Yeah, just in case people think we forgot: Apple launched its iPad today. It’s just that since the rest of the web is pretty much clogged with iPad “news” items at this point, I don’t really know what to add; who’d you rather hear from, someone who owns one, or someone like me, the small orphan child pressing his face to the glass of a candy shop full of delight he can’t afford (because he lives in the wrong country)? About the only meaningful item I’ve seen today is Engadget’s iPad review, so let’s take a quick look at that one.
Engadget’s Joshua Topolsky published his review earlier today, probably coinciding with the official launch. He believes the iPad is a ‘computing revolution’. “The iPad as a computing revolution,” he writes, “Does the iPad evolve the personal computer in a significant way? Yeah, actually, it kind of does. Despite what you think right now, and despite the limitations Apple has put on some aspects of this device, what it says to the market is significant. The iPad is powerful, elegant, and largely unlike any computer you’ve ever used.”
He basically says that if you “listen to music, casually browse the web and read news sites, watch some online video, play games, and keep in touch with friends via Twitter, IM, and Facebook”, then the iPad is perfect for you. This looks suspiciously like the 80/20 rule to me, and that rule is utter nonsense; at one point, you’ll want to do something else, for which you will still need your laptop. Can you predict exactly when those moments come?
I’m still pulling stuff out of my bum here of course, since I’ve never used or even seen the iPad. Still, after all these reviews and videos, I’m still not exactly sure why anyone should buy the iPad instead of a MacBook or even a netbook. I don’t see the iPad perform any task better than a notebook/netbook, which makes me wonder: why not just get a laptop right away?
Apple is trying to create a new product category here, and sure, the enthusiasts are all over this thing like ants over honey, but I’m just not convinced you’ll still be using your iPad once the novelty wears off. Again – before I’m accused of being anti-Apple – I haven’t yet used an iPad, so my opinion is effectively worthless. Let me add that while we’re talking iPad now, this more or less applies to any tablet device I’ve seen.
I guess time will tell, and I’m fairly sure time will prove me wrong. At this point, I’m the only person in the world who doesn’t see the magic or revolution – all I see is a big iPod Touch with some added UI elements that come straight from the desktop world. I do like the newspaper and comic books application though, they look pretty neat.
Can’t beat reading a real newspaper on the can, though, and you can’t share iPad comics.
I like the look, but it’s missing a few
features that need to be added before I
would consider getting it ..
1. micro-sd card slot
2. 5 MP cam and mic
3. option 1.8″ hd (lower the overall cost)
4. 2 usb ports
I figure a 2GB flash for OS and a 1.8″ HD
for storage. I figure having a flash and HD
solution would reduce the overall cost.
Also, the over all cost for the iPad is too
high missing a cam, mic and sd slot.
I’m waiting for the HP slate ..
I just can’t get excited about the iPad. Maybe its because I already own an ipod touch and know its limits. I agree with you on a few points Thom, but most notably the one where the novelty wears off. I believe people will be dragging these things around for a few months, after that they are going to sit in the corner. Also, I find the keyboard would be really odd to type on, a flat surface like that will make you hunch over or sit in odd positions. I see back problems cropping up from it.
http://sneak.datavibe.net/20100219/ipad-love-hate/
Why else would they make their own chip, when there’s quite a lot of perfectly good chips on the market?
The use of different chipset (design) is mostly a marketing issue rather than technology.
Differentiation is basically Apple’s lifeline. It allows Steve Jobs to stand there and say this is our very own silicon, nobody has something like it. Regardless of how true that statement is and how different A4 is from existing chipsets on the market, it still is great from a marketing standpoint.
As it’s very much obvious within their other products. Distinct whilte/alumnium facade, use of the letter “i” and the massive effort Apple puts into protecting it. Even the “Mac vs. PC” TV commercials which basically present Mac as something different from Personal Computers (technically invalid statement).
Thom, you’re not the only one who is underwhelmed by Apple’s attempt the relaunch the failed “tablet computing” concept. What is different this time is that the news media is licking Steve Jobs boots like he is the messiah.
This is becoming a trend, especially with the American news outlets. Once upon a time, when companies released a new product, they had to purchase expensive advertisements to get the message out to the public. No longer – remember the last release of a Harry Potter book or movie? For nearly a week, every time you turned on the TV or radio, some moron was talking about Harry Potter. Now it’s headline news when Apple releases a product that no one was really asking for.
Alright, I can see the news value in covering the release of a Harry Potter book or movie in the Sunday “entertainment” section on page D1, but not on the front page. And I can see covering a story about the iPad in the paper’s “technology” section.
But when the news media starts pimping a product 24/hours a day, 7 days a week, I can’t help but shake my head. It just shows how dumbed down the US news industry has become. Newspapers are getting thinner, and consist mostly of advertisements, the few “news” items look like paid advertisements too. Of course, there will be some sensationalized tabloid story about protecting your child from Internet predators, and a report on the rescue of a cat from a tree. I guess this is where home schooling – now popular in the USA – has brought us. Along with software patents, it’s just another example of the rot in what was once a great nation but is now a crumbling empire.
Edited 2010-04-04 00:42 UTC
I agree with you, just look to engadget site, it looks like an apple site, only iPAD, ipad ipad, it becomes so boring to visit a site like that.
They have the joojoo but now lets wait and make a iPAD review first, because of that most of the times I give up on visiting sites….
Edited 2010-04-04 00:50 UTC
I personally don’t think Engadget is Apple biased. They talk about Android/HTC as much as they talk about Apple products. This includes BOTH good and bad points.
Did they [Engadget] not show a video of the JooJoo first and said they would review it later? You may not like the iPad, but they did the JooJoo a favor by doing that, giving it a chance to be reviewed after the iPad hype this weekend. I’m sorry it makes you mad that somewhere someone might like the iPad 🙁
I guess this is where home schooling – now popular in the USA – has brought us.
That was irrelevant and a beautiful example of “post hoc, ergo propter hoc” argumentation. In fact it’s much more likely to be the opposite of what you suggest: public schools are breeding grounds of credulity. But this isn’t a discussion that should be had here.
The typical sentiment towards home schooling in the US had confused me for a long time, until an American friend pointed out that most home schooling there is done for religious reasons (by fundamentalists who believe that the world was created 6,000 years ago yada yada, and who object to their children being taught otherwise).
Although, even within that context, I don’t see how home schooling has anything to do with the “advertising as news” phenomenon. That sort of home schooling also tends to breed distrust of news sources (they’re part of the “liberal media” after all).
If it was only for US media I could care less but they do the same thing in Europe as well.
And so far with all the Hype I have not been provided with a _real_ use case yet that other devices would not do better or equally well.
Btw., omg “segmented display”, do we really have to use bad apps to then later come back to a place we have been to years ago to be happy with that? I have the same feeling with all these web apps, slower than their desktop counter parts and with very few features.
I really don’t get it, for the same amount of money I could a get a decent Netbook and install whichever program I want and these might also be nicely integrated with eachother, no need to have 3 apps for (nearly) the same task.
Wow, you are ready to write off the iPad and its competitors right now because of the failed “tablet computing” concept. Let me tell you why all of the other tablets failed … tablet computers are not desktop or laptop computers, and they were designed with poor UIs to boot. Until now, that is what everyone needed when they needed a computer. With internet and wifi available everywhere, some people at times just need to check twitter, email, listen to music, and maybe browse the web or watch a show on Netflix or something (maybe on the bus or in the back of a car). Guess what works great for that?
Boy, am I glad I don’t live in the USA…
You should have linked to the iFixIt website where they tore one apart.
But, I bought an iPod Touch.. well, I really didn’t buy one. My sister-in-law got a Macbook as a student, and the iPod Touch came free. I thought it would just be fun to tinker with, listen to music… but now, I use it constantly.
If I want to check my email – it’s almost instant without having to sit down or wake up a laptop or whatever.
If I want to post to twitter or a quick thing to my blog, yes, more cumbersome than a good keyboard but it’s fast (since I leave my desktop off most of the time).
If I want to look up something or check my bank account balance or whatever, near instant.
Plus, I can keep it in my pocket wherever I go. (Plus = Madden 2010 and other assorted games…)
The iPad is just an extension of that. I was on board with the idea of an iPhone, but an iPhone without a phone? Lame, right? Wrong. It’s pretty rad and useful. (Now I want an iPhone more than ever before.)
So, yeah, some folks will still need their notebook, but for a lot of folks who don’t do website design or who write important documents at work, it’s an instant on media and internet powerhouse that may just be fun to use. I have yet to try one out either, so I am not planning on getting one until I get to demo it a little.
