The Apple iPad launched today.

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cowsmanaut
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Re: The Apple iPad launched today.

Post by cowsmanaut »

Gambit, there are a very large number of websites for computer manufacturers and for artists, musicians, and even a few regular companies that use flash as a large part of their interface. Showing you images or to create a slightly more flashy interface. There is even intent of using flash as an interface option with bluray players... What I will grant you is that many of those sites which are flash rich, offer a plain HTML version of their site. So yes, you could surf just about anywhere, however without the experience and possibly even the same information or updates via these optional html versions. Trust me, I'm not going to sit here and make a claim I'm not certain of. I see these websites nearly every day. Just depends on what kind of web surfing you do.. I happen to stumble over a LOT of flash driven ones..

Sophia, I keep trying to make it very clear that the cost does not justify what you get... and I'm quite certain you're happy with your toy.. because most of the apps they're pushing on their store are games, and that's what they show trying to sell it.. games and gimics.. It's all about the window dressing. I've used and held the ipad.. as a person who has been tempted many times to get an Iphone I can tell you that there are many things that are cool about it, but the ipad again, doesn't do as much as the iphone, and certainly not as much as a notebook, and certainly not as much as a laptop and so on.. and yet costs more or the same as many of those. That is my biggest problem, and yet you keep pointing out that the ipad "can do that too".. great.. that was my point.. not yours. That a notebook of lesser price can do most everything the Ipad can do and many things that it can not... and when I say that it may get a little warm and please be reminded I'm talking low power mini notebooks not a laptop.. and when i say little warm.. i mean little. I've felt it after watching videos and music on youtube.. not sure where you're getting the 45c from.. but then I live in canada and anything that can warm my wife's hands I suppose would be good for her since she's constantly complaining about being cold ;)

As for claims of battery power life.. perhaps you didn't read clearly when I mentioned the mac book who claimed to have 10 hrs? thats Apple's claim.. not some other company. However when put under the real test it didn't come anywhere near that claim. That was 10 hrs reading text... :P My current laptop has the crappiest battery in the world. It last about 1 hr on the kind of crap I put it through (3D modeling in Maya and photoshop painting all at the same time :P while playing music in the background.. and a chat client) but the reality is, I'm never far from a plug. Just my life I guess. The next laptop i get will have a better battery I'm certain.. but I'm never going to find one for any device that will allow 10 hrs of what I'll intend to put it through.. no matter who makes it. So those other notebooks and laptops claiming 10 hrs are no different that apple in it's claims.. and since the ipad will never be able to do any of what the above mentioned anyway.. i suppose they need not worry about their 10 hr claim..

seriously.. I just hunted down for some kind of legitimate top 10 list of reasons to get an Ipad. To see if anyone had a true compelling argument. All I found was sarcasm talking about unicorn tears or why my grandma will love it. Then I found plenty of top 10 reasons not to get it, many of which are mentioned here... and quite honestly I'm not ready to fork over my paycheque for a device that will what.. let me read a PDF in bed for 10 hours.. from every angle.. because that matters... or watch 10 hrs of youtube.. loads my photos at blazing speed.. (woo...!) .Though.. you know.. My ipaq doesn't get hot...ever, lasts god knows how many hours, can run flash and thus watch videos on youtube, play games, read pdfs..in bed, even has a gps so I know where I am.. when I'm in bed :P and still costs less than the ipad :D

So the end result is, I've yet to see anything that states that the Ipad is actually worth it's cost.. which is my biggest problem. It's a big toy that has only so far shown it's true usefulness in very SPECIFIC circumstances.. which I will mention here.

1. Doctors are apparently looking it as a tool to replace their pen and paper folders. That quick transfer of xrays and files that they can quickly zoom in on and flip through with their patient rather than taking them to different rooms to show them on larg light tables etc. Use here is fantastic.. if only they had a more standard method for transfer than their ipod cables..

2. Teachers in classrooms with young kids will find the interactive aspect of such a device will make learning with it fun, unfortunately the price tag and the very limited cash flow to schools makes that highly unlikely. Perhaps there is educational pricing in the future?

3. Real estate agents can use this to quickly address their files and their clients with the photos and data they need just as the above mentioned doctor. However the typing interface on the ipad is not anything like a keyboard and as I mentioned before, you can't really set it down on a hard surface either as it shifts and slides. Which is something again the notebook, which also folds and protects the screen, offers via it's real
keyboard. Though Zillow looks as if it's exactly the kind of software he/she might want to use.. but as I'm not one of them.. hey.. i don't really know.

4. People who fear computers and want to learn on something easier. The touch interface is a bit easier to digest and so now grandma can call you late at night when she is trying to check her email not because she can't turn on the computer.. but because the web browser is still confusing.. but still no skype video calls..

