Best remark about iPad so far...

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  • Reply 61 of 102
    .........
  • Reply 62 of 102
    areseearesee Posts: 776member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by ArticulatedArm View Post


    There is something that just doesn't add up about the iPad.. supposedly Jobs has been working on this for 10 years.. yet how much work does this iPad require when you consider all they did was scale up the iPhone? It makes no sense... The only answer seems to be that this isn't Jobs tablet. So when will we get it?



    Or the iPhone is a scaled down iPad. There was talk a couple of years ago that the tablet was interrupted so that its components could become the base for the iPhone. Therefore it is no surprise that the iPad resembles an iPhone. It is its daddy.



    As far as the rest of your argument, you're arguing for arguments sake you are making no points. What you need to do is to look at the functions being performed. If you need it to write code, it's not for you. Likewise if you need it to manage a network or to manage a research project, you don't need it either. But is you just want to surf the web, read/send email and privately watch a TV show or movie, it may just be the device for you. Most people out there (and they have never heard of AppleInsider) fall into that last category. This is the device that Apple has generated for that group. The ones that are afraid of computers and because of that fear do not explore their uses are the ones the iPad is created for.
  • Reply 63 of 102
    wilwil Posts: 170member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by ArticulatedArm View Post


    Then you are deluding yourself.. because believe it or not I get it more than you do.



    But I know mac zealots are really really good at deluding themselves... which is why Jobs can put sh!t out in a sack and the devoted koolaid drinkers will buy it up.



    Look at all the tools that bought that ridiculous iPhone. The most useless device ever made. haha



    Now he has you buying it again for what you should have gotten when you first paid for it.



    I think I have just stumbled on to how Jobs is so successful and why his products seem so advanced. He has figured out how to sell everything to his customers twice(At least)! And this way he can take the extra money and dump it into R&D



    Now I remember why I stop posting at Apple Insider or any Mac forums for long periods at a time. it has something to do with uber geeks who think that they know better than those who work at Apple on how to build Apple products and design their software and hardware and they will not stop until they get their way on a thread which btw, won't change Apple's mind one bit.



    Articulated Arm. I got an iMac, Macbook Pro 2006 , an iPhone and iPod Touch. . Let me tell you something, I got a lot of medical apps on both the Touch and the iPhone and I found that while they are handy, the small size of the iPhone and the Touch can be a hindrance when reading notes. If you ever tried Epocrates , it becomes a bother when you have to consistently enlarge the text to clearly read what on the iPhone display. An iPad can deal with multimedia and text better than the iPhone or Touch because of the size alone and that is a big advantage in the health industry. There are industries and people that would find the iPad a helpful tool for their work . It just so happen that you are not one them.



    Again I repeat myself, without the sales numbers, you can scream all you want and accuse us of being Mac Zealots , Jobs Kool Aid drinkers and tools because at the end , the customers and the market will decide from the end of March 2010 to March 2011 on how the first generation iPad fared in the real world . It may succeed beyond our wildest expectations , it may shake the market up or it will fail miserably or it might be a so so product. There are more things that are more important than criticizing the unreleased iPad you have no intention of owning.
  • Reply 64 of 102
    A perfect response. Thank you.
  • Reply 65 of 102
    Well, back on topic...



    Here's the cleverest (most clever) bit I've found regarding the iPad so far:



  • Reply 66 of 102
    tednditedndi Posts: 1,921member
    One killer app yet to come for the iPad. Back to my mac/remote desktop.



    file transfer via idisk, etc.



    Boom.
  • Reply 67 of 102
    midwintermidwinter Posts: 10,060member
    Apple's move for ages now has been to abstract as much of the file system away as is possible so that users interact with applications which, in turn, deal with the files so the user doesn't have to (e.g. iPhoto, iTunes). The iPhone and iPod Touch abstracted the file system away almost completely?users never *have* to deal with files on them at all. Even when someone emails me a Word document and I open it I have no idea where that file is, nor do I care.