But if it’s slick, my laptop is out the door.
And I don’t just mean the iPad, but other tablets that follow. These are definitely not my ideas, but here are two that I’ve absorbed during all this:
1) (Remember – consumers)You don’t have to know anything. Yes, for the first time a person doesn’t have to know anything, even learn the desktop metaphor. There are things to learn, yes, but out of the box, a person can begin to use these devices without knowing a single thing about computing. If you say one can do that with a regular desktop or laptop, then why are family members and friends calling you for help?
2) To me, this is overlooked. It is a new way of computing because, in ordinary use, you hold it in your hands. You usually only use your hands, nothing else. It is meant to be held, just like our cell phones and iPods, etc. In many ways it’s true – it is like a big iPod Touch, but it is also much more. Just the screen real estate alone makes it a whole new environment.
There needs to be evolution of course, but I cannot see trying to compare something like the iPad to netbooks and notebooks. It is something that stands alone.
New way of “computing”. Really? I’d rather agree with Thom. Especially about the aspect of trying to create a new product category. The idea here is of course that people need both normal computers and these tablets. In a way all these attempts have failed in the past: people want general purpose devices. This was evident with the PC revolution. And it has been evident with smart phones; before you had mp3 mplayers and portable radios and whatnot but now people are, I believe, generally happy to have all those unnecessary little “gadgets” in one phone.
I agree with parrotjoe.
Well it’s more a new way of internet access, media consumption and limited creation platform, but that is computing for most people anyway.
Most people already have both: a desktop pc and a mobile device like a laptop or netbook. Or how many netbook user do you know that do not have (and need) another pc (or powerful laptop)?
The only attempt I know of was Windows tablet and it failed primeraly because MS tried to shove Windows down every users throat no matter what device they use. MS simply didn’t get it: You can’t change form factors / input / display size and still use the same Windows desktop paradigms. So, no: it was not very surprising that UMPCs, tablet PCs, WinMo, etc. were not very successful.
Well, please explain me why a single purpose device like the iPod could have been successful while there were those hybrid “mp3-camera-radio-phones” on the market. Many competitors tried the ‘we have everything and the kitchen sink’ and failed. Or look at the iPhone: many competitors had way better hardware support: cameras, radios, sd-ports, usb and whatnot. And now: which phone concept does MS and all the others try to copy?
There’s value in simplicity – as Saint-Exupery once said: Perfection is reached, not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away.
My prediction is that most people still have a desktop PC around but use something simpler like an iPad, wePad, .. for everyday tasks were you don’t need flexibility but a simple and fast user experience.
i cant wait to get mine hands on video http://mac-gear.co.uk/ipad-review/
Gizmodo officialy lost it when not 1 but 3 writers went off on thier commentors.
one claimed that the industry didnt do anything untill apple innovated with a touchscreen phone
and another outright told a commenter to go and f’ng die
and
that there is enough oxygen for idots too in the world
i find it sad that a commenter cant have a descenting viewpoint from the author and not fear verbal lashings for not agreeing.
note that the 3 have note written one ipad article since then
sorry for the formatting, sent from my touch pro 2 running 6.5 at work where im not supposed to have a phone.
I think Engadget achieved a fair balance on the review, based on first-hand usage of the iPad: it IS snappy, and works as they state in the review, warts and all (warts==no Flash and the other limitations) and yes, I still maintain Apple isn’t attempting to replace the laptop with this: they’re going for something entirely different, that of a computer that’s more of an appliance, something people that can reasonably operate a TV or a toaster can make work for their requirements, and something that requires no more administration than those appliances: they’ve hit that target.
Also, now having held an iPad for many minutes, and not being a lightweight, wimpy person, I can weigh in on something to compare between the iPad and the JooJoo: the weight AND the size! Why? Well, weight by itself isn’t the most important: size also matters (wait, did I just say that?) for long-term usage. If you’re holding the device in one hand, the weight matters quite a bit, and if it gets too heavy, it’ll tire you out very quickly: if it is heavy enough, some people won’t be able to hold it properly due to lack of hand/finger strength, even if they’re not typing on it. Now, where size matters is all about leverage: if you have a weight at the end of a lever, the farther out that lever goes with that weight distribution, the harder it will be to hold both near the edge, as well as just maintain holding it. Now, the iPad is sufficiently heavy as it is, and some lightweights will find it tiring fairly quickly; this will be so much more pronounced with the JooJoo, because it weighs almost a pound more, combined with being a longer lever. If you combine that with the only real advantage being that it does Flash out of the box, but doesn’t play native games or other apps or much of anything else, the JooJoo is DOA in the market, even without all the legal questions behind it. Sure, some geeks will buy the JooJoo to hack it, but few consumer electronic devices are bought by enough hacker geeks where geeks alone are enough for the manufacturer to break even or make a profit. And, of course: everyone everywhere knows about the existence of the iPad: it’s been on many TV shows, clearly placed, sure, but that’s marketing, many commercials, stores (Best Buy as a chain in the US) and many print ads, and (for all I know, though I’ve not looked for them) online ads: where has the JooJoo been mentioned? Tech sites? slashdot? No matter what one’s opinion on the merits between the JooJoo versus the iPad, even if for some definition of “superior” it won’t matter which one is, if not enough people are aware that it even exists, and for those that likely do know about the JooJoo, they’re also aware of the shaky legal standing of things: that’s not exactly confidence-inspiring for potential customers, either
Apple has a reputation for supporting their products once they get home, at least for a known length of time: Fusion Garage… unknown.
Well, it will be interesting to see how many other touchscreen tablets come out in the next 2 years or so: at the rate things are going, it’s likely to be Android/Chrome or iPhoneOS as the major contenders for OS, because of the most important factor that makes any hardware useful: software, and, in this case, software designed from the start for the actual hardware user interface, instead of a pasted on user interface to a desktop mouse pointer system.
Its a Shrek-like iTouch with about as much ‘magic’ as a mid evil rock to today’s standards. Its also very over priced as a result.
I’ve been trying to avoid yelling at my monitor all day as people describe the iPad as a “computer” or a “revolution in computing”, when computing is pretty much the only thing you can’t do on it. It’s like describing a new shoe as a revolution in swimwear.
“An Application may not itself install or launch other executable code by any means, including without limitation through the use of a plug-in architecture, calling other frameworks, other APIs or otherwise. No interpreted code may be downloaded or used in an Application except for code that is interpreted and run by Apple’s Documented APIs and built-in interpreter(s).”
That’s as good a description of general-purpose computing as I’ve ever read, and it’s simply Not Allowed on the iPad. So please, everyone stop calling it a computer. Call it an appliance, call it a glorified web browser, call it an entertainment device, I don’t care, but don’t indulge Apple in their attempt to redefine what a computer is. Words have power; use the right ones, please.
+1.
Thank you! For shedding light on something I did not even realize! And I make a living out of software engineering! That’s how much the overwhelming hype over this underwhelming and overestimated appliance can numb a mind.
No Java?
For those who read French, I posted (earlier today) a rather long comment here (are URLs authorized in comments?): http://www.giiks.com/12999-prix-de-l-ipad-devoiles/?utm_source=feed…
My user name on the page is “topdawg”. In short, I was saying that I do not see any point in buying something that does not even have a USB adapter, no cam,… In the past three years, I haven’t bought, except for the Nintendo DS, a single tech thing that didn’t have both of USB and SD/MMC, be it a digital camera, an MP3 player or a phone. Sure, people will say none of these have Wifi. True, but at least, they allowed me to copy things from their storage unit and even to extend the capacity. Even the DRM-plagued Creative Zen does.
Anyway, I ended my comment with two questions:
1- is it possible, using the iPad, to listen to some music on a 2.0 external speakers system while reading mails at Yahoo Mail or GMail (which I could surely do, using the proper adapter, with my Nokia 6110 Navigator phone bought two years ago)?
2- (because I’ve read, and written! shame on me, a lot about what it does not have) what does the “magical and revolutionary” iPad have?
I’m adding one here:
3- The randomly-generated WPA2 key that I use for my home Wifi network is in a text file on my laptop. I copied the file to a USB key today when setting up an Asus EeePC netbook I recently bought. How do I transfer that key to an iPad since the only way in (unless I’m not educated enough) is through the Wifi and I need the key to get a working Wifi connection? The virtual keyboard I guess… Wow!
Is the JooJoo a possible contender?
Actually, yes. That is certainly possible since Apple allows multitasking for its own apps and music will play in the background. Hook up your external speakers via a standard 3.5 mm connector and you’re set.
