in this), was a device like the iPHone, but bigger, and with content creation abilities. The iPad attempt to be that, but it fails technologically IMO. Needless to say later versions will do what I want, I think they could have done it with this version however instead of focussing on the media consumption angle. Selling devices specifically to passively consume media obviously is "the thing" lately, and obviously will make them a ton of money. I was merely hoping for a bit more, or in fact, *anything* that used technology to solve some of these problems.
What we have is a big iPod, with *no* new technology, that solves none of the problems associated with tablet computing and on top of that, eschews the use of some previously discovered solutions, like a stylus.
Why leave out a stylus, if what you have without it is not as good? I was assuming they would leave out the stylus, but have some cool method that replaced it. Instead they just left it out.
Why leave out thumb typing (which works so well on the iPhone), when they have nothing to replace it with?
The main physical design problems with tablets always have been input related. The biggest one of all has always been, .... how do you type on it without putting it down? The idea being that if you have to put it down on a surface to type on it, you might as well be carrying a laptop.
The most often proffered solution to this problem has been pen input, and either holding the big tablet in the crook or your arm, or making the tablet smaller. Apple has made it smaller and lighter, but they've taken away the stylus and replaced it with basically nothing at all.
Apple's solution is that you simply don't type on it without putting it down or you type on it like all tablets in the past by poking at a virtual keyboard with one finger at a time. This is seriously lame, and worthy of criticism.