    Now, certainly, allowing document creation via iWork necessitates some dealing with files, but I imagine that moving files around will be absolutely minimal. My point is that when the universe is moving toward not dealing with files at all, I just don't see file transfer as a high priority. Apparently, when you plug the iPad in it mounts as a shared volume. I don't think we'll need much more than that and a cloud storage app like dropbox.
  • Reply 68 of 102
    addaboxaddabox Posts: 12,665member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by midwinter View Post


    Apple's move for ages now has been to abstract as much of the file system away as is possible so that users interact with applications which, in turn, deal with the files so the user doesn't have to (e.g. iPhoto, iTunes). The iPhone and iPod Touch abstracted the file system away almost completely?users never *have* to deal with files on them at all. Even when someone emails me a Word document and I open it I have no idea where that file is, nor do I care.



    Now, certainly, allowing document creation via iWork necessitates some dealing with files, but I imagine that moving files around will be absolutely minimal. My point is that when the universe is moving toward not dealing with files at all, I just don't see file transfer as a high priority. Apparently, when you plug the iPad in it mounts as a shared volume. I don't think we'll need much more than that and a cloud storage app like dropbox.



    Dude!
  • Reply 69 of 102
    midwintermidwinter Posts: 10,060member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by addabox View Post


    Dude!



    Hola!
  • Reply 70 of 102
    addaboxaddabox Posts: 12,665member
    So is it just the fierceness of iPad talk that draws you out? Speaking of which, I remember you talking about wanting a coffee shop machine, maybe kinda like this.



    What do you think? Useful for your needs, or no (I mean, as far as you can make out, from here)?
  • Reply 71 of 102
    midwintermidwinter Posts: 10,060member
    My wife really, really wants one. I'm a little skeptical, but I find myself leaning more and more towards getting one. If I were to get one of these, I can totally see myself using it for my lecture notes. I do everything in OmniOutliner and then print the notes out on 5x8 notecards, which then go into a Levenger junior circa notebook. It would be nice just to pull up the notes I need on an iPad and get to work.



    I can also see this as a way for me to wag around PDFs of Google Books around instead of printing them out, which is what I do now.



    I can also see this giving my Nook a run for its money.



    I don't know that I would use such a gadget for sustained document creation, mostly because I don't like or use Pages. But we'll give it a good, hard look. like I said, my wife wants one; we'll do our best to share.



    The wailing and gnashing of teeth is pretty funny, to me. A few years ago, I was in London and was only able to access the internet on my iPaq PDA. When I got home, I really started to rethink my needs in a portable device. Why was I spending so much money on a laptop when 95% of what I do was web surf, type documents, answer email, and watch movies? I got a Nokia N800 and a bluetooth keyboard and found that I was able to do most of what I needed to do without much hassle (email, web, video, commenting on student papers, etc). Then I got an iPod Touch, which replaced my N800 entirely. I have a little Dell Mini 9 Netbook running Mac OS X 10.5.



    But we'll see. It may be that I can live with Pages and a bluetooth keyboard and get just about everything I need to done. For me, it'll really hinge on how RTFs move back and forth from Pages to Nisus Writer Pro. I have been well and truly screwed by documents not transferring properly.



    But I think, like Steven Frank, that Apple is really trying to move us into New World computing: an app-centric, hidden file system, natural and intuitive UI where the user doesn't need to learn anything.



    What cracks me up about the reviews is this: every review that I've read where the person has actually used it is glowing.



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by addabox View Post


    So is it just the fierceness of iPad talk that draws you out? Speaking of which, I remember you talking about wanting a coffee shop machine, maybe kinda like this.



    What do you think? Useful for your needs, or no (I mean, as far as you can make out, from here)?



  • Reply 72 of 102
    addaboxaddabox Posts: 12,665member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by midwinter View Post


    What cracks me up about the reviews is this: every review that I've read where the person has actually used it is glowing.



    Yeah, they generally describe the experience as "revelatory", or words to that effect.



    Which is course is always the point of churlishness re Apple products, from certain quarters-- that talk of "experiences" is touchy-feely nonsense and the provenance of hippies, fan boys and posers.



