Traditional PC makers are going to ceed the future of computing? That's hard to believe. They'd soon find it difficult to exist when the day comes that iPads become just as powerful as laptops and desktops.
You've gotta be careful with that kind of shit. Next thing you'll find yourself on the floor with an iPad (2) around your neck.
Thanks!
Because of my " matinee idol" good looks I am able to attract beautiful women, but for some reason, not able to hold on to them....oh well, such is life!
That, and the retina display. Coming from a 1st gen iPad, I can't wait!
If Apple can get Retina Display for the next iPad then that's it. Apple will have locked in another natural monopoly, just like with the iPod. Sure, there will be the $200 loss-leader gnatablets sold by Amazon and B&N but Apple will be taking nearly all the profit from the tablet market and have all the sales from the proper tablet market.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Maverik234
I heard a lot about buyers remorse over the iPad, the only remorse I had was buying a Wifi only. I won't make that mistake again...iPad 3 3g here I come ... when it comes out. With a 3g PAYG chip it really comes into it's own. With (hopefully) Siri on board it will be a must have machine!
My first IPad was WiFi-only. Then I bought the 3G model, but never activated it. Bak then I only used a few GB of storage. With my 3rd tablet, the iPad 2, I found that I used it a lot more for storing and watchng videos on the go so decided that I'd get a higher capacity model next time. Then TomTom made their GPS app Universal. Then I lost my WiFi?only iPad 2. Next time I'll be buying the highest capacity iPad with AT&T 3G and maintaining a active account.
That's exactly why people want a PC over an iPad. I love my iPad, but it's not a replacement for a computer. It's an ultra-portable accessory.
"People" is an overly broad swath of the population I think. "Some people" maybe, but both my wife and daughter, who for the sake of the argument are closer to "average consumers", hardly touch their desktops anymore - doing most everything on their iPads, both "consuming" [sic] and creating content. In fact my wife will wander into her office/den of creation, and if she needs to throw together a quick doc she sits down at her desk, leaving her desktop slumbering in the background, connects her bluetooth keyboard to her iPad, knocks out the doc, and then walks away again. The desktop never even knew that it was co-opted and once paired, the keyboard gives her instant typing on the iPad.
My daughter tracks her homework and tests on her iPad, keeps all of her textbooks and reference material in iBooks, turns in her homework via email to her high school teachers, keeps her assignments lists in iBooks as PDFs. She writes papers on it - able to toggle back and forth to her texts and reference books complete with highlighted passages and notes - and builds her classroom presentations in Keynote which she then uses in the classroom to deliver.
Every day, apps and capability increase on these devices. If you have special needs (coding/programming, Windows only software, etc.) then yeah, your statement of course makes sense. But if you poll the vast majority of average consumers, their needs are squarely within the existing capacities of the iPad. Apple planned and delivered these devices that way. But their potential for broader and more specialized use is there as well. My friend is a pediatric surgeon, and he basically runs his practice off of his iPad. His systems were setup to optimize data handling and delivery for mobile device management. And this is a guy who 5 years ago was a very loud Apple critic.
I work with a large population of systems engineers in a Fortune 50 company, who daily show me how they are using iPhones, iPads and even iPod Touches to remote manage their storage and server systems on a global basis. And they are in turn driving development of amazing system management interfaces with our internal iOS dev team.
It is one hell of "an ultra-portable accessory" my friend!
The big problem is simply a lack of innovation from most of these companies, that's why they fail on many of these products.
Computer company A Builds a computer, installs Windows and sells
Computer Company B Builds a computer, installs windows and sells
Etc
Etc
Computer Company E Builds an OS and a Computer and sells
Then
Computer Company A builds a tablet, installs Android and sells
Computer Company B builds a tablet, installs Android and sells
etc
etc
Computer Company E builds a tablet, builds an OS and Sells
For companies A-D there is no solid reason to chose one over the other...they are basically selling the same thing. Customer loyalty, price, and advertising all come into play but for Gods sake, try to differenciate yourself.
Say what you like about Microsoft but at least they have some products of their own (not just cloned software and hardware). They have Xbox, Office, Windows (not the best, but it's theirs)...and lots of failures ... zune? Not really something new...a bad copy of the iPod...it failed.
OSX is now very compatible with Windows, Apple made it that way to ensure that people could communicate, heck I'd even go as far to say that Office for Mac is the best version (even if it is the only programme I have that crashes). Companies like Dell, HP, etc need to decide if they're just manufacturers, that is a company that manufacturers and rebrands other products. If they want to be something else then that will take a major effort...and a major risk that I doubt they (shareholders) want them to take.