This is the million dollar question. In a sense, it has everything the iPod Touch has with the addition of iWork (for extra, of course) and Apple’s iBooks app. I’m sure there’ll be more iPad-specific apps coming out, but other than that it really doesn’t have anything that great.
Yep since Apple, in their infinite wisdom, doesn’t allow you to copy any old files to the device and even if they did it’s not like you can cut/paste a Wifi key as that secure text field isn’t cut/paste enabled. This isn’t standard OS X, where basically every editing feature works everywhere. Manual typing it is. Pathetic, isn’t it?
Lol. No. It’s bigger, lower res, and has no native app capabilities at all. The joo joo is a $500 12-inch web browser and nothing else, unless you want to hack it. It uses standard netbook hardware, but putting a desktop os on a tablet doesn’t usually result in the best of experiences. Plus, given that it is standard netbook hardware in a smaller, thinner casing and driven by a touch screen, I’m not sure battery life would be very good.
No! No Java! Java is bad! Java is not owned by Apple! What are you thinking? You may even want to download and install some Java app written for smartphones and do so by circumventing AppStore? That kind of thinking is unlawful, but thanks God, we have Steve Jobs who locked iPad and is protecting us from Java apps and from every app which doesn’t come through AppStore.
Do you own a large, 4×4 Truck or perhaps an SUV? Most folks don’t. Why not? Might they want to haul something sometime? Off road? In the mountains?
Most folks have cars, and many are opting for smaller cars, for all sorts of obvious reasons. But when they make those choices, they’re opting for compromise and doing “less” than the potential of what a 4×4 truck can do, with it’s go anywhere, do anything utility.
I have an iPod touch, and I love it. I have an iPhone, also, and I don’t even consider the Touch redundant. When I travel, I carry both. My phone is my phone and internet appliance and daily carry. The Touch is gorged with movies, music, and books and what not, it’s my entertainment unit.
Why is that? It’s thinner, and it’s lighter. I like the feel of it better when reading and watching things on the plane, or in the hotel room.
I might get an iPad for my wife, and I think it will provide a better “couch surfing” experience for her than the laptop does. But, at the moment, I wouldn’t get one for myself, as I wouldn’t travel with it. It’s size and such lack the handiness of the iPod, and just adds bulk to my travel. Don’t you hate sitting next to somone who’s bumbling with their laptop within the confines of a plane seat? I sure do. Easy way to get an accidental elbow in the eye.
But I could see, if I had one, I’d rather watch a movie on it than the iPod, for obvious reasons. And I think the iPad is a better movie experience than a laptop. Not having the bulky, heavy unit heating my legs lying in bed seems like a win to me.
Mind, a netbook may just well be the better compromise for travel, and perhaps not too horrible for consuming content in bed. Can’t say. But I find the laptops heavy, hot, and ungainly.
But, since I have to carry a laptop anyway, it comes along.
The iPad is a great consumer device. I look at the Pages video and, boy, it sure SEEMS easy to use. I mean, really easy. I think the “touching” aspect is key to that. The touching is direct, using a mouse is indirect. And I highlight SEEMS because it may well simply not work out.
But I watch folks struggle with Word, and OOo, etc., and Pages on the iPad looks really amazing to me, as imperfect as it is.
Folks have been trying to get computers easy to use for “the rest of us” for a long time, and frankly, while great strides have been made, the iPad I feel takes it a leap forward. Because of its constraints. Because of it’s limitations.
It may be an 80/20 device, but it seems to do the 80 REALLY well, and most folks really don’t need the other 20. Why commute in a 4×4 when a subcompact does just as well.
Wrong analogy.
It is more like this Ipad car drives on 80% of the roads out there.
SUVs and small cars can drive on the same roads (more or less, few mountain and forrest roads excluded) that is 100%.
Would you buy a car that only works with 80% of the roads, when you can get one that drives all of them for half the price?
Except computers aren’t cars and using that aanalogy/straw man results in instant credibility loss for the post. Wait and see what apple’s competitors do. It normally takes MS 3-4 tries to get something right so the ball is in google’s court now.
I do have to remind people of this, though…lots of folks questioned the viability of netbooks when they came out. I currently have 2 and would buy another if one of these breaks. This time I’m one of the skeptics (although for me its mostly because it’s apple).
Edited 2010-04-04 13:07 UTC
Analogy-Schmanalogy ..
but the Notion Ink Adam ticks all my boxes:
USB
1080p
HDMI Output
Android
No backlight e-ink like display (Pixel Qi)
16:9
Flash
16 hours max
I just hope the David will survive against Goliath.
Anyone will agree with that. At least me.
Are you kidding? In what aspect is it a “better movie experience”? I would say the contrary and here are the reasons. A laptop has a horizontal side (keyboard) and a (possibly) vertical side (the screen). That makes it sit where you put it and allows you to watch a movie without holding it. No looking for a way to keep it steady *and* at the right angle for your comfortable watching. How do you do that with the iPad? Plus, most movies are 16:9 these days while “old” ones are 4:3. The iPad, when docked, is 3:4, which is more relevant to reading than watching. Not to mention the fixed angle! Unless one can grow one or two additional fully formed arms at will, I wonder what will happen to the pizza and beer…
I understand “being interested in” or “not against the idea of”. I don’t understand this specious “being a better movie experience than a laptop” thing. The iPad will NEVER beat my aging 17-inch Amilo Xi2528 despite the heavy 4.2 kg, as far as watching movies is concerned. Same goes with the EeePC netbook running XP, maybe not as snappy as the Apple products (this is the soft spot I have for my MacBook Pro speaking) but so much more reactive than Windows “turtle” Vista.
I received my ipad today. I’ll be placing an order for a second.
I own a few desktop workstations and a laptop. All synced via drop box. I generally avoid using the laptop unless i am doing a presentation because its just too much of a hassle to cart around.
The iPad is a great device (but by no means perfect).
It’s much more portable than a laptop yet it covers almost anything I might care to do with it. It handles all the social stuff very well : email, facebook, as well as browsing, gaming, and yes, presentations.
Sure, I’d never code on it but that’s why I have a desktop and, in a pinch, I can cartainly use it to ssh if need to be and do some quick maintenance.
I’d say for longer trips I’d bring an apple bluetooth keyboard though because although you can type on the iPad (typing on it now) its still not as easy as a real keyboard.
I do think it needs multi tasking because not being able to Skype and take notes is just stupid. Thats really my biggest gripe.
Ideally a front facing camera would help too.
I am getting a second because my wife and especially my daughter love it so much.
K
From what I recall of the iPad Launch, there were iPad versions of quite a few of the Mac “iWork” applications going to be available for $9.95. Again, from memory, one of these is a ‘note taker’. It might not be something akin to Microsoft Word but something that can take notes.
I stopped using Word a while ago and switched to Pages.
Pages is a reasonably powerful mid range word processor that probably does what 80-90% of people want to do with their word processor but currently lacks some of the more obscure functions of Word. Pages can read and write files in Word format so compatibility is not a problem. Using Pages as a Word processor is a joy compared to Word.
Where Pages really leaves Word in the dust is as a lay out and DTP app. Putting together any sort of lay out from the simple to the very complex is really easy in Pages and in this area Word has nothing that competes. Pages can save files in PDF format if necessary.
I was hesitant to stop using Word at home because my employer uses Office as the company standard but I haven’t used Word for over a year now and don’t miss it. The fact that there is cheap touch enabled version of Pages for the iPad is fantastic.
Just to round off on the other two iWork apps – Keynote kills Powerpoint and Numbers is a pretty good alternative to Excel especially if you want to do any sort of fancy lay out or presentation with your data.
Ditto.
It’s not that you can’t afford Apple, it’s that Apple still can’t afford you. Come on, it’s XXI century and I’m supposed to pay $0,5k for THAT?!
I am enthusiastic about the iPad. I have often been browsing the web with my iPhone thinking “having this with a large screen would be great”. There are many occasions where I just want to carry something to watch movies, browse the web, and read a book. In those cases I do not want to carry my laptop around.
That said, I think I will wait for the competition to show up. No, not the Windows 7 competition, I think that their user interface is totally unfit for such devices. But, I expect that if the iPad turns out to be successful, we will see Android/MeeGoo/… tablets. The primary reason being that I don’t like the closedness of the iPad. OS X is fine, iPhoneOS was still acceptable for a Phone (which tend to be very closed anyway), but I am pretty afraid that Apple will simplify (read: restrict) more and more devices. Of course, developers will still need a relatively free system with Xcode, but how long until we get a iPhoneOS-based desktop?