    I guess we'll see, but I sort of have this feeling that a $499 device that does most of what most people want to do with a laptop, and does it in this sort of delightful way that gets all the "computer" cruft out of the way may be Apple's next big game-changing runaway success.



    Which, of course, would mean that the same people slagging it off now will immediately embrace clones from Asus and begin the "Ha ha this one has better specs" dance, but some things never change.
  • Reply 73 of 102
    midwintermidwinter Posts: 10,060member
    Yup. When you stop to think about it, the fact that sooooo many people own really, really powerful computers is pretty bizarre?it's sort of like we've only had an option for supercars when all we need to do is drive to the store and back. This move by Apple (and I guess, this has *always* been their MO) to abstract away the nonsense and give users the tools to do what they need without needing to learn some byzantine system.



    I keep thinking about my mother, who just wants to read her newspaper, IM with me, and check her email. She doesn't even understand the entire metaphor of the desktop or a file system. If I send her a file over IM, she has no idea where it went. If I tell her to click on the desktop, she asks me where that is. But she wants to do the simple things she wants to do, and I think the iPad, with its new approach, could be exactly what she needs.
  • Reply 74 of 102
    addaboxaddabox Posts: 12,665member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by midwinter View Post


    Yup. When you stop to think about it, the fact that sooooo many people own really, really powerful computers is pretty bizarre—it's sort of like we've only had an option for supercars when all we need to do is drive to the store and back. This move by Apple (and I guess, this has *always* been their MO) to abstract away the nonsense and give users the tools to do what they need without needing to learn some byzantine system.



    I keep thinking about my mother, who just wants to read her newspaper, IM with me, and check her email. She doesn't even understand the entire metaphor of the desktop or a file system. If I send her a file over IM, she has no idea where it went. If I tell her to click on the desktop, she asks me where that is. But she wants to do the simple things she wants to do, and I think the iPad, with its new approach, could be exactly what she needs.



    I've been thinking the same thing with my mom. She's a perfectly bright woman, spend her working life as an educator and sits on the board several local non-profits, but you can just see the weariness descend when I start explaining to her about "windows" and "files" and "drop down menus" and the rest.



    The funny thing is, kids aren't much better-- the things they want to do are second nature, but beyond that they aren't really "computer people" any more than their parents (IMO because "computer person" is an oxymoron, but that's another rant). Moreover, because they grew up being told that they must be computer geniuses because they had mastery of a few processes their parents didn't, they've been rendered incurious.



    It's like a generation of people that were taught they were master mechanics because they were adept at parallel parking.



    So if Apple can give us the fabled information appliance, I think they can pick up market from both older and younger people-- the former because it grants access to all that cool tech without the frustration, and the latter because it feels natural and is fun. The most resistant will be self-styled "power users", particularly of the PC stripe, who consider their hard won proficiency with horrible UIs to be a mark of character.
  • Reply 75 of 102
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by midwinter View Post


    Yup. When you stop to think about it, the fact that sooooo many people own really, really powerful computers is pretty bizarre?it's sort of like we've only had an option for supercars when all we need to do is drive to the store and back. This move by Apple (and I guess, this has *always* been their MO) to abstract away the nonsense and give users the tools to do what they need without needing to learn some byzantine system.



    I keep thinking about my mother, who just wants to read her newspaper, IM with me, and check her email. She doesn't even understand the entire metaphor of the desktop or a file system. If I send her a file over IM, she has no idea where it went. If I tell her to click on the desktop, she asks me where that is. But she wants to do the simple things she wants to do, and I think the iPad, with its new approach, could be exactly what she needs.



    I think it's more than just the moms factor. I teach Mac classes at a local community college and find that I could spend an hour (if I wanted to) just explaining the Finder. These concepts are far from obvious and clear; they take real mental adjustment to understand. So Apple wants to "abstract" the file system to make the iPad easier to comprehend and use? Who is going to gripe about that but the propeller heads who aren't happy if they can't tinker with every little part? Nobody, I predict. I also suspect that if Jef Raskin were still with us, he'd be very satisfied with this development, which brings us a lot closer to his original conception of the Mac.



