Apple to move aggressively on FaceTime, camera-equipped iPads

1235

Comments

  • Reply 81 of 111
    drdoppiodrdoppio Posts: 1,132member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by 6ryph3n View Post


    ...If I were to buy them FT enabled iPads for Christmas I'd be pretty disappointed if the servers crashed the first time they tried to use them.



    Don't worry, video chats have been around long enough and the Intertubes have not exploded yet...



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by juandl View Post


    ... Not everyone needs a camera to see who they are talking with...



    Largely due to the requirement for eyes and light instead.



    Seriously, too many posters here sound as if they've been living under a rock for the last 5 years... \
  • Reply 82 of 111
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Dr Millmoss View Post


    I don't. I knew what I was buying, and I knew that new and improved models would appear within months. So what?



    I agree, albeit from the other side of the fence. I didn't buy v1 because I knew at least some of the features I was looking for would be in v2.



    I am awaiting v2 with pockets ablaze. I'm actually hoping for a smaller size (unlikely given v1 popularity, I know) along with front/rear cameras. Two inches smaller in both directions and I would have bought v1.
  • Reply 83 of 111
    i vote they release a 7" version with facetime in november (starting at $479), then update both versions in april with sleeker liquid-metal construction with the same camera setup as the iphone4.
  • Reply 84 of 111
    My prediction is Verizon will be the first network with FaceTime running over LTE. 3G is not fast enough and LTE will make FaceTime come alive over a wirless network.



    ?And although Apple's historical product cycles would beg to differ, that person familiar with the company's plans claims that as of last month, there was an ambitious push inside Apple to verify the refresh for a possible launch ahead of this year's holiday shopping season.?



    Say Oct-Nov? Just about the time Verizon is supposed to launch LTE Nation wide for Data devices and Yes FaceTime is a data service. Ipad could be the first device to run on Verizon LTE with Video (FaceTime). This would make the Ipad Fly off the shelves just in time for Christmas. That?s my prediction and I?m sticking to it.
  • Reply 85 of 111
    To me it would be useless, unless I wanted to show the person on the other end my ceiling. I'd rather have support for transferring data to usb devices than a camera. But I can understand how some people may want it.
  • Reply 86 of 111
    I think both machines should be identical except the front-facing camera for the "iPad Facetime Edition".



    - iPad 16Gb without camera: $429 (could be a missile to penetrate the business market)

    - iPad 16Gb with camera: $499 (targeting the mass market)



    And the same price model for the 3G version.





    Chilli





    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Vatdoro View Post




    Imagine this linup:

    iPad v1 starts at $400

    iPad v2 starts at $500 (with cameras, FaceTime, and twice the RAM)

    New iPod touch starts at $229

    That right there will be a bloodbath for the holiday season.



    Now imagine if Apple can put the RetinaDisplay in the iPad 2. That's quite a few pixels, and might require a beefier GPU, but it would be awesome.



  • Reply 87 of 111
    enzosenzos Posts: 344member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Mike Fix View Post


    I will buy an iPad when it has 2 fully functional USB ports.



    .. and a floppy disc.



    As to the camera: When was the last time you used the camera on your MacBook (whatever)?



    Apple knows what it's doing. A camera will only be a significant asset when it becomes compelling and common to use one. Otherwise it's just bloat, another tick on the salesman's feature list.
  • Reply 88 of 111
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by technohermit View Post


    I agree, albeit from the other side of the fence. I didn't buy v1 because I knew at least some of the features I was looking for would be in v2.



    Okay, but that's an argument for never buying any technology product, because the next version is always going to be better. Except maybe for Windows.
  • Reply 89 of 111
    I would not buy one of the current ipads,the screen quality is very very poor. I am waiting for one has front back camera, retina display, usb support, be able to use it as a phone and cheaper. They have too many versions, 3g none 3g this and that, it is just sickness. all should have 3g or 4g and that is it.
  • Reply 90 of 111
    wizard69wizard69 Posts: 13,377member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by cy_starkman View Post


    Early adopters take their turn at paying our collective way. I was for decades and still am occasionally but I'm over it, like SSD for example, it can wait. I've already paid my dues to memory and storage.



    This is my view today. I still have a good idea as to what I paid for my first Mac Plus HD. Expensive and hardly enough storage.



    As I've said before there is nothing wrong with being an early adopter. It does not however give you the right to complain about Apple updates. Especially when some of those updates are obvious.

    Quote:

    It's always a bad time to buy tech.



    The time to buy is when you need it. Done this way what Apple does or anybody else for that matter, isn't of concern to you.

    Quote:

    2 USB port? I love the usability fail people demonstrate when asking for such things. The dangling hdd and power drain are bleedingly obvious.