Why is it so expensive? That seems like the obvious reaction to the review. Its a minimalist processor, it has minimal memory, minimal storage. The pictures of the board suggest it gives new meaning to the concept of hardware minimalism.
We just bought a second hand x series Thinkpad for someone who needs portability because he works in libraries quite a lot and wants to be able to take notes at some length, and put Debian on it. So I read it wondering whether this device, at some three times what we paid for the Thinkpad, would do the trick. And also, whether it would be more performant.
As far as I can see, the answer is no. Our old Thinkpad does, its true, have a battery life about half this. Otherwise however, it has 1G memory, 60G hard drive, 2Ghz processor, all the software you could want (and just download right away anything we forgot to install). It has a real keyboard, one of the few laptop keyboards that’s as comfortable for extended typing as a real full size keyboard. Its light weight and superbly built.
And its several years old. This looks to me like an overpriced, overhyped underspecified netbook, from wich most of what makes them usable has been taken out. Well, probably they will sell. But I feel rather sorry for anyone who buys one of these and thinks they have anything resembling the functionality of a laptop or netbook.
One post on this thread applauds, in characteristic echoing of the Cupertino Party Line, that this is supposed to be computing ‘for the rest of us’, and that its wonders are achieved precisely by the restrictions and lack of features. Makes your toes curl, really. Its positively Orwellian, this Apple insistence that restriction is freedom, dictatorship democracy, and that there is some ‘rest of us’ that needs something different, ie less of this awful thing called freedom, to be truly fulfilled.
Ugh!
“Computing for the rest of us” doesn’t mean “affordable”, but a computer that you, as an untrained person, can actually use.
Consider that the mere presence of the physical keyboard deters many people from using computers, because there are so many buttons. It sounds ridiculous, but I meet people like that all the time, who won’t use computers, because of all those damn buttons they would have to learn. They see the keyboard as the computer and as the only way to use a computer. It’s unknown to them in the same way that it’s unknown to most of us to be asked to land the space shuttle.
The mouse, trackpad or trackball is less of a deterrent, but still there is nothing like touching the user interface directly on the screen.
Don’t underestimate the form factor. But we are all here so ingrained with laptops and netbooks, we don’t look at form factor, only size and price.
Over the past 20 years, the only computer my mother has ever responded to, was my iPod Touch, because she saw immediately what I was doing with it. For a person as low-tech as she is, it’s quite amazing that she connected with it.
You’re basically saying that iPad is intended for mentally retarded and illiterate people.
Maybe you are right.
So the thinkpad has a life battery of at least 5-6 hours? under what load? There are not many thinkpads (or any other laptop) that has a 5+ battery. Some reviews claim that this iPad thing can reach 12 hours, tho that remains to be seen.
Don’t mix things. A thinkpad, as cheap as it might be, it’s a full fledged computer. The iPad is not that.
Well, there’s no need to pay 500 $ for an iPad when you can pay 92$ and 155$ for tablets like zenPad and MD500 running Android:
http://i.engadget.com/2010/03/11/92-md500-android-tablet-from-hott-…
http://i.engadget.com/2010/03/22/ensos-zenpad-is-the-cheap-android-…
5 inch tablets with weaker CPUs and GPUs, less storage, shorter battery life, no external keyboards, older Android software (2.1 is out, manufacturers, why are you still using 1.6 and 1.5!!!????), clunkier operation when syncing with your PC or Mac (though Android syncs beautifully with Google, at least my Nexus One does)… It may be cheaper, and it shows. Oh and who are those companies, how long are they going to be around to support the tablets with updates, and troubles, how well-researched is their UI, how well will they work with the existing Android apps, etc????
I love my Nexus One because I can hack it to my heart’s content, has multitasking, and more importantly their notification system is beautiful – no popups get in my way when I get a new SMS.
I loved my iPod because I could sync everything easily with it without having to buy clunky 3rd-party software or use clunkier free solutions, or even manually manage. Yes I’m a techie and I’m also a sucker for ease of use. I deal with enough things at my job, when I get home I want my computers to JUST WORK, click a few things and sync this and that artist to my mobile device, not copy, delete, move files manually, and so on.
This is why the iPad interests me, and probably why the iPod and iPhones have caught on so much. They’re not all things to all people, but the things they do, they do well. Android is crawling slowly towards that, but not quite there yet…
Though the geek in me loves Android regardless
I still don’t consider those tablets a viable alternative to the iPad for what the iPad’s intended purpose is.
It’s fun watching geeks squirm. So many geeks hate the very nature of this device. It takes control and mastership away from them and hands it to regular users.
The geeks should be hanging their head in shame. Why is it took Apple to make this easy? Why wasn’t HP there first? Why wasn’t IBM? Why wasn’t Microsoft? (The iPad is shipping, nobody has even seen a real Courier)
The fact is, that Apple worked _really frakking hard_ to produce this device. They sweated every detail. The engineering is astounding (See the MacFixIt teardown)—perfect 50/50 weight distribution.
They have the ineffable right to design, create and release the products they want, at the price they want—and people have the right to buy whatever they so please.
All this iPad debate is vapid hot-air. Don’t talk to me about freedom, bloody well ship something that competes, something that sweats the details, something that puts the majority of people in control of their own devices; then let’s talk about freedom.
Large companies, small companies and geeks in between have failed the most important computer users—everybody—because they made computers the express playground of the arrogant, in-crowd for too many years.
Geeks, you have nobody but yourself to blame for the lack of “freedom†on the iPad. You cannot change the device now that it’s out of the door. Neither by buying one, talking about the damn thing endlessly or crying foul. The sooner geekdom wakes up and realise that computers are here to serve everybody on this planet, and not just the social fallouts, then the quicker you may be able to pick yourself up and produce something that the populous would actually want to buy.
I have been working with computer users full time for four years and I have no sympathy for those who decry the iPad as unfair. It’ll take two years to take solid grip of the market, but it’s unquestionably going to turn computing on its head. And good. Because the geeks fumbled and messed up and dropped the ball with the power they held.
Maybe the iPad will make HP, IBM, Microsoft et al sweat, really really sweat. And that’ll be good for all of us.
Kroc, you have fallen into the pit of Cupertino-speak. Cupertino has for years and years put out the myth that there is something impossible for some undefined set of people about Windows or Linux, and that Cupertino is here to save them by giving them something they can use. These users are targeted as ‘the rest of us’, whatever that is.
Its false. The fact is, you have to learn to use tools, whether they are cash registers, computers, lathes, TV remote controls. Apple stuff is no more easy to use than anything else. Its a bit different in detail, but so are all other brands from each other.
The second thing that you’re missing is that the freedom thing is about the role of corporate power in our culture. What Cupertino wants, for reasons that are totally obscure, is to be able to dictate what people read or view and what they use. Well, one understands the desire to control what they use, because Jobs has always regarded outside developers as parasites, and always wanted the cash flow stream from all applications. He finally thinks he’s got it.
But the desire to be able to operate a sort of content Index, in which material which is perfectly legal in the jurisdiction of the buyer is banned from the device, that, as well as being totally obscure, has social implications. We do not want corporations, Apple or any other, to have that power. The end result of this is a state where the law says you can publish certain things, but in practice no-one can read them.
Apologists for Apple need to re-read John Stuart Mill. This is a very old debate, and Apple is on the wrong side of it, along with the Church of the time of the Index. Its a debate that is not primarily about consumers and buying choices, its about what sort of society we are prepared to see evolve, and how much power we are prepared to give to corporate interests.
Think about it. There will be a push to install these kinds of devices in educational institutions. Think about the implications. As Bild remarked, today it is breasts they censor, tomorrow it will be politics. Never was more pointed and truer remark made by a less worthy source. But never mind the source, it is true, profoundly so.
I’m not apologising for Apple. I’m stating that Apple did the work nobody else was willing to do. They slapped on their restrictions and now a new enemy has arisen before it could be nipped in the bud.
Desktop Linux has already failed. To the customers I serve, desktop Linux is no different than Windows. It uses the same hard to learn desktop metaphor. File systems are hard to learn. Context menus are hard to learn (rarely meet a person who uses the right-click). Drag and drop is hard to learn. The desktop is a 25 year old metaphor that is hard to learn.
Linux keeps trying to catch up with that metaphor, whilst Apple have already moved on.
iPhone OS is OS XI. Apple will spend the next 10 years winding down OS X.
I understand the dangers Apple represents with it’s control over the OS, and I still state that it’s pointless debating it because that will never change Apple. The writing was on the wall for ages, and open source has dawdled about polishing a turd.