If Apple can get Retina Display for the next iPad then that's it. Apple will have locked in another natural monopoly, just like with the iPod.
I agree and I suppose S. Jobs envisioned this from day one, and that's why he was so disappointed at the negative press after iPad's release. \
For corporations, they want to gravitate around a platform that has a long future. So far, only iPad seems to have it. But, once a corporation start coding apps for iPad, it will be difficult to start selling another pad to them. In order to minimize cost, they would rather stay with the first mover. I seriously doubt if Windows pads can make it.
On the other hand, I think Windows phone can still make it. They don't need corporate support to make it. But, with corporate support, iPad will crush all other pads, it feels.
I think that the moral of the story is that a strong entertainment ecosystem is necessary to move this particular product category.
I'm not so sure this is true. 1) judging from the anecdotal evidence here and other blogs and forums I do not think users mainly use their iPad/tablets to consume entertainment, if you define it as movies, music and possibly books. And before you can make a statement like that, either you or I would need stats of some kind to back that up.
Nice try at a subtle dig at iPad for being a "consumption only" device, though. I shouldn't have to say that there are many more uses for it, which many of us have discovered.
2) It's still way too early to call the Kindle Fire a success. Up until Best Buy slashed prices a few months ago we all thought the HP Touchpad was a success. Give it a few quarters before you call Amazon's product a market mover.
Now we'll put to test that theory about how competition is the only thing that pushes Apple forward. It seems to me that Apple barely pays any attention to what their competition is doing (aside from occasionally grabbing a good idea like notifications) and just pushes forward with their own vision. If the iPad stagnates over the next two years, I guess those theories will be proven right, but I'm betting it doesn't. I'm betting the iPad continues evolving at the same pace as before, no competition required.
I'm not so sure this is true. 1) judging from the anecdotal evidence here and other blogs and forums I do not think users mainly use their iPad/tablets to consume entertainment, if you define it as movies, music and possibly books. And before you can make a statement like that, either you or I would need stats of some kind to back that up.
Nice try at a subtle dig at iPad for being a "consumption only" device, though. I shouldn't have to say that there are many more uses for it, which many of us have discovered.
2) It's still way too early to call the Kindle Fire a success. Up until Best Buy slashed prices a few months ago we all thought the HP Touchpad was a success. Give it a few quarters before you call Amazon's product a market mover.
There's some evidence that a high percentage of iPad owners may regret their purchase, finding they don't have as much use for it as they originally envisioned. That could be one reason that some of the computer makers may have decided it's a market not worth pursuing right now.
Also, while you might think that iPad owners find more use than owners of other tablets, not so according to this European study. To the contrary, those cheaper tablets/readers are used more often by their owners than those with the somewhat expensive iPads.
"Interestingly, non-iPad owners are recording an average of 30 minutes more usage a day than people with Apple iconic device. This trend was evident in all markets surveyed. "We found that younger people are more likely to own cheaper non-Apple devices, and that these users tend to be most engaged with social networks," said Garner.
Traditional PC makers are going to ceed the future of computing? That's hard to believe. They'd soon find it difficult to exist when the day comes that iPads become just as powerful as laptops and desktops.
I agree. Although it might take a long time, if ever, to match the power of a laptop/desktop, there will certainly come a day in the not too distant future that the iPad will be able to do the majority of the same tasks that are done with laptops/desktops today.
I see interest waning to some degree before a strong resurgence, though, but I don't see Apple dropping out of the tablet space... ever.
Now we'll put to test that theory about how competition is the only thing that pushes Apple forward. It seems to me that Apple barely pays any attention to what their competition is doing (aside from occasionally grabbing a good idea like notifications) and just pushes forward with their own vision. If the iPad stagnates over the next two years, I guess those theories will be proven right, but I'm betting it doesn't. I'm betting the iPad continues evolving at the same pace as before, no competition required.
Agreed, not an argument I've believed, if Apple (Steve) was guilty of anything then it would arrogance rather than being pushed by competition. I believe they were more inspired by bad products than good ones. At the end of the day, everyone is copying to some some extent, but what differentiates companies is copying a good idea, improving it and making something new, as a posed to straight copying and regurgitating someone else's product.