Anyway, one bit of good news I just got today, was that the next version of the iphone OS (version 4 I think?) is going to be multitasking. Or so i was told. Anyway, if it was half the price, I would think a lot higher of it.. but the cost doesn't justify it at all... and I'm I guy who LOVES toys. I have my Ipaq, DS, PSP, PS3, there are no less than 4 computers in this house, and a variety of odds and ends like plasma balls, and music mixers and mp3 players etc.. there are portable HD's all over the place.. Apple makes cool toys but their price and attitude always turns me off..

Tomi, I've edited your post to clean it up a bit but retain the meaning intended, please watch your language as per the rules of the general section. Nothing wrong with a debate, but just keep it clean please.
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Trantor
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Re: The Apple iPad launched today.

Post by Trantor »

I think many people have a misconception what an iPad actually is. It is not a PC. It is something new with a new target audience. If you want to play the newest games and have something you can use to write programs, burn CDs or whatever, buy a full-fledged computer, not an iPad. I mean, if you want to cook food, it's not like you say "this toaster is crap because I can't cook potatoes with it". It's not the toaster's fault that you are actually looking for a stove.

About the whole value/cost thing: This is always hugely subjective. Things are always worth what people are willing to pay for it and be happy with it. Is a Mauritius stamp really worth a million dollars when it is just a piece of paper? Yes it is, as long as people buying it are happy. The same goes for the iPad.
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beowuuf
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Re: The Apple iPad launched today.

Post by beowuuf »

The day an artist tries to tell someone else that the intangible love they have for something is wrong is the day I worry. Really, I'm not quite sure what this continued discussion is all about. Some poeple are happy wityh the iPad as a device, because it fills a niche that everyone was cynical about and didn't think existed. There's a tipping point where expectation and functionality and need go one way or the other. Great. Apple have also pitched their device higher than they should in price. Apparently, that's still not enough to move it away from the marmite tipping point of loving it or loathing it. Whether its smoke and mirrors, or an inciteful idea seems to be subjective, so again, not sure why a definitve answer is being rammed down people's throats here. The iPad is not for everyone, but apparently the negatives and positives do go one way or the other for people. Just liek many, many things people argue about on the net. I'm not quite sure why blasting people for likeing it is constructive right now. Surely the point is to wait six months or even a year, and then see a) do people still like it, b) has apple released a next generation with more features, and c) if the price has come down.

I'm also not sure what telling people 'they're wrong' is supposed to achive. They sell their iiPad and buy a netbook. They lose money from selling the device most likely, th4en have something they obviously won't like as much, functionality debate aside. Or they keep their device, but admit they are wrong for liking it. So they get to feel misterable and wrong about a device that was actually making doing alot of comupter stuff effortless or enjoyable. Yeah, more low grade misery in the world either way for no real reason.

Anyway, I'm moving this into the informal section, because it's gone from 'discuss cool news' to 'you are wrong', and that can't be good. There are many 'why you might like this' and 'why you should not like this' posts from prominent people. Peole You should be able to navigate the thoughts, base them on the personalities saying them, and hopefully figure out of the iPad is for them or not. That is cool.

I also don't mind further 'i like it because' or 'i dislike it because' posts, because that is also helpful, especially when considering such an expensive yet well publicised device people might still be considering. But I swear to god I'm lockign this damn thread if I see another 'you are wrong' style from any side. I thoguht the forum was better than this on topics as shallow as this :(

Anyway, I think Trantor said it all very elegantly, so let's stick his post back at the end here where it belongs.
Trantor wrote:I think many people have a misconception what an iPad actually is. It is not a PC. It is something new with a new target audience. If you want to play the newest games and have something you can use to write programs, burn CDs or whatever, buy a full-fledged computer, not an iPad. I mean, if you want to cook food, it's not like you say "this toaster is crap because I can't cook potatoes with it". It's not the toaster's fault that you are actually looking for a stove.

About the whole value/cost thing: This is always hugely subjective. Things are always worth what people are willing to pay for it and be happy with it. Is a Mauritius stamp really worth a million dollars when it is just a piece of paper? Yes it is, as long as people buying it are happy. The same goes for the iPad.
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cowsmanaut
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Re: The Apple iPad launched today.

Post by cowsmanaut »

whatever.. no one seems capable of even understanding what I'm trying to point out despite the fact it's simple..

the Ipad costs fro 2-3.5 times what it costs to manufacture(depending on version). Rushing out to buy it perpetuates that behavior from companies. THAT is wrong. If you can tell me that it's right Beo.. be my guest..

assertions that an ability to turn your screen and a MINOR heat issue justifies it's 3X price tag with less than half the rest of it just pisses me off. Because that is what companies listen for.. I can omit more than half the abilities if I make it look cool and then I can charge a lot more for it. Let's add a guide laser to this can opener and charge $80.. Those choices by the rest of you consumers out there change how those prices reflect for ME.

period.. end of story.. I will now return to my cave and grumble more. That's the last I'm saying on the topic and I'll not bother reading anymore on it either. Done..
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beowuuf
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Re: The Apple iPad launched today.