Google’s Android is the best hope at the moment, I can only hope someone can marry that with some reliable hardware, and provide some compelling software.
What a poor excuse for unusable software and devices! Of course there are vast differences in usability. And please don’t say that usability is just a minor part of software, easily implemented and can be done as an afterthought. From the user perspective, it’s the most important part of software and impossible to implement as an afterthought.
You’re joking. What total non-sense when e. g. looking at the iPhone – How astonishing: Since that device was released, almost all cell phone makers try to mimic that device, because .. , hm? => Users have learned that they don’t have to be satisfied with unusable phone software like S60, WinMo and the like. Unusable software is not a natural law but hard work (unfortunately, stupids telling that isn’t important are!).
Apple – at the moment – is the only big company that dares doing things differently if the think it’s important. While all others have tried to slapped desktop OS’s more or less “as is” on units that are by fare not suitable for the desktop metaphors (e. g. UMPCs), Apple tried something new and succeeded. Would the world be a better place if we stayed with crappy Nokia S60, WinMo and the like?
They made the right decision to scale up from a touch driven, restricted phone interface instead of scaling down from a mouse driven, flexible but complex desktop interface.
Apple is also the one company that will not implement something as ‘copy-paste’ or ‘multitasking’ as long as they don’t know to implement it right for the given device just to have those extra long list of (sometimes barely usable) features we all know from others.
When talking about tablets or netbooks, all other brands don’t have much choice and so they don’t come up with different, innovative solutions: they use either Windows or some sort of Linux (including Android). I don’t care for e. g. having 3 or 5 USB ports – those are not the big differences when it comes to usability.
The only companies that made long-term investment in an OS and which would therefore be capable of providing something better are IMHO Nokia and Palm. But alas ..
I fail to see how this is worse that standardise on Windows in education and government or sell your privacy to Google / Android devices. Do we really need to train kids how to use MS Word and MS Excel (which is done in the country I live in), thus advertising MS products, prolong an unnatural monopoly and having people in e. g. software companies that are not able to come up with more usable, better solutions because they don’t know anything else than how crappy MS software implemented a given feature?
I welcome companies that try to achieve better solutions and are no just satisfied with putting the latest from MS on their hardware because they simply have no choice or they don’t care as long as people buy it. E.g. HP was once a proud and innovative company. Their scientific calculators were really exceptional. Now they’re satisfied to put the HP logo on some piece of interchangeable HW and sell something that is essentially the same product as the solution from Acer, Dell, Lenovo, ..
You may think about Apple however you like, but IMHO mixing up a world view with a product rating has never resulted in intelligent comment ..
The above statement has proven to be false by most of the people I know and an immense chain of people using Apple products.
Learning Mac OS X (and its applications) seems to be way easier than any other similar device.
With that aside, the iPad brings a whole new level of simplicity. Under Mac OS X, you need still need to learn (to use a mouse for example), need to learn about windows, about how to close them, about how you have to shut it down, etcetera. And tho these tasks seems to be easier to learn to OS X new users (than, say, a new user in front of an Ubuntu Box), the iPad removes all that complexity.
You rarely need more than 5 minutes on an ATM to learn how to extract money. Even if you’ve never really used one. I suspect that new users of the iPad (and devices in general) will learn to use the iPad quite rapidly.
Kroc is right in some things. (maybe hating geeks too much) but he’s right. The haters of the iPad are those who want to SSH to their boxes. I suspect most of the “computer of some sort†users of the world, have no idea what SSH is (and never will).
I have a few boxes around (Mac Pro, Linux Servers and some Windows XP/7 workstations). I even got a Macbook (old white) as a gift last week. I wish I had one of those to read RSS/Mail before i go to bed or when I’m bored.
I don’t think anyone will want to fire XCode in that thing…
What a load of BS. Big time.
You make it sound that us geeks are here to please the generic public, that our mission would somehow be to create some idiotic crap for consumers to consume. It may be the job of some of us, but it sure ain’t what makes people geek.
I blame this ridiculous “usability” trend. Oh, please, please think about the…. Average Joes.
No more hacking with embedded platforms, no more kernel hacking, no more playing with electronics, no more coding useless stuff for fun, no more Unix, no more reading technical books, no more functional languages, no more IRC. It’s all about creating crap for Average Joes now.
Even open source is filled with this nonsense nowadays. Everything has to be about market shares and useless “usability”. All in the name of Joe.
A proud day for computer science too. That computing has become an event of pushing buttons in a screen.
Please think about the poor Joe Sixpack!
Edited 2010-04-04 08:52 UTC
Have you ever met Joe Sixpack?
I do. Every day. Guess what? You’re wrong. Usability is real and makes up what we call life.
Yes, I do. I even live with one Average Jane.
All hail the Average Joes. If you are a geek, you should hang your head in shame! Hang in your head in shame because you do stuff that Joe doesn’t understand.
Race to the bottom.
No. I do stuff people don’t understand to be able to create something that they do understand.
It’s called engineering. For too long we’ve been engineering things only other engineers could use. Now it’s time to build the bridges and the houses and all the things that everybody can use and enjoy via our ‘magic’.
The iPad won’t kill the programmer, it will give the programmer more challenging work than he’s ever had before.
It’s called consumerism.
I say: f–k that. (Sorry for my french.)
Everyone who agrees with me can continue with their current space rocket project. No worries; there will always be people who say that it’s rocket science.
You’ve got a pretty skewed view of what usability means. Usability has nothing to do with Joe Sixpack. It means that a tool is made so that its “users” can use it efficiently. Efficiently subsumes a lot, from correctness to intuitivity.
What “user” means, depends on the tool. E. g. an IDE has to deal with other users and other user expectations than a web browser or a sound mixer software. Even an API or a physical interface has “usability” (or lake thereof).
Usability in software is as necessary as a good software architecture: Both are essential investments in a software product.
Unfortunately, I come across a lot of open source software that have laking usability – a real waste of effort and time, because nobody is interested in dealing with unusable software – no matter how cool the ideas and implementation are underneath. Those projects normally also have problems attracting other developers so they die sooner or later.
As a software engineer – and to use your language – I say: f–k producers of software engineering tools that give a damn about usability. Do they really expect that just because the user is a software engineer, he should fix horrible UIs himself before doing his own work or he should have a look at the source code because they were to lazy to think about an intuitive implementation or didn’t even bother to write any documentation ..
All in all: Go on with your current space rocket project, but don’t expect others to use that rocket or that anybody cares for you if you get stuck half way to the moon.
Yeah, right. Open source is all about Ubuntu and Gimp.
Hard to use software like compilers, gdb, Apache, shell, filesystems, kernel code, nothing like that matters. It is all about Ubuntu, Gimp, and idiots.
Yeah, and usability still applies.
LLVM/Clang is easier to use than GCC.
Lighttpd is easier to use than Apache.
And so on so forth.
As a subservient slave for Apple, paying Apple street toll for everything he’s willing to create?
iPad may be great, but not THAT great. I’d rather skip this particular dystopia and see if we’ll have a better one lined up.
Seems like this link is yet again appropriate:
http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2003/07/12/WebsThePlace
Summary:
Edited 2010-04-04 10:34 UTC
Of course, I’m a web developer. I’m saying that a focus on everybody computing, instead of geek computing is going to challenge programmers rather than dumb-down their work (as some have themselves believe).
I’ll be developing for the web, but be it the web or the App Store you are developing for, the challenges ahead are catering for another 1–2 billion new people joining the fray.
Wow, if you develop for the iPhone or iPod or iPad you are a “sharecropper” and a “subservient slave”. Well there is a solution, make something more people will use and buy.[Edit – punctuation]
You know anybody that can do that? Has anyone else done that? Tell me about this wonderful device!
Edited 2010-04-05 01:41 UTC
Yes, because in 2011 the average person is confused and frightened by this com-pu-tor and strange electronic mail! Except they’re not. There’s a vast amount of adults in the world who grew up on this stuff being as common as a toaster. Heck, I think the prime example is that I don’t know anyone under 30 who even has cable tv at this point. None of the non-geeks I know, none of the geeks. Everyone just gets stuff off the net.
Not all, but a pretty large amount of them are carrying smartphones around as well for that matter. Iphone, android, or otherwise. It’s not that big a deal today. There’s no need to proclaim the revolution. It’s happened, and already over.
No, no, no, no, no, lol!!! That is the point – regular people do use things like smartphones because they have reached the point where regular people can use them. That is exactly what the iPad is.
They don’t care about lock-down and all the other stuff we care about – in fact, they want all that so they won’t accidentally screw things up.
