Blowing up an ipod Touch is not revolutionary or magical. I'm not sure what this has to offer than an iphone doesn't besides a larger viewing area. You can buy e-books on your iPhone. You can use office clones on your iPhone. They put faster hardware in the iPad, but doesn't take advantage of any multitasking. My iPhone will at least take pictures and video. This isn't filling any gap between an ipod and a laptop. Add a camera for video conferencing, flash support (yes it is easy to say flash is dead, but it is still very widely used), MULTITASKING, and the ability to customize the desktop and you might get closer to middle ground.
?m surprised they chose to launch it with a reworked version of iWorks (Apple?s version of MS Office) and not iLife since the rest of the iPad is geared for casual use (music, video, photos, email, web).
This is a GREAT point. I was a bit surprised by this too. Perhaps it's something they'll add by the time the product is actually released a couple of months from now......
seriously though, they could have included some touch sensitive controls in that HUGE bezel - timeline scrub, volume up/down, scroll / game controls, etc.
I have the same feelings about this device that i did for the ATV. Love it in concept, but just not enough features for me to buy.
likes:
love the form factor, weight, interface and design.
I'm so sick of these idiots out there trolling on the bezel. it's to keep your gorilla thumbs off the screen so you aren't constantly 2-fingering the touch screen. Gosh!
ibooks, but if it's only compatible with ibooks format, it's a fail. no iMagazine? I subscribe to lots of journals, would be nice to have them all on my iPad or my iPhone for that matter.
dock - i'm glad apple recognized the necessity of the phyical keyboard, but why no docking in landscape mode? seems stupid if you're watching a video/tv/movie in the dock and can't rotate it. I think the dock will evolve so it's more like a laptop design, maybe even an adjustible viewing position. basically a lap-top keyboard with a hinge for the iPad to dock with.
dislikes:
no multi tasking
no camera
no phone app - i mean, if you're going to make it 3G, why not include the phone
no handwriting recog. in the notes app. would be nice for taking notes for students.
no wireless sync with my PC. would be nice if i could just sync or stream content from my computer to the iPad, like the ATV does.
No file sharing with my PC or access.
Overall i can't say i'm underwhelmed because i kind of figured this is what we'd get. However, i kind of hoped they would throw a couple curve balls at us. i think everyone predicted what we would be getting months ago.
I pretty much agree with this, particularly the lack of stylus/handwriting recognition. As a student it would have been really nice to finally replace piles of paper notes with one slick device which can hold everything. It wouldn't have been too hard to add surely, they have already done it with the Newton over ten years ago. If they added support for this, it would be trivial to enable use as a graphics tablet too. I've bought several Apple products in recent years and currently own a MBP and iPhone, but as it is I won't be buying the iPad and I fail to see who really will.
But most people DON'T type for hours on end. If they do, they'd use a laptop (or desktop). That's not what the iPad is for. Typical home users spend most of their time browsing the web, watching photos, listening to music, etc., maybe even reading the occasional eBook. About all the typing they do is enter their credit card when purchasing something off the Internet and the odd email. For them it's ideal, apart maybe for the lack of Flash support. My son plays a LOT of Flash games on the web :-)
I spend quite a while typing while I surf, for example, what are you doing now?
As a professional student and techie, here's what I think:
1. If I can't take notes onto my books and insert pages of notes INTO my books, this thing is 100% worthless to me as a student. How hard is it?
2. I'd seriously like some better voice recognition AND voice "reading." This thing should be able to read my books or notes to me while I'm exercising or reading something else. Seriously. I don't have a lot of time, med school is hard. Please make my life easier.
3. Hulu would have been nice.
4. I don't really care about lack of multitasking. If you use well designed iPhone apps you don't notice it. The only example people seem to be able to give me is Pandora + Web browsing...I can browse and listen to iTunes songs simultaneously, so who needs crappy Pandora?
5. More video support would have been nice. I've heard there's no .mkv support. True?
6. Camera-Shmamera. I have cameras. If it had one, it'd just suck like the iPhone one anyways. If I need a camera, I'll use one. Like I need to be Skyping from Starbucks while I'm trying to read, anyways...sheesh. That's what phones are for people!
7. GPS would have been nice. Maybe it'll be in the 3G enabled versions.
Until I'm able to take notes on my books, I will NOT be getting one.
Lots of good points + and -, but on the books front, it seems (through McGraw Hill etc) that text books are a major push for the iPad so i doubt that annotation will be a problem - as you say - crazy to have it without that. With the right format, people could sell annotation for major books If it is not there immediately, it will be in time for next year's back to school.
User facing camera would have been nice but a front facing one would be ridiculous - as you say, worst camera ergonomics ever!