Since moving back to Apple I've never felt so supported, so confident that my purchases will continue to improve and only get better. Even my apps are constantly being updated and bug fixed. Never seen this as a Windows / Nokia customer.
My first IPad was WiFi-only. Then I bought the 3G model, but never activated it. Bak then I only used a few GB of storage. With my 3rd tablet, the iPad 2, I found that I used it a lot more for storing and watchng videos on the go so decided that I'd get a higher capacity model next time. Then TomTom made their GPS app Universal. Then I lost my WiFi?only iPad 2. Next time I'll be buying the highest capacity iPad with AT&T 3G and maintaining a active account.
And here we have the definition of an 'ideal customer'
Oh I don't know, maybe the PC market to start, maybe Xbox Live, enterprise, Office, just all the other software they produce that they make billions from.
PC's are going nowhere anytime soon, the market keeps growing.
Xbox live is blowing up and MS are constantly striking deals to provide more and more content to the consumer
Enterprise is MS's bread and butter, servers, mail servers ect.... all run MS
Office, number one selling business software suite
I could go on.
The PC market is nearing the moribund state, as the major segment of Microsoft's revenue stream starts eroding (enterprise computing) they have struggled with the successful incursion of Linux into the server space, even backing SCO's battles to challenge Linux's code base as containing elements of UNIX they claim they own. If they weren't worried about this they wouldn't be throwing so much money at undermining Linux. In the Office space, they are eyeing Google's Cloud Office for enterprise carefully to see where that is going to impact them. And Google is gunning for the mail side and messaging as well.
A lot of major enterprises are moving off of local hardware and moving to virtualized desktops, which changes the licensing of Office and Windows, and lessens it's profitability.
XBox has only recently in the last couple of years even produced profitable revenue for Microsoft, and again it's in a segment that is threatened by the increasing presence of gaming on mobile devices. YOU may prefer XBox as a platform, but the viability and profitabilty of the platform is marginal according to M/soft's own financials, and the market is divided.
Back to the PC market growing - the only source of real growth in the PC is in developing countries, whose markets don't support the robust costs associated with Windows and Office - most of them have a huge problem of pirated software and illegal licenses - no source of revenue for M/soft there, outside of recouping legal fees trying to sue pirates. All other segments of PC sales are plateauing or declining slowly.
And yes Microsoft has enough presence in the market to keep driving revenues for the near-term (next decade or so), but unless they can expand influence into new markets (a la Windows 8 "on everything" for example) their segments will erode out from under them. Not even putting Windows into Fords, etc. will keep revenues coming in strongly enough to offset the erosion of consumer PCs into mobile devices, Linux and Google into the server space and Google into the Office space.
The only credible profit sources for Microsoft are Office, Windows desktop, and Windows server. XBox scarcely registers on the scale below those. And those are where Microsoft's vulnerabilities lay.
Only a fool would allow Microsoft to continue "business-as-usual" in light of these facts, but Mr. Ballmer could well be that fool.
I like my iPad but lately I've found it pretty restictive.
First at work I wanted to move a bunch (100s) of pdfs on to it. Were the heck is the fn usb port@#$%. Can you imagine how much groveling I had to do to get itunes installed at work?
Second at home I wanted to move some home movies into imovie. It took a day to figure out how to do that and it is still cumbersome.
To paraphrase Steve. Sometimes it just doesn't work. Messge to Apple: There's a lot of non-Apple stuff out there. Please make the iPad work with it.
As it is right now I'm not sure my next tablet will be an iPad. Problem is there is no viable alternative.
Wow! It's only the fastest growing segment of the computer market!
I'll say one thing, after enjoying my ipad2 for the last few months, I'll most likely, never buy another desktop. But, I'll definitely buy the ipad3 when it comes out! That, along with my ip4, (soon to be a 4s, which is soon to be iP5) and I'm good to go.
If there is a traditional pc in my future, I would probably choose an 11" MBA. Really, who wants to sit in front of a pc all day, anyway?
P.S. (Off topic) I'm looking to get a print app for my iPad...any suggestions? Thx.
The best print app by far is print N share. It sniffs out your wifi network for any printer and you can use them. You can also print over 3G after installing the desktop software. It prints from all apps with the native print function in ios. And it saves all printers you've used just like a desktop so you don't have to keep rediscovering them.
The limits Apple puts on it's devices may play into a couple of surveys that strangely show that consumers overwhelmingly prefer Windows as their tablet OS. Whats that you say? What tablets use Windows? My guess is that buyers want computers/tablets with an OS and feature set they're already comfortable with. That's generally Windows.