We have all kinds of things we, as geeks, can work on, get into – there is no shortage. If we don’t want an iPad because it contains elements we don’t like or are absent, we have a million other things to attend to.
So many of you absolutely refuse to look at this from the ordinary consumer’s point of view. If it’s no good or unexciting to you, then it’s crap. Open your minds a little bit!!
I hate these stupid generalisations. As if something like “they” exists. It’s the usual geek arrogance – something remarkably prevalent among Apple fans. “There there you poor incapable person, have an iPad, you’re too stupid to handle the real thing!”
Trust me – people care about lockdown. When I explained to my dad – not that computer-savvy, but can handle himself – how the Apple way works (all the iTunes lock-in, total control, etc. etc.) his reaction was telling. “That’s stupid… And dangerous.”
These people will care about the lock-in once news articles are magically altered on their devices without them knowing about it. When contents of books is altered. When books magically disappear (see Kindle).
It is our job as the ones that are aware of this danger to point it out to them. Since people often come to me for advice about these matters (boy, what a surprise), I *always* explain to them just what Apple stands for. I’ll tell them Apple products belong to the very top of the market, but that it comes with a price – and geeks or no, they understand full well the dangers that come with Apple’s total control.
I’m getting sick of this “users are stupid, they need protecting!” attitude. It is incredibly arrogant and snobist. I hate most geeks for it with a passion. It’s no wonder I steer clear of geeks in real life. The arrogance and disdain for other people’s capabilities is sickening.
Edited 2010-04-04 20:29 UTC
You got it wrong.
Once upon time there was a vision that users should learn and educate themselves about computers. (And they still do, of course.) But the recent “usability” aims to dumb down computers to specific-purpose, locked-down, single-purpose gadgets. At the same time the web is turning to an interactive consumer-driven television.
Being part of the general trend, these tablets will just widen the gap between those who understand the technology and those who only consume it. It tells something that increasing the amount of the former group is the aim of practically every country, yet people here celebrate the opposite trend.
True strcpy
How long will it take for the rest to notice the potential risk of all these little developments?
Or at least acknowledge a feeling of unease about all of this.
Edited 2010-04-05 00:13 UTC
While I agree that the content you buy being “magically altered” later is a terrible thing, I dont see the lockdown of the iPad being something that is terrible because of the whole “users are stupid” thing. The iPad doesn’t need to run all OS X apps, it should run apps designed for the iPad. This is not a general purpose computer, it is a tablet. So I appreciate some lockdown that adds to the experience.
…it should run apps designed for the iPad. This is not a general purpose computer, it is a tablet. So I appreciate some lockdown that adds to the experience.
This is not the point, of course it shut run programs designed for tablets, and doesn’t need to run others.
The question is, should these programs be only available through Apple? Should the content accessible through these programs be only the content Apple approves of?
Thom is right, this stuff is really seriously dangerous for a liberal society, and must be stopped.
I really cannot see what any of this faux outrage is about. Really.
The situation seems to be this – Apple has long been committed to controlling the whole technology stack that goes into it products (hardware, software etc) and to creating closed tech ecology systems. Its reasons for doing this are several (and they included in the early days of Apples renaissance preventing Microsoft from embracing and extending them to death) but mostly its so they can create an absolutely predictable user experience. They have largely succeeded in this aim and the result has been a series of products that have been smash hits with consumers who appreciate the stability, aesthetics, usability and interactivity of Apple products.
Apple have made available cheap, accessible and robust tools for anybody who wants to create products to work within their closed systems – the barriers for access are very low. In order to participate you have to abide by some rules laid down by Apple, mostly these rules are about preventing the degrading of the user experience that Apple has tried so hard to guarantee, sometimes its a reason to do with morality (although I suspect those are mostly to do with things like marketing to the education sector) and very occasionally they are to do with preventing a competitor from threatening Apple’s business model.
Why is this approach seen as somehow fundamentally wrong let alone (absurdly) evil?
Apple has chosen its particular model (the closed eco system) and offers it as an alternative in the market place in competition with other products created using different models. Consumers are free to choose between Apple’s approach and products, and those of its competitors. In no market segment and in no product category is Apple a monopoly so consumer choice is not constrained in anyway. Why is Apple choosing one approach to product design any more or less bad ethically than any of its competitors? Let the consumer, unrestrained by coercion, make a free choice and may the best product win. Sounds good to me.
It should also be pointed out that even though it is committed to a closed ecology approach to its tech products Apple is very highly committed to supporting a wide range of open source projects and standards. See here for the long and impressive list of open source projects that Apple is connected to:
http://www.apple.com/opensource/
From Webkit and Darwin to HTML5 Apple has for a long time championed open standards and open source. It dumped DRM from iTunes as soon as it had the clout to convince the record labels to do so. Apple is happy to champion open standards (like Google but unlike Microsoft) because it has a high level confidence that its products can stand on their own two feet, that their products can win in open competition with the products of other companies.
To me Apple’s approach seems ethical and commendable and I like their products. I understand that other people may not like their approach or their products. But to dress up a dislike for Apple’s products in overblown and vacuous rhetoric about civil liberties or good and evil is just plain silly.
If you don’t understand the dangers of having a privately owned company control the *content* on your devices – a company who, to make matters worse, is trying to put people in jail for accessing content not approved by them – then you, my dear sir, are ignorant.
I have no other words for it. It boggles my mind how someone can just brush all that away because the products are nice. He who sacrifices freedom for security deserves neither, a great man once said (paraphrased).
This will go wrong. Inevitably. It’s not a question of if, but when.
What a load of puffed up toss. If you don’t like Apple’s devices don’t buy them – its that simple.
By the way – who have Apple threatened with jail for accessing content not approved by them?
Currently, jailbreaking falls under the DMCA – making it a felony. Apple is currently actively trying to keep jailbreaking under the DMCA.
And who has actually been arrested or even threatened with arrest?
Come on – saying Apple products are crap and you don’t like them is one thing but spouting hysterical nonsense about Apple being some sort of threat to people’s civil liberties is just silly. This site just posted a link to a story about how to jail break an iPad – did the big bad Apple Gestapo come looking to shut you down?
We are talking about a phone – if you don’t like the conditions under which Apple sell their phone then buy another.
It has nothing to do with good versus evil or freedom versus tyranny – its just a fairly trivial issue about which consumer gadget to buy. Its just about shopping.
Jesus Christ people are you intentionally blocking out all the reviews I’ve ever written about Apple products? I have NEVER written a negative review of an Apple product, and yet, you Apple apologists keep on insisting I hate apple products! It just doesn’t make any goddamn sense.
Let me make it simple for you.
I like Apple products, I dislike and mistrust the company’s actions and intentions, and I fcuking hate their zealots.
Clear enough for ya?
He who misapplies cliched historical quotations deserves to not be taken seriously.
Curiously enough, a 29 year old friend, sent me his FIRST email EVER today. He’s never had the need to use a computer (he’s not the only one I know in that situation). His Cellphone is an old thing that works. He’s not into computers at all.
The funny party of the email? He wrote it all in the SUBJECT LINE. (I laughed a lot about it)
You know, not everybody is a computer user. At least not yet.
It just takes control from anyone. It doesn’t give any kind of control to anyone.
Maybe HP, IBM, Microsoft weren’t evil enough? Because they weren’t enough malefic, malignant, mischievous, obnoxious, wicked, toxic?
Companies like HP and Microsoft, unlike Apple, actually give you something for your money. Unlike Apple, they are not just taking your money but they are actually transferring some rights and ownership over the goods you have purchased from them.
You see, HP doesn’t tell you what apps you have the right to run on tablets, PDAs and pocketpcs you have purchased from them. Microsoft doesn’t tell you what apps you have the right to run on Windows Mobile and doesn’t force you to buy or download apps only from their store. Microsoft doesn’t force you to use Windows 7 only on their hardware and to buy apps and songs from their store.
There’s going to be a lot of ARM power smartbooks soon. For example
http://www.itechnews.net/2010/01/13/freescale-smartbook-tablet-refe…
I think this is about US$ 200 is the ipad twice as good?
Of course its twice as good. See, one thing it does not have is all that disturbing freedom that drives people crazy. All that distressing choice.
Its like elections in many ways. I see so many people in Europe coming out of polling booths these days shaking with anxiety because of all those choices. They often say to me, why can’t there just be one candidate to vote for, the right one? Why can’t the government just pick the one who is right for us?