Post by beowuuf »

Anyone else still reading this thread, please feel free to start a new topic about whether we think companies producing various branded hardware (apple, Sony with thigns liek the Playstation and the cash n of constantly changing PSPs, and Microsoft with the XBox) are being unfair with their pricing, release schedules, upgrade schedules, and build quality.

It might be an interesting discussion.
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T0Mi
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Re: The Apple iPad launched today.

Post by T0Mi »

Hey! The date at the court went well. I've been drunk and feeling ok, which happens seldomly enough.
Sorry if my trying to give this thread direction toward the coder/geek/user evolution funny thing looked like arguing.

Today a friend of mine opened his game shop (it's called "ZOC", which is short for "Zocken", slang for "gambling" or "gaming". http://www.zoc-world.de/ )
They have a lounge where you can hang out, have soft drinks, surf the net, play Wii or any nostalgic console ranging from gameboy to SMD, N64, whatever. Guess what they got for the surf and vid watch job. Of course: ipads. So I got my hands on one to have my way with it. It's good. I can't think of any device more suited for exactly that task. And even if I would, I won't tell my buddy: "hurr, I got a Precision M6400 quad with 1TB HD off ebay for 700 bucks, your Iphuks are like calculators compared to a Cray."

Sure they are overprized for the mere specs they got. So are mercs. Or Macromedia Flash.
If everyone would follow the spec vs. cost logic, noone would ever buy a porsche or merc. They would all go for Skoda or VW.

No idea, why everyone is so touchy all of a sudden. Humans are strange. Why would someone edit cuss words and then use the same ones in the very same thread. You must have some hard RL times right now, cows. Welcome to the club. At some point getting pissed on feels like natural summer rain. It's all nice and warm.
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Re: The Apple iPad launched today.

Post by Sophia »

There is almost no "objective reality" when it comes to this kind of thing. I don't think it's possible to just flat-out say "the cost does not justify what you get" because the whole idea of "what you get" is so different depending on the person and their goals and what they want to get out of it. Sure, looking at a specs sheet, the iPad will probably come up short on the raw numbers of gigahertz and gigabytes, but that's what we have to realize: that is from the standpoint of a person who looks at the spec sheet and uses that as the metric. That's not all there is out there. To some people, sure, the specs are king, and they'll trivialize a lot of user experience aspects. So be it. That's their opinion and they have the right to think that. However, it is only that-- an opinion. It is not an objective standard of what is better and what is not. I could trivialize things like the inclusion of a camera, because I honestly don't care at all. The problem is, that's just my view, and there are others who would disagree quite heartily with me.

I'm not going to give a "top 10 reasons to get an iPad," (at least not without a paycheck from Apple's marketing department) I don't think such a universal decree of is of much value, anyway. I will instead give a "top 10 reasons I got an iPad and not a netbook," though. These are my reasons. These are where the value was, for me, whatever the spec sheet says. For anyone else, your mileage may vary, but that doesn't make me wrong. It just means we disagree on where the value is.

10. Apple branding
Fine, this is the most ephemeral and the easiest to criticize. But their stuff has never disappointed me in 10 years, which is more than I can say for HP, Dell, Acer, or Microsoft. It's also #10, I've got 9 better reasons.

9. Tiny form factor
I really like the form factor. If it was twice as thick and twice as heavy, I couldn't use it one-handed, balance it on a corner on my body, or prop it up like I do now. This may not matter that much to some, but it matters a lot to me. I like to write, but I could never get comfortable doing it on a laptop, but with the iPad, I just prop it up, put my keyboard wherever, and go. Yes, the keyboard costs extra, but I wouldn't want to type on a tiny netbook keyboard anyway, and so I would have to buy an external keyboard anyway.

8. Heat and noise
This may or may not concern some people. All I can say is that the heat level of almost every portable notebook/netbook computer I've used-- not that I've used many, I kind of gave up on the damn things-- has disappointed me, and the ones that didn't, got rid of that heat with a fan that made enough noise I almost wished for the heat back.

7. Battery life
The ultra-low-power-consumption CPU of the iPad is a weakness, but the strength of this CPU is that it doesn't really kick into overdrive and start burning tons of battery if it gets busy, because there really isn't such a mode. 10 hours is 10 hours is 10 hours. Maybe 9.5 hours if you're playing tons of games. But, the point here is, it's not like a laptop-- yes, even a macbook-- that burns itself down really fast when it starts getting busy, and your 10 hour battery gets chomped down to 3.