I suspect the entire tablet space will undergo a change once MS-based tablets start hitting the market, no matter that Apple was the initial player.
Comments
You've gotta be careful with that kind of shit. Next thing you'll find yourself on the floor with an iPad (2) around your neck.
Thanks!
Because of my " matinee idol" good looks I am able to attract beautiful women, but for some reason, not able to hold on to them....oh well, such is life!
That, and the retina display. Coming from a 1st gen iPad, I can't wait!
If Apple can get Retina Display for the next iPad then that's it. Apple will have locked in another natural monopoly, just like with the iPod. Sure, there will be the $200 loss-leader gnatablets sold by Amazon and B&N but Apple will be taking nearly all the profit from the tablet market and have all the sales from the proper tablet market.
I heard a lot about buyers remorse over the iPad, the only remorse I had was buying a Wifi only. I won't make that mistake again...iPad 3 3g here I come ... when it comes out. With a 3g PAYG chip it really comes into it's own. With (hopefully) Siri on board it will be a must have machine!
My first IPad was WiFi-only. Then I bought the 3G model, but never activated it. Bak then I only used a few GB of storage. With my 3rd tablet, the iPad 2, I found that I used it a lot more for storing and watchng videos on the go so decided that I'd get a higher capacity model next time. Then TomTom made their GPS app Universal. Then I lost my WiFi?only iPad 2. Next time I'll be buying the highest capacity iPad with AT&T 3G and maintaining a active account.
That's exactly why people want a PC over an iPad. I love my iPad, but it's not a replacement for a computer. It's an ultra-portable accessory.
"People" is an overly broad swath of the population I think. "Some people" maybe, but both my wife and daughter, who for the sake of the argument are closer to "average consumers", hardly touch their desktops anymore - doing most everything on their iPads, both "consuming" [sic] and creating content. In fact my wife will wander into her office/den of creation, and if she needs to throw together a quick doc she sits down at her desk, leaving her desktop slumbering in the background, connects her bluetooth keyboard to her iPad, knocks out the doc, and then walks away again. The desktop never even knew that it was co-opted and once paired, the keyboard gives her instant typing on the iPad.
My daughter tracks her homework and tests on her iPad, keeps all of her textbooks and reference material in iBooks, turns in her homework via email to her high school teachers, keeps her assignments lists in iBooks as PDFs. She writes papers on it - able to toggle back and forth to her texts and reference books complete with highlighted passages and notes - and builds her classroom presentations in Keynote which she then uses in the classroom to deliver.
Every day, apps and capability increase on these devices. If you have special needs (coding/programming, Windows only software, etc.) then yeah, your statement of course makes sense. But if you poll the vast majority of average consumers, their needs are squarely within the existing capacities of the iPad. Apple planned and delivered these devices that way. But their potential for broader and more specialized use is there as well. My friend is a pediatric surgeon, and he basically runs his practice off of his iPad. His systems were setup to optimize data handling and delivery for mobile device management. And this is a guy who 5 years ago was a very loud Apple critic.
I work with a large population of systems engineers in a Fortune 50 company, who daily show me how they are using iPhones, iPads and even iPod Touches to remote manage their storage and server systems on a global basis. And they are in turn driving development of amazing system management interfaces with our internal iOS dev team.
It is one hell of "an ultra-portable accessory" my friend!
Computer company A Builds a computer, installs Windows and sells
Computer Company B Builds a computer, installs windows and sells
Etc
Etc
Computer Company E Builds an OS and a Computer and sells
Then
Computer Company A builds a tablet, installs Android and sells
Computer Company B builds a tablet, installs Android and sells
etc
etc
Computer Company E builds a tablet, builds an OS and Sells
For companies A-D there is no solid reason to chose one over the other...they are basically selling the same thing. Customer loyalty, price, and advertising all come into play but for Gods sake, try to differenciate yourself.
Say what you like about Microsoft but at least they have some products of their own (not just cloned software and hardware). They have Xbox, Office, Windows (not the best, but it's theirs)...and lots of failures ... zune? Not really something new...a bad copy of the iPod...it failed.
OSX is now very compatible with Windows, Apple made it that way to ensure that people could communicate, heck I'd even go as far to say that Office for Mac is the best version (even if it is the only programme I have that crashes). Companies like Dell, HP, etc need to decide if they're just manufacturers, that is a company that manufacturers and rebrands other products. If they want to be something else then that will take a major effort...and a major risk that I doubt they (shareholders) want them to take.