Fortunately Apple has got it right for these people. The only thing I worry about is the existence of all these alternatives to the iPad and the iMac. I think it could well be that the very existence of these things is a threat to the mental health of our countries. We can eliminate choice from the iPad, but it seems there are still these enemies of true freedom who carry on making this illusory choice available, thus threatening the mental health of everyone and increasing the risk of global warming. We should really do something about it, for people’s own good.
Book stores are even worse. I came out of Heffer’s in Cambridge on a visit to the UK the other week, and let me tell you, it was a nightmare. There were several floors, absolutely full of all these books! Many of them were not fit for children to even know about, let alone read. Then when I came out, the street was full of clothes shops, and there was a newstand full of different newspapers and magazines to choose between. I felt ill. And then there was a huge supermarket next door, with all different kinds of foods in it, and a store called Argos, with thousands of different electrical appliances.
What we need, I thought, and maybe Apple can do this for us next, is just one newspaper. I thought, we could call it ‘Truth’. That’s what it would be, it would only contain the truth.
We could cut down and only have one brand of computer, too. The right one.
Edited 2010-04-04 08:47 UTC
I hate when people make silly comparison based on price without actually looking at the spec of the device. The most expensive thing on the device is most likely the screen which by all accounts and reports is supposed to be phenomenal. Its an LED backlit IPS screen with a fully capacitive multi-touch layer with higher resolution than you would find in cheaper tablets of this nature let alone a cheap netbook, or laptop.
Look at the specs not just the price. Most other tablets of this nature are also using plastic not Aluminum and glass like Apple is using. I’m not saying Appel isn’t adding abit of a markup to protect their margins, but to compare a cheap $200 device without even the same specs or build quality is silly, imo.
Not if you can get the same job done on the $200 device with comparable degree of comfort.
If you think the main use case is casual browsing on sofa, the important thing is the form factor, not whether it’s plastic or aluminium.
If I can get a $200-$300 tablet with fast browser that has well done finger control, I’ll be happy. If I can reflash it to support my OS of choice in the future, even better.
What are you going to choose? Those crappy $200 tablets who may browse the net faster, and even have flash so you can see all websites, or a wonder, a marvelous $500 iPad which has the nicest apps for groceries lists. Word is spreading that you can buy from AppStore a truly amazing app that actually shows Steve Jobs walking on water and you can buy it for a special price.
Remember that you make a choice for the future, maybe even for your family’s future. You can buy one of those Android junks for $200, but for just $300 more you may be given permission to taste a little bit of the mythical, magical Apple, iPhone, iTunes, iPod, iPad, iEverything realm.
That’s not the point. The point is that regardless of perceived functionality they are not comparable devices. One is made with better, more expensive materials, On has better more expensive technology being employed (in the screen). I never mentioned functionality that’s subjective but to compare something that is not even in the same league in terms of build quality and point to price as the clear denominator is an unfair comparison, imo.
Its always the same story, even with PC/Laptops. Yeah you can get comparable functionality from a cheaper Dell, but you are not taking into account the Aluminum body, the screen (most OEMs use cheap low quality screens) which Apple uses have to be taken into account. I’m not saying that equals what Apple is asking for their products, but these things have to be taken into account when comparing their products to cheaper products.
OK lets look at specs:
Both tablet designs with keyboard docking station.
Freescale ARM Cortex-A8 processor Ipad Apple A4 chip basically the same.
Free scale 512 MB RAM Ipad 256 MB.
Screen basically similar in size but 1024×600 for the free scale 1024×768 Ipad.
Storage 64GB storage Freescale, 16 – 64GB on the Ipad.
Freescale there is an integrated 3 Megapixel camera, speaker, microphone and microSD card slot. 3G modem runs Android or Other Linux. Ipad similar stuff no camera or microSD card slot but with digital compass, Accelerometer and its own OS.
Price Ipad more than twice as much no that’s a lot of money for a bit of glass and aluminum.
…anyone got it running Linux yet?
The hardware looks decent, get it running Android and I might consider buying one.
If locked-down tablet computer will becoming the future of computers I might be happy as well,
You see a long time ago I used to be that person “that owned a computer†which efficiently made me a highly intelligent über-geek without having to show any proof.
Then the Internet revolution came along and everybody bought a computer, the only difference between there’s and mine was that mine was old and made ` sound like it was about to die. Suddenly I had to proof my intellect (if I have any) which is much more work then just owning a computer.
One time I was creating some AI simulator in Lisp, for which the world simply is not ready yet, when my aunt came into my room and remarked: “You always use your keyboard so much, do you know how to operate mice, you should come with me to my Windows course. I think you’ll like it you’d learn a lot.â€
So if everybody will buy a tablet now, I will become that person with a clunky machine on his desk and some strange keyboard with physical buttons (Oh, and USB ports!) which would give me back my former status without having to do anything for it.
That’s always funny to see, because popularity of the Apple products [eh, in some country at least] shows that influence that marketing seems to have on people’s choices is pretty high.
It’s a marketing thing to force them to buy unwanted / overhyped / overbiased / not-that-good products just because some CEO wants his invested money to return.
They used to tell us that ‘they invested unhealthy amounts of money in the product X’ just like this fact alone could ever make this product better … they seem to forget that there’s plenty of poorly designed product of high prices. Apple itself had some design fails in the past and iPad can become one of these.
Edited 2010-04-04 11:31 UTC
A lot of people seem to confuse marketing and advertising. Marketing is understanding what your market wants, providing that and then letting people know you have it. Some people seem to think that you can simply do the latter and have a product succeed. In fact it’s not true.
It’s interesting that you used the words “force to buy” as if marketing is some kind of magically binding spell. Of course it is not, you are not “forced” to buy gadgets.
As you also pointed out, Apple have had it’s failures and no amount of advertising was able to compensate for the fact that people did not want or need those failed products.
Yes Apple are very good marketers and they are quite often able to understand what will sell well. This however is a necessary function of a corporation that is intended to make money.
Yes Apple are good at marketing, if you are going to make and sell successfully, you have to be.
This article is worth a read, it compares Apple’s triumph in the mobile device market (ie the market which is the future of technology) with Microsoft’s triumph in the desktop market (ie the market which is the past of technology).
http://www.thevirtualcircle.com/2010/04/watch-apple-go-and-watch-mi…
The way to measure this triumph and the indicator of who is winning is simple – the number of Apps. To summarise a longer article worth reading in full – when developers began to switch in droves to Windows it was game over for IBM and OS/2.
What is the situation now? The latest figures (read the article for details) indicates that 90% of new mobile app developments project starts in the recent quarter was for the combined iPhone/iPad platform. In fact new app development for the iPad (before it was released) was 22% compared to Android which was 10%.
Apple have almost certainly won.
I understand that the people here who are enraged by this, by Apple and by the iPad. I understand it because when Windows 3.1 was clearly taking over the IT world back in the 1980s, when Windows 95 came out and it seemed to take over the world, as a Mac user I felt like screaming “but its crap!!”.
It was crap but it was the right crap for the times and it won. Now Apple is winning. My advice based on my own experiences back then to those who feel enraged by all this is to say: take a deep breath, calm down, retreat to the niche market that makes you happy and prepare for the day when you start a new job and your new boss hands you an iPad (version 2 or 3 or 4) and says “this is what we use here – do you know how to work it?”
Says a guy on the internet.
An app becomes irrelevant once a better app takes its place. There is only a limited set of applications that mankind needs. A new platform that can do the same things better will kill the old platform.
It may well be that html5 (or 6) is that new platform. Apple doesn’t do html any better than microsoft or open source ecosystem.
See how all the shareware crap made for windows is not really an asset for microsoft. It’s just something that sits there without anybody caring anymore.
We can see what the problem was with MS. It was not how it behaved, it was that it wasn’t Apple. What we wanted was a company that would behave worse than MS, more monopolistic and locked in, but we wanted it to be Apple.
Why?
In what market segment is Apple a monopoly? On the desktop, in the mobile smart phone market, in the mp3 player market there were and are plenty of viable alternatives for the consumer. Have you ever been forced to use an Apple product because there was no alternative or because Apple was a monopoly?
Because the success of MS was based on being a monopoly (a monopoly that was deliberately and brilliantly constructed and doggedly defended) its a common error to think that any company such as Apple that is hugely successful in a particular tech market somehow must be a monopoly. Its simply not true.
When Apple entered the music player business there were loads of established mp3 players – there still are. When Apple entered the smart phone market there were huge, and long established competitors already operating in and dominating that market. The fact that Apple wiped the floor with the other mp3 players and seems to be be such a huge success in the smart phone market in just three years is because they make stuff that people really, really want to buy.