    This is garbage! USB ports draw little if any power when nothing is plugged in. Besides who are you to say a particular usage is a fail. I for one would live to be able to plug in standard USB to RS 232 converters. It would allow for connection to anything I need to access with a terminal emulator. The power impact is trivial because I'd unplug it after use. The same rational would apply to card readers, USB memory sticks and ither hardware. Whatever the item it only hangs there long enough to do the job.

    Quote:



    As for 7" models. There is only one reason, market stratification. Apple has products at $xx to $xxxxx, if there is a 7" model it's price will be curious.



    This arguement doesn't fly either. I'd pay the same price for a 7 inch iPad as I would the current one - given equivalent Internals. Bigger only costs more in porno.

    Quote:

    The iPod touch already fills the price points upto the iPad and increasing the retail price while not unique would seem a bit unlikely just to make room for another one.



    You say another one like it would sever the same market. It doesn't. Even Amazon has seen the light and sells two different readers. Yeah they throw people a bone and carge different prices but they don't have to. The cost to manufacture between the two is trivial, so the pricing differential is more about consumer expectations than anything. Besides there is nothing to keep a low end 7" ipad from overlapping the high end Touch prices, they could sell at the same price and nobody would care.
  • Reply 91 of 111
    For all the many people that will be ticked off with Apple if they do come up with the new iPad with a camera.

    Could Apple just not make a connector with front and rear camera that could perhaps swivel. Sell it at $25.00-$35.00. They already have the camera connector kit.
  • Reply 92 of 111
    wizard69wizard69 Posts: 13,377member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Dick Applebaum View Post


    I think the holiday lineup is already in place for iPad, iPods, iPhone. The thing that could / should be fleshed out is ATV -- with flagship games, apps, and SDK enhancements. I believe that will happen in November.



    .



    I see no future at all for Apple TV. Dumping storage was not very smart at alll. What do you expect people to do, download all their apps, games and data from the cloud everytime they want to use the device. It might work for Tic-Tac-Toe but not for modern games.



    Personally I think Apple killed what could have been a good concept here.



    As to iPad, I suspect Factime support will be a very high priority at Apple. Because of the need to reach a certain saturation point quickly you will see some rapid releases from Apple.



    Besides it is obvious that iPad is a very very rev one device from Apple. It is short on RAM, has provisions for a gyroscope, and also cameras. These are all signs that this model falls short of what even the designers at Apple envisioned. Plus an uodate of the CPU to Cortex A9 would be marketable against the coming ATOM and ARM based tablets.



    The report may be bogus but if Apple isn't thinking about doing this they should be.
  • Reply 93 of 111
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Wurm5150 View Post


    I'm still puzzled on why the iPad didn't have a camera in the first place. They were able to shove one on last year's Nano.. Then maybe they wouldn't have to go out of cycle to release the second generation (that's if).



    Maybe a Bluetooth "clip on" camera made by a third party or Apple themselves will become available? Just so the original iPad doesn't get left out when iPad 2 comes out with a camera. I don't know. Just a thought..



    It may not be a big deal to some but it is to some people.. Apple is promoting FaceTime heavily so I guess it is a big deal for them as well.



    The original ipon "1" already has a place for a camera - in fact the first ones had a hole visible in the coating in the top region and there where reports of a section internally (in the bezel I believe) there a standard macbook camera would fit. AND the ipod developers kit used to have hooks for camera use but they got pulled at launch time. I suspect it was held of for the iphone 4 and other technical issues..
  • Reply 94 of 111
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Cubert View Post


    Hah! My prediction is vindicated!



    Well, almost.



    ThieciecWpplecwecare talking about. They will milk every penny only to turn around and do it again to sel them to the same people instanty making the Vaule of the Apple product, last generation, not worth much. It's the one thing that gets on my nerves. The way they devauke their product line so quickly these days but never lowering the price as CPU prices hit Rock bottom. It's not passed in to the consumer. Hmmfft!!
  • Reply 95 of 111
    They will milk every penny only to turn around and do it again to sel them to the same people instanty making the Vaule of the Apple product, last generation, not worth much. It's the one thing that gets on my nerves. The way they devaule their product line so quickly these days but never lowering the price as CPU prices hit Rock bottom. It's not passed on to the consumer. Hmmfft!!
  • Reply 96 of 111
    pwjpwj Posts: 19member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by oneaburns View Post


    I'd have to respectfully disagree...sort of. The retina display may not be necessary for Face Time but it is becoming necessary for everything else you do with the iPad...especially surfing the internet. Switching from iPhone 4 to your iPad you notice a huge difference. I have found myself using my iPad less since getting the iPhone 4 because it's hard to go back to a normal display after using one that is so perfectly sharp.