It has the skyhook faux gps which is fine in urban areas generally.
As you also say - multitasking is way overrated - nice but costly for battery (see Droid)
Doubt they will ever offer .mkv since this is primarily the pirates' choice for HD torrents - it has no other broad legitimate uses unless you can enlighten me.
PS That's why I love my WD Media player since it can do the .mkv thing
A couple of thoughts. One is that Apple nailed the most important detail, namely price.
The basic model with 16G and no 3G will still be quite useful for many of us. That Apple got the pricing right and still will deliver a good quality, decent-sized screen, is rather impressive.
The other thought is that this device could, potentially, help bring about a resurgence in the popularity of the desktop. A desktop system in combination with the iPad makes a lot of sense. More portable than a laptop and with better battery life. By not trying to be a computer that happens to work anywhere, the device eliminates some of the trade-offs that laptops impose on us. At the same time, it is a handy product that does a lot of what people were in fact using laptops for.
Compared to a PC netbook, this thing will look good. My netbook can barely deliver two hours of battery life and it has a significantly inferior display. It's running inferior technology (no LED backlighting or IPS) and a resolution of 1024X600 compared to the iPad's 1024X768. The iPad is more money but also a higher-quality device all around. Also, longer battery life means fewer charge cycles and that means the battery will take a lot longer to wear out and require replacing. Over the long haul, that could offset the initial higher price.
This device will be very successful because Apple gets it, especially when it comes to price. As a shareholder, I'm quite pleased.
Excellent points. I won't be in the market for a new computer for another year and a half or so, but when I do, it's going to be goodbye laptop, hello iMac / iPad combo.
Here's a thought. If I already have an iPhone for which I pay AT&T $30/month for UNLIMITED data, I think I shouldn't have to pay again to get UNLIMITED data, or any data, on the iPad. My reasoning is this. If you are using your iPad, it's unlikely you will be using your iPhone simultaneously. I suppose you could get a phone call while you're on your iPad, but that's not data, that's voice. So technically, I'm still only using one stream of data at a time on an Apple 3G device on the AT&T network. On stream of data = one UNLIMITED data plan. Anyone buying this logic?
Just take the SIM from your iPhone and plug it into the 'Pad. No? Not compatible? Thanks Steve!
t that does a lot of what people were in fact using laptops for.
Compared to a PC netbook, this thing will look good. My netbook can barely deliver two hours of battery life and it has a significantly inferior display. It's running inferior technology (no LED backlighting or IPS) and a resolution of 1024X600 compared to the iPad's 1024X768. The iPad is more money but also a higher-quality device all around. Also, longer battery life means fewer charge cycles and that means the battery will take a lot longer to wear out and require replacing. Over the long haul, that could offset the initial higher price.
This device will be very successful because Apple gets it, especially when it comes to price. As a shareholder, I'm quite pleased.
Carmissimo, most newer netbooks today have full 720p LED, but the IPS in the iPad will obviously have far better color and viewing angles. It's a trade-off of resolution versus quality, but the iPad's res. is about right for a multi-touch 10" LCD.
Also, the iPad's CPU is not higher quality than the newer Atom chips and certainly not the AMD Neo with integrated ATi graphics. The latter will actually do basic 1080p and modern gaming (at lower res.).
Looks like I'll be jailbreaking an iPad. I've been holding off on an Touch until I knew what we'd see. No reason to have both. Used to use my Touch at work mainly just for web, mail, sms and simple things as the machine does it's job. It's light and portable, so, basicly not cumbersome like a laptop. Add vonage and a BT headset to the 3g and bam. It's a deal
Now it's time to think hard where a person would carry this on them. I'll have to get some t-shirts and put a big pocket on the front of them. If they could have taken 5/8" off both long sides it would fit in a hoodie pocket very well.
I haven't heard anything about the Adobe apps. PS is already available on the App Store, but has there been any word on Illustrator or InDesign?
In the old days, Apple would dare debut something like this without Adobe at the demo.
How the mighty have fallen.
I would imagine Cocoa competitors like Lineform must have an edge here. Can they capitalize?
Capitalize on what? There's no market for professional level image editing, vector based illustration, or page layout on the i-devices. I've never understood why people think that people who use design software want to use it on a tiny screen by poking at it with our fingers. Keyboard shortcuts (or functions mapped to Wacom buttons), dozens of palettes and layers, and image sizes and rendering that make a 8-core Mac Pro churn aren't very practical on an i-device.
Comments
It isn't a netbook killer.
?m surprised they chose to launch it with a reworked version of iWorks (Apple?s version of MS Office) and not iLife since the rest of the iPad is geared for casual use (music, video, photos, email, web).