My point is not that Apple is a monopoly. It is not. My point is that its behavior is inexcusable whether it is a monopoly or not.
The other point is that what the Apple mavens regret in Apple’s earlier failure against Microsoft is not what they criticize MS for. They criticize MS conduct. But what you hear between the lines is that the problem was not the behavior. The problem was, who was doing it. If Apple had won, and being doing the same thing and worse, they would have no problem with that.
You can see that because the current degree of lockin and censorship that Apple is practising is way over any of MS’s practices back then. But the Apple people applaud it. And in the OP on this thread, we had, and we have elsewhere in this topic, true Apple triumphalism.
There is a complete lack of moral compass. The practices are ones we as socially responsible people should abhor, and Apple’s version of them is worse, far worse, than MS’ version.
The MS dictatorship, if you can call it that, was far preferable for society and intellectual freedom and democratic liberal values to what an Apple dictatorship would be like.
They are monopoly an any goddam device and Operating System they own.
Users can not install Os X on the hardware of their choice. Buyers can not buy, download and install whatever app they want from whatever developer they want. Developers can not publish their apps using whatever channel they want, charging whatever money they want or even not charging at all. Developers can not publish at all apps if the apps aren’t approved by Steve’s dogs. And they can’t publish their apps if they threaten Steve’s dirty revenue model.
I hope something will reach the ears of EU Commissioner for Competition, Neelie Kroes who may severely punish Apple for anti competitive practices like the way she punished Microsoft before. Maybe Apple will get what they deserve: a nice fine and the obligation to remove the offending software locks.
That doesn’t even make sense. A monopoly is when a single vendor controls enough of a market that they effectively have control over its direction. Monopoly isn’t the word you want in this situation, it doesn’t apply. You could say that iTunes has a monopoly over the online music distribution market, and that would be true. Saying Apple has a monopoly on their own devices just doesn’t make any sense. I think you’re looking to say they were control freaks, and you’d be almost right… except, did you forget about OS X and the Macintosh? That is an operating system, and a whole line of devices that Apple produces, where they do not enforce much control. They do not control what you put on your Mac, though they do try to control where *you* can put OS X (a losing battle imho). I wouldn’t be surprised to see them try it in the future though, but for now OS X is pretty open. You can install whatever app you want, there is no central repository. The dev tools are free and you can write anything you want for it. Wonder how long that will last if the iPad actually takes off better than most predict?
What is the actual reality here? The actual reality is that Apple has only used their licensing framework to legally restrain a company set up to sell PCs with MacOSX installed. When Steve Job’s returned to Apple he killed the Mac clones because he clearly saw (rightly in my opinion) that the Apple business model was not the same model as the Microsoft model. Apple is a hardware manufacturer. It will do whatever it can to prevent the commercial cloning of its hardware.
Meanwhile a few minutes on Google and you can find many sites, forums and technical assets which makes it easy for an individual to load MacOSX on any hardware capable of supporting it. I have done exactly that by loading MacOSX on a Dell Mini 10 because I wanted a cheap small form factor laptop for a long trip I was planning. I used a very nice packaged piece of software which is openly available for download and which is specifically written to make installing MacOSX on a Dell mini 10 a breeze.
Apple have taken zero action against such sites. The only effect of Apple’s legal licensing framework’s on this activity by individuals loading MacOSX on non-Apple kit is to prevent it mutating into a business. I am sure the moment someone tried to charge for the software utilities used to load MacOSX then Apple would deploy their lawyers.
Based on their actual actions it seems as if Apple are only interested in stopping the commercial exploitation of their software to create commercial hardware competitors. That seems reasonable to me. What would Sony or Microsoft do, for example, if someone started to sell clones of the Xbox of PS3?
Again based on their actual actions it seems as if Apple are not interested in using legal restraints to prevent individuals from making what are essentially Mac clones. Apple retains a legal framework so they can act if any of these individuals get carried away and start to drift into commercial activity but they choose not to use it against individuals. As far as I know none of the web sites devoted to supporting individuals to make mac clones has received any legal threats from Apple.
So legal restraint of commercial exploitation of their software but a blind eye in relation to individuals and hobbyists.
It all seems fairly reasonable to me.
Because our IQ is low and our brain was struggling to understand some ideas and concepts but it couldn’t so it surrendered and now it trusts the government, the media and TV to do the thinking?
There’s been a couple of comments hinting at the educational status and where this will lead.I’m not from the USA so take my words with a pinch of salt.
From an educational point of view(tech wise), the Chinese are years ahead of what the US is doing (from what’s being planned in recent years)… processor design, own LINUX flavor etc. I’m not gonna get into the political debate or economics debate. A lot of US companies also rely on India for a source of software developers.
More focus is put on the bottom line – good. That is good. But these are not PC’s. You won’t be learning anything from these. At best your progress of learning will be sloooooooow.
My concern is where will we stand in 10-20 years.
This generation of developers are kids learning PC tech in the 90’s. They’re the ones working on win7, OS X, LINUX etc.
On another note : The same debate about usability vs power was and still is going on between GNOME and KDE.
Good times and I hope like in the above case, we will all benefit not a little, but a whole lot!
Thom, get a little bit creative, as a consuming device it’s perfect. Reading books and comics, watching TV shows, news, surfing the Web. And it’s much easier to carry around than a 1.5kg laptop.
That said, I would never ever buy an iPad, because my computer should be more than an interactive TV.
I’m waiting for good Android tablets. The Dell Mini 5 and the Notion Ink Adam are much more interesting than the iPad.
And Androids tablets are flooding the market soon and will be much cheaper than the iPad.
The iPad seems to my more iHype than anything than revolutionary.
With the current limitations, I could spend far less money and get a better experience with a Netbook that will be capable of WiFi, Java, webcam, Flash support, multi-tasking and expandability through USB Ports (and ability to add RAM to some).
At a later time, if I wanted a 3G Connect Card for my Netbook, there are plenty of plans & carriers that would GIVE me the card if I commit to a 1 or 2 year contract (carrier dependent).
With Apple & the iPad, I’d have to pay for the 3G H/W and still be locked into a 2-year 3G Plan with AT&T. It also looks like I’d be stuck with a device with no user-expandabilty options.
Yes, they’re touting this as a fantastic eBook Reader, buth there are plenty of readers s/w for exsisting Netbook platforms.
No thanks.
There is no required contract in the case of the iPad – you can pay as you go every month, if you want to.
I wish people would stop calling the iPad a new product category. Tablet PC’s have existed for years. The only difference is that they are now going multitouch!
That being said, what would anyone rather own? A iPad with a limited custom OS, or a Slate which runs Windows 7?
How about a tablet running something open like, oh I don’t know, Android? Why would I want Windows 7 on a tablet, an os that has no UI designs to take touch into account?
It is a new category. It’s the new “commercially viable” tablet category.
Well,
I design pages that uses non Latin scripts. All I can tell people who use non-latin scripts (or one of those supported like Russian, japanese, etc), “Do not waste your Money.”
The iPad browser does not even support script rendering available on some not so smart phones – that include the iPhone. save your money and buy an Android tablet later this year. Apple has got it into its head that the world revolves around it.
So I went to the Apple store this afternoon to mess around with one and I have to say I’m impressed. its really snappy and responsive. The screen is absolutely beautiful. My work colleague and i were both able to view everything on the device even when not directly in front of it. The blacks and colors were phenomenal, everything was crisp and vibrant. Apple wasn’t kidding with the screen, just that alone is worth the cash over the competition, imo. The device is fairly heavy, I know I wouldn’t want to hold it for too long in one hand, just int he short stint that I was holding it in the Apple store I could feel my arm getting a bit tired. I couldn’t make out the soudn in the store so I have no opinions there. The Youtube App was freaking incredible, they really took it to a whole new level, as was the photo, and video apps. The ipod app looks cool but is a bit cluttered (just like the desktop version) I prefer the cleaner one found in the iPhone/touch. I tried a couple of games and they load really fast, was very impressed.
I myself may not get one this gen because knowing Apple they will probably fix a couple of things next gen (weight being the biggest issue imo). I would have liked to see a USB port somewhere but considering the device is supposed to be “disconnected” from your computer (other than syncing and charging, huh)I can see the logic behind it. Besides that is what Bluetooth is for. lets hope 3rd party peripheral makers take advantage of it (if Apple lets them).
One thing I can point out is that my co-worker, never having used an iPad before took to it like fish to water. She was tapping swiping like a pro. She intuitively knew where things were and how to use them. She works in IT so that may not be a fair comparison to a regular consumer, but I was surprised nonetheless.