    Having said all of that, if they don't improve the display, putting a camera on it is not going to be enough to get me to upgrade.





    SSquirrel talked about this too, but a "retina" display isn't happening.



    If Apple were to try to add a higher res display, they would probably go the pixel-quadrupling route like they did with the iPhone 4 (e.g. doubling the horizontal and vertical pixel count), which would preserve compatibility with existing iPad applications (as the resolution of a legacy iPad app would be a neat factor of a hypothetical iPad retina's resolution). Any other new resolution would break old iPad apps to varying extents (pixel sharp lines would be dithered and made fuzzy, etc.)



    Currently, iPad has an output of 1024x768, for ~0.79 MP. A "retina" iPad would do 2048x1536, or 3.15 MP.

    For comparison, my 13" MBP puts out 1280x800 on one display and 1920x1080 on the other, for a grand total of 3.10 MP, which is less than a retina iPad. My MBP, with substantially more powerful hardware than an ARM-based iPad, currently drops frames and stutters when doing Exposé animations



    Unless you get a massive leap in ARM processing power / power consumption ratio in a few months, there's no way an iPad will be doing a retina display. Sorry to keep beating the dead horse







    As for the forward camera, no surprise that was coming (though it'd be uncharacteristic for Apple to announce revise their product so quickly, and besides, the iPad already sells extraordinarily well).

    I just want to know whether the iPhone 4 gained the forward camera because of the HTC Supersonic, which was announced before that whole Gizmodo leak.





    I also would like to echo the sentiments of a few other posters here when it comes to the iPad's connectivity. I don't have one, but the iPad would be a far more compelling product if it used more industry-standard connections.

    For instance, you can't expand the nonvolatile memory. Very frustrating if you don't buy a big enough device the first time around (as happened to me with my most recent 32 GB Touch). It's especially infuriating as essentially all non-Apple products on the market have a mini/micro SD card slot; to me it feels like Apple leaves off SD expansion because it knows smart consumers will pick up the 16 GB iPad and buy much cheaper SDcard memory (you can easily get an 8GB microSD card for $15) rather than spring for Apple's heavily marked-up internal memory.

    And SD expansion hardly threatens usability?consumers who don't want / need SD expansion can ignore it (much as consumers who don't want external monitors / firewire / ethernet on Apple's OS X hardware can ignore those ports).



    Likewise with the microSIM slot on both iPhone 4 and iPad?again, a standard miniSIM slot doesn't threaten usability (no one seemed to suffer from miniSIM on the first three iPhones), but a miniSIM slot would allow smart consumers to abandon AT&T's nose-bleed expensive overseas roaming plans.



    AND THEN there's the dock connector.....I don't understand why Apple doesn't adopt the mobile industry's chosen charging interface?microUSB. It means that I (hypothetically) need to go buy expensive licensed dongles with Apple's patented dock connector rather than using the car adapters / wall adapters / dongles / etc I've used for years.

    I don't care if they keep the dock connector, but for Pete's sake, at least give us the option to charge our iDevices with the same microUSB cables we use for everything else (though I'm willing to make an exception for the iPad and its higher power draw whilst charging).





    Apple's negligence with hardware standards in its mobile sector is a shame, really. The Macs that were produced after Jobs returned to Apple were very good about pushing industrywide standards?the first iMacs abandoned all of Apple's crappy proprietary ports in favor of USB, and Apple was early at pushing Airport into its computers, which was 100% compatible with 802.11b WiFi.
  • Reply 97 of 111
    nkhmnkhm Posts: 928member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by delizaza23 View Post


    I would not buy one of the current ipads,the screen quality is very very poor. I am waiting for one has front back camera, retina display, usb support, be able to use it as a phone and cheaper. They have too many versions, 3g none 3g this and that, it is just sickness. all should have 3g or 4g and that is it.





    There are two versions. Nothing complicated there.



    Everything else in your post is nonsense. The screen is great.
  • Reply 98 of 111
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Avidfcp View Post


    They will milk every penny only to turn around and do it again to sel them to the same people instanty making the Vaule of the Apple product, last generation, not worth much.



    Yeah! That's exactly why the resell value of used Apple hardware is so low... oh, wait...
  • Reply 99 of 111
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Dr Millmoss View Post


    Okay, but that's an argument for never buying any technology product, because the next version is always going to be better. Except maybe for Windows.



    Especially when you have limited funds. The first version was compelling, but not enough to make me part with the cash.
  • Reply 100 of 111
    sheffsheff Posts: 1,407member
    The only question is how well will it scale. Do retina displays have the same resolution as iPad, and will they all have the same quality camera. It would suck if iPad users had to look into a tiny square or have things be blown up and pixelated.
Sign In or Register to comment.