If Apple can get Retina Display for the next iPad then that's it. Apple will have locked in another natural monopoly, just like with the iPod.
I agree and I suppose S. Jobs envisioned this from day one, and that's why he was so disappointed at the negative press after iPad's release.
For corporations, they want to gravitate around a platform that has a long future. So far, only iPad seems to have it. But, once a corporation start coding apps for iPad, it will be difficult to start selling another pad to them. In order to minimize cost, they would rather stay with the first mover. I seriously doubt if Windows pads can make it.
On the other hand, I think Windows phone can still make it. They don't need corporate support to make it. But, with corporate support, iPad will crush all other pads, it feels.
HP, and Dell will likely shift from Android to Win8 tablets. I wouldn't call that conceding the market.
The better Android tablet builders like Asus,Samsung will be in Android and Win8 tablets.
I think that the moral of the story is that a strong entertainment ecosystem is necessary to move this particular product category.
I'm not so sure this is true. 1) judging from the anecdotal evidence here and other blogs and forums I do not think users mainly use their iPad/tablets to consume entertainment, if you define it as movies, music and possibly books. And before you can make a statement like that, either you or I would need stats of some kind to back that up.
Nice try at a subtle dig at iPad for being a "consumption only" device, though. I shouldn't have to say that there are many more uses for it, which many of us have discovered.
2) It's still way too early to call the Kindle Fire a success. Up until Best Buy slashed prices a few months ago we all thought the HP Touchpad was a success. Give it a few quarters before you call Amazon's product a market mover.
I'm not saying that PCs are going away. But I do think the majority of people will be replacing them with a tablet at home.
I'm not so sure this is true. 1) judging from the anecdotal evidence here and other blogs and forums I do not think users mainly use their iPad/tablets to consume entertainment, if you define it as movies, music and possibly books. And before you can make a statement like that, either you or I would need stats of some kind to back that up.
Nice try at a subtle dig at iPad for being a "consumption only" device, though. I shouldn't have to say that there are many more uses for it, which many of us have discovered.
2) It's still way too early to call the Kindle Fire a success. Up until Best Buy slashed prices a few months ago we all thought the HP Touchpad was a success. Give it a few quarters before you call Amazon's product a market mover.
There's some evidence that a high percentage of iPad owners may regret their purchase, finding they don't have as much use for it as they originally envisioned. That could be one reason that some of the computer makers may have decided it's a market not worth pursuing right now.
http://crave.cnet.co.uk/laptops/ipad...;siu-container
Also, while you might think that iPad owners find more use than owners of other tablets, not so according to this European study. To the contrary, those cheaper tablets/readers are used more often by their owners than those with the somewhat expensive iPads.
"Interestingly, non-iPad owners are recording an average of 30 minutes more usage a day than people with Apple iconic device. This trend was evident in all markets surveyed. "We found that younger people are more likely to own cheaper non-Apple devices, and that these users tend to be most engaged with social networks," said Garner.
http://site14.fourfiveone.com/2011/1...their-tablets/
Traditional PC makers are going to ceed the future of computing? That's hard to believe. They'd soon find it difficult to exist when the day comes that iPads become just as powerful as laptops and desktops.
I agree. Although it might take a long time, if ever, to match the power of a laptop/desktop, there will certainly come a day in the not too distant future that the iPad will be able to do the majority of the same tasks that are done with laptops/desktops today.
I see interest waning to some degree before a strong resurgence, though, but I don't see Apple dropping out of the tablet space... ever.
Now we'll put to test that theory about how competition is the only thing that pushes Apple forward. It seems to me that Apple barely pays any attention to what their competition is doing (aside from occasionally grabbing a good idea like notifications) and just pushes forward with their own vision. If the iPad stagnates over the next two years, I guess those theories will be proven right, but I'm betting it doesn't. I'm betting the iPad continues evolving at the same pace as before, no competition required.
Agreed, not an argument I've believed, if Apple (Steve) was guilty of anything then it would arrogance rather than being pushed by competition. I believe they were more inspired by bad products than good ones. At the end of the day, everyone is copying to some some extent, but what differentiates companies is copying a good idea, improving it and making something new, as a posed to straight copying and regurgitating someone else's product.
Since moving back to Apple I've never felt so supported, so confident that my purchases will continue to improve and only get better. Even my apps are constantly being updated and bug fixed. Never seen this as a Windows / Nokia customer.