    BTW, RTF transfers shouldn't be any issue. This is a very basic format.
  • Reply 76 of 102
    midwintermidwinter Posts: 10,060member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Dr Millmoss View Post


    I could spend an hour (if I wanted to) just explaining the Finder. These concepts are far from obvious and clear; they take real mental adjustment to understand.



    Yup. And nevermind the bizarre mental adjustment you have to make when using a mouse: moving it on a horizontal plane moves the cursor on a vertical one....



    And I completely agree. The whole notion of dealing with files and folders and desktops and whatever is a metaphor that's seen its day come and go, I hope. Think about it: Apple seems to be (re)inventing the UI. Again.



    Quote:

    So Apple wants to "abstract" the file system to make the iPad easier to comprehend and use? Who is going to gripe about that but the propeller heads who aren't happy if they can't tinker with every little part? Nobody, I predict. I also suspect that if Jef Raskin were still with us, he'd be very satisfied with this development, which brings us a lot closer to his original conception of the Mac.



    Yup. As I was typing all of that, I kept thinking about my trusty Newton 2100, which is I guess as close as Raskin got to realizing his ideal interface. Abstracted file system, app centric, and apps interconnected. We can only hope and pray that the iPad/iPhone OS will be as smart as the Newton OS was and is.



    Quote:

    BTW, RTF transfers shouldn't be any issue. This is a very basic format.



    Well, that's what you'd think, but when you start dealing with endnotes and footnotes, nothing is basic. It's all about whether or not the application writes RTFs to spec, and not all do.
  • Reply 77 of 102
    I thought the UI on the Canon Cat was sort of Raskin's dream come true.



    Does RTF recognize footnotes and endnotes? I wasn't aware of that. If so I don't see why Pages would not handle them properly.
  • Reply 78 of 102
    addaboxaddabox Posts: 12,665member
    Here's a pretty nice blog post about just what we've been discussing.



    Interestingly (to me, because it validates my line of though, and what's more interesting than that?), he makes the same point I was making about older and younger users:



    Quote:

    When I think about the age ranges of people who fall into the Old World of computing, it is roughly bell-curved with Generation X (hello) approximately in the center. That, to me, is fascinating — Old World users are sandwiched between New World users who are both younger and older than them.



    Some elder family members of mine recently got New World cell phones. I watched as they loaded dozens of apps willy-nilly onto them which, on any other phone, would have turned it into a sluggish, crash-prone battery-vampire. But it didn’t happen. I no longer get summoned for phone help, because it is self-evident how to use it, and things just generally don’t go wrong like they used to on their Old World devices.



    New Worlders have no reason to be gun-shy about loading up their device with apps. Why would that break anything? Old Worlders on the other hand have been browbeaten to the point of expecting such behavior to lead to problems. We’re genuinely surprised when it doesn’t.



    But the New World scares the living hell out of a lot of the Old Worlders. Why is that?



    I'd be willing to bet that most of the people doing the most bellyaching about what a dreadful idea the iPad is are in their thirties or thereabouts. Much younger than that and you're more likely to embrace new tech without any "how things are properly done" encrustations, and much older and you just want to do stuff with as little hassle as possible (and platform contention starts to seem impossibly stupid as one contemplates the onrush of one's imminent death ).
  • Reply 79 of 102
    midwintermidwinter Posts: 10,060member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Dr Millmoss View Post


    I thought the UI on the Canon Cat was sort of Raskin's dream come true



    Hrm. Maybe I'm mixing up my Raskinses and my Togses.
  • Reply 80 of 102
    midwintermidwinter Posts: 10,060member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by addabox View Post


    Here's a pretty nice blog post about just what we've been discussing.



    Interestingly (to me, because it validates my line of though, and what's more interesting than that?), he makes the same point I was making about older and younger users.



    If only I had referenced that aeons ago....
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