This is a GREAT point. I was a bit surprised by this too. Perhaps it's something they'll add by the time the product is actually released a couple of months from now......
seriously though, they could have included some touch sensitive controls in that HUGE bezel - timeline scrub, volume up/down, scroll / game controls, etc.
Yep. Overall it is pretty disappointing.
Also, there is no mention if current desktop apps (like photoshop) could be run in this thing. . .apparently not. .. so what is the point?
I wouldn't worry about that... I imagine developers will be all over this device in no time flat. As soon as I able to, I'm ordering.
I can hardly wait to see what developers can do with this.
I have the same feelings about this device that i did for the ATV. Love it in concept, but just not enough features for me to buy.
likes:
- love the form factor, weight, interface and design.
- I'm so sick of these idiots out there trolling on the bezel. it's to keep your gorilla thumbs off the screen so you aren't constantly 2-fingering the touch screen. Gosh!
- ibooks, but if it's only compatible with ibooks format, it's a fail. no iMagazine? I subscribe to lots of journals, would be nice to have them all on my iPad or my iPhone for that matter.
- dock - i'm glad apple recognized the necessity of the phyical keyboard, but why no docking in landscape mode? seems stupid if you're watching a video/tv/movie in the dock and can't rotate it. I think the dock will evolve so it's more like a laptop design, maybe even an adjustible viewing position. basically a lap-top keyboard with a hinge for the iPad to dock with.
dislikes:- no multi tasking
- no camera
- no phone app - i mean, if you're going to make it 3G, why not include the phone
- no handwriting recog. in the notes app. would be nice for taking notes for students.
- no wireless sync with my PC. would be nice if i could just sync or stream content from my computer to the iPad, like the ATV does.
- No file sharing with my PC or access.
Overall i can't say i'm underwhelmed because i kind of figured this is what we'd get. However, i kind of hoped they would throw a couple curve balls at us. i think everyone predicted what we would be getting months ago.I pretty much agree with this, particularly the lack of stylus/handwriting recognition. As a student it would have been really nice to finally replace piles of paper notes with one slick device which can hold everything. It wouldn't have been too hard to add surely, they have already done it with the Newton over ten years ago. If they added support for this, it would be trivial to enable use as a graphics tablet too. I've bought several Apple products in recent years and currently own a MBP and iPhone, but as it is I won't be buying the iPad and I fail to see who really will.
It isn't a netbook killer.
You can't kill what's already dead.
I'd buy this any day before I would lug around that 7 lb. medicine box sold by Dell.
But most people DON'T type for hours on end. If they do, they'd use a laptop (or desktop). That's not what the iPad is for. Typical home users spend most of their time browsing the web, watching photos, listening to music, etc., maybe even reading the occasional eBook. About all the typing they do is enter their credit card when purchasing something off the Internet and the odd email. For them it's ideal, apart maybe for the lack of Flash support. My son plays a LOT of Flash games on the web :-)
I spend quite a while typing while I surf, for example, what are you doing now?
Thoughts from a Medical Student:
As a professional student and techie, here's what I think:
1. If I can't take notes onto my books and insert pages of notes INTO my books, this thing is 100% worthless to me as a student. How hard is it?
2. I'd seriously like some better voice recognition AND voice "reading." This thing should be able to read my books or notes to me while I'm exercising or reading something else. Seriously. I don't have a lot of time, med school is hard. Please make my life easier.
3. Hulu would have been nice.
4. I don't really care about lack of multitasking. If you use well designed iPhone apps you don't notice it. The only example people seem to be able to give me is Pandora + Web browsing...I can browse and listen to iTunes songs simultaneously, so who needs crappy Pandora?
5. More video support would have been nice. I've heard there's no .mkv support. True?
6. Camera-Shmamera. I have cameras. If it had one, it'd just suck like the iPhone one anyways. If I need a camera, I'll use one. Like I need to be Skyping from Starbucks while I'm trying to read, anyways...sheesh. That's what phones are for people!
7. GPS would have been nice. Maybe it'll be in the 3G enabled versions.
Until I'm able to take notes on my books, I will NOT be getting one.
Lots of good points + and -, but on the books front, it seems (through McGraw Hill etc) that text books are a major push for the iPad so i doubt that annotation will be a problem - as you say - crazy to have it without that. With the right format, people could sell annotation for major books
User facing camera would have been nice but a front facing one would be ridiculous - as you say, worst camera ergonomics ever!
It has the skyhook faux gps which is fine in urban areas generally.
As you also say - multitasking is way overrated - nice but costly for battery (see Droid)
Doubt they will ever offer .mkv since this is primarily the pirates' choice for HD torrents - it has no other broad legitimate uses unless you can enlighten me.