Because of my " matinee idol" good looks I am able to attract beautiful women ...
Phew! For a while there I thought it was only me... Its tough, ain't it?
My first IPad was WiFi-only. Then I bought the 3G model, but never activated it. Bak then I only used a few GB of storage. With my 3rd tablet, the iPad 2, I found that I used it a lot more for storing and watchng videos on the go so decided that I'd get a higher capacity model next time. Then TomTom made their GPS app Universal. Then I lost my WiFi?only iPad 2. Next time I'll be buying the highest capacity iPad with AT&T 3G and maintaining a active account.
And here we have the definition of an 'ideal customer'
Oh I don't know, maybe the PC market to start, maybe Xbox Live, enterprise, Office, just all the other software they produce that they make billions from.
PC's are going nowhere anytime soon, the market keeps growing.
Xbox live is blowing up and MS are constantly striking deals to provide more and more content to the consumer
Enterprise is MS's bread and butter, servers, mail servers ect.... all run MS
Office, number one selling business software suite
I could go on.
The PC market is nearing the moribund state, as the major segment of Microsoft's revenue stream starts eroding (enterprise computing) they have struggled with the successful incursion of Linux into the server space, even backing SCO's battles to challenge Linux's code base as containing elements of UNIX they claim they own. If they weren't worried about this they wouldn't be throwing so much money at undermining Linux. In the Office space, they are eyeing Google's Cloud Office for enterprise carefully to see where that is going to impact them. And Google is gunning for the mail side and messaging as well.
A lot of major enterprises are moving off of local hardware and moving to virtualized desktops, which changes the licensing of Office and Windows, and lessens it's profitability.
XBox has only recently in the last couple of years even produced profitable revenue for Microsoft, and again it's in a segment that is threatened by the increasing presence of gaming on mobile devices. YOU may prefer XBox as a platform, but the viability and profitabilty of the platform is marginal according to M/soft's own financials, and the market is divided.
Back to the PC market growing - the only source of real growth in the PC is in developing countries, whose markets don't support the robust costs associated with Windows and Office - most of them have a huge problem of pirated software and illegal licenses - no source of revenue for M/soft there, outside of recouping legal fees trying to sue pirates. All other segments of PC sales are plateauing or declining slowly.
And yes Microsoft has enough presence in the market to keep driving revenues for the near-term (next decade or so), but unless they can expand influence into new markets (a la Windows 8 "on everything" for example) their segments will erode out from under them. Not even putting Windows into Fords, etc. will keep revenues coming in strongly enough to offset the erosion of consumer PCs into mobile devices, Linux and Google into the server space and Google into the Office space.
The only credible profit sources for Microsoft are Office, Windows desktop, and Windows server. XBox scarcely registers on the scale below those. And those are where Microsoft's vulnerabilities lay.
Only a fool would allow Microsoft to continue "business-as-usual" in light of these facts, but Mr. Ballmer could well be that fool.
First at work I wanted to move a bunch (100s) of pdfs on to it. Were the heck is the fn usb port@#$%. Can you imagine how much groveling I had to do to get itunes installed at work?
Second at home I wanted to move some home movies into imovie. It took a day to figure out how to do that and it is still cumbersome.
To paraphrase Steve. Sometimes it just doesn't work. Messge to Apple: There's a lot of non-Apple stuff out there. Please make the iPad work with it.
As it is right now I'm not sure my next tablet will be an iPad. Problem is there is no viable alternative.
Apple user since 1981.
Wow! It's only the fastest growing segment of the computer market!
I'll say one thing, after enjoying my ipad2 for the last few months, I'll most likely, never buy another desktop. But, I'll definitely buy the ipad3 when it comes out! That, along with my ip4, (soon to be a 4s, which is soon to be iP5) and I'm good to go.
If there is a traditional pc in my future, I would probably choose an 11" MBA. Really, who wants to sit in front of a pc all day, anyway?
P.S. (Off topic) I'm looking to get a print app for my iPad...any suggestions? Thx.
The best print app by far is print N share. It sniffs out your wifi network for any printer and you can use them. You can also print over 3G after installing the desktop software. It prints from all apps with the native print function in ios. And it saves all printers you've used just like a desktop so you don't have to keep rediscovering them.
I suspect the entire tablet space will undergo a change once MS-based tablets start hitting the market, no matter that Apple was the initial player.
http://allthingsd.com/20111005/never...-windows-ipad/