PS That's why I love my WD Media player since it can do the .mkv thing
None of the hype was generated by Apple.
Jobs said it was the most important thing he had done.
A couple of thoughts. One is that Apple nailed the most important detail, namely price.
The basic model with 16G and no 3G will still be quite useful for many of us. That Apple got the pricing right and still will deliver a good quality, decent-sized screen, is rather impressive.
The other thought is that this device could, potentially, help bring about a resurgence in the popularity of the desktop. A desktop system in combination with the iPad makes a lot of sense. More portable than a laptop and with better battery life. By not trying to be a computer that happens to work anywhere, the device eliminates some of the trade-offs that laptops impose on us. At the same time, it is a handy product that does a lot of what people were in fact using laptops for.
Compared to a PC netbook, this thing will look good. My netbook can barely deliver two hours of battery life and it has a significantly inferior display. It's running inferior technology (no LED backlighting or IPS) and a resolution of 1024X600 compared to the iPad's 1024X768. The iPad is more money but also a higher-quality device all around. Also, longer battery life means fewer charge cycles and that means the battery will take a lot longer to wear out and require replacing. Over the long haul, that could offset the initial higher price.
This device will be very successful because Apple gets it, especially when it comes to price. As a shareholder, I'm quite pleased.
Excellent points. I won't be in the market for a new computer for another year and a half or so, but when I do, it's going to be goodbye laptop, hello iMac / iPad combo.
Yep. IMO, that relegates it to toy status. But for $499, it looks like a fun toy.
Agreed completely. Android Tablets will multitask like crazy once higher end models with 1GHz + CPUs are introduced.
If nothing else though, the iPad is great for competition.
Here's a thought. If I already have an iPhone for which I pay AT&T $30/month for UNLIMITED data, I think I shouldn't have to pay again to get UNLIMITED data, or any data, on the iPad. My reasoning is this. If you are using your iPad, it's unlikely you will be using your iPhone simultaneously. I suppose you could get a phone call while you're on your iPad, but that's not data, that's voice. So technically, I'm still only using one stream of data at a time on an Apple 3G device on the AT&T network. On stream of data = one UNLIMITED data plan. Anyone buying this logic?
Just take the SIM from your iPhone and plug it into the 'Pad. No? Not compatible? Thanks Steve!
Let's face it, nothing it's missing can't be added in a HW/OS update or thru an app.
I think that was true of my Apple //c, as well.
t that does a lot of what people were in fact using laptops for.
Compared to a PC netbook, this thing will look good. My netbook can barely deliver two hours of battery life and it has a significantly inferior display. It's running inferior technology (no LED backlighting or IPS) and a resolution of 1024X600 compared to the iPad's 1024X768. The iPad is more money but also a higher-quality device all around. Also, longer battery life means fewer charge cycles and that means the battery will take a lot longer to wear out and require replacing. Over the long haul, that could offset the initial higher price.
This device will be very successful because Apple gets it, especially when it comes to price. As a shareholder, I'm quite pleased.
Carmissimo, most newer netbooks today have full 720p LED, but the IPS in the iPad will obviously have far better color and viewing angles. It's a trade-off of resolution versus quality, but the iPad's res. is about right for a multi-touch 10" LCD.
Also, the iPad's CPU is not higher quality than the newer Atom chips and certainly not the AMD Neo with integrated ATi graphics. The latter will actually do basic 1080p and modern gaming (at lower res.).
Very good analysis from Pogue: http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/...t-impressions/
The guy gets to the point.
Thanks for the link. As evidenced by some of the things said here, it is too bad a lot can't read.
Now it's time to think hard where a person would carry this on them. I'll have to get some t-shirts and put a big pocket on the front of them. If they could have taken 5/8" off both long sides it would fit in a hoodie pocket very well.
I haven't heard anything about the Adobe apps. PS is already available on the App Store, but has there been any word on Illustrator or InDesign?
In the old days, Apple would dare debut something like this without Adobe at the demo.
How the mighty have fallen.
I would imagine Cocoa competitors like Lineform must have an edge here. Can they capitalize?
Capitalize on what? There's no market for professional level image editing, vector based illustration, or page layout on the i-devices. I've never understood why people think that people who use design software want to use it on a tiny screen by poking at it with our fingers. Keyboard shortcuts (or functions mapped to Wacom buttons), dozens of palettes and layers, and image sizes and rendering that make a 8-core Mac Pro churn aren't very practical on an i-device.
Sigh... still no flash plug in eh? Talk about useless then.
Yeah, just like that pathetic "iPhone" thing!