6. Video
It looks so good on the iPad's nice big screen and it never lags or gets choppy like when a typical netbook tries to play large, high quality video and ends up chugging along barely able to keep up.

5. Apps
Everything for the iPhone and the iPod Touch runs on the iPad (albeit in a slightly ugly double zoom) along with a whole bunch of applications available just for it. There are tons of free apps too, and honestly, I've actually bought very little because I've found almost everything I want to do available in a free app. The lack of Flash on the iPad, while somewhat of an issue, I will concede, isn't nearly as negative an impact as it might first seem because a lot of the major Flash websites have lovely iPad apps that do everything-- and more-- their flash versions did. They usually do it faster and more responsively (see #1) too.

4. Motion sensor
Being able to rotate the device and have it react seems so silly and minor but it is so useful to me to be able to view documents and more text-oriented websites in portrait mode, and then flip it around to view graphics and videos in landscape mode. Applications will reorient themselves and resize elements, too, which is honestly a whole lot nicer on a touchscreen device like that than trying to use some sort of window manager.

3. IPS panel
The TN panel used in most laptops and netbooks is not as good quality as the IPS panel used in the iPad. For once, this isn't a subjective impression of values: it just plain isn't as sharp, colorful, or have the viewable angles. I'm a big fan of the iPad's display. Amusingly (or perhaps appropriately) enough, one of the few laptops to have an IPS panel is Apple's own macbook.

2. Touch screen
I dislike trackpads. I like being able to touch the screen and have it react. If you want a true tablet, with a touchscreen-- and I emphatically do-- rather than a netbook with a trackpad, your options are more limited, and the price of many of those options makes the iPad's somewhat high price tag more attractive.

1. Overall user experience
Fine, this is probably the most vague of all. It's also what really did it for me. I don't care how many times faster the processor in a notebook or netbook is, they just feel slow. You've got to sit there and wait for it to boot (or use up your battery even faster in standby mode), applications take time to load up, and so on. Things just pop up and are ready to go on the iPad, because it's not trying to run Windows or OSX or Linux or some other desktop OS. It has its own little OS, optimized, ready to go. Sure, there are limitations, but it also has some pretty good implementations of VNC, which means that anything I really really need my computer for, I can probably do anyway.
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Re: The Apple iPad launched today.

Post by Beastman666 »

Too expensive.
Too small for your desktop.
Too large for your handbag.
Too reflective a surface, especially when used outdoors.
Too fast overheating.
Too bad I can't warm up with that thing and
Too bad I don't even know why.
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Re: The Apple iPad launched today.

Post by Gambit37 »

@Sophia. Very cool explanations. Of course, you can't be "wrong" about opinios or your decision making process so thanks for taking the time to go into more detail.

I also didn't realise that all Apple stuff uses IPS displays. I thought they were TN with a glass plate over the top to make them look more expensive. That does explain a bit more the high cost of Apple stuff!

For those who don't know, IPS displays are the highest quality and most expensive flat panel displays which the best clarity and colour reproduction. Most other manufacturers of pre-built systems use the much cheaper TN displays, which have a much lower colour gamut and tend to suffer more with back-light bleed issues, as well as being less good at producing pure whites and deep blacks. If you're serious about your screen (ie, you do graphics work, etc) you'll insist on an IPS display. TN just doesn't cut it for serious graphic work, in particular many TN displays suffer from colour graduation from top to bottom. For example, if you display a solid red all over the screen, it will be slightly darker and murkier at the top than the bottom. IPS does not have this problem.

There is an intermediate display type called VA too which is much better than TN but not as good as IPS -- this is what I bought recently for my new main monitor as the IPS equivalent was double the price.
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Re: The Apple iPad launched today.

Post by Gambit37 »

Funny reading back over this thread three years later, considering how ground-breaking the iPad turned out to be - and it's effective creation of the new tablet marketplace!
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Re: The Apple iPad launched today.

Post by Gambit37 »

5 years now since the iPad was released.... boy, did some of us get it wrong in this thread...! :D :D
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Re: The Apple iPad launched today.

Post by cowsmanaut »

Thing that bugs me, is that there are devs who produce apps exclusively for the ios market and don't seem to understand their expected user base is more likely to be on android.. Android has the larger slice of the market both in phones and now in tablets too.. Though a quick visit to the mac forums and you see people inventing pie charts that suggest the opposite, that Macs hold close to 90% of everything :P Where as the non biased review sites paint a very different picture. So with that kind of misinformation going around.. it's likely they don't realize. For autodesk, they did this with a sculpting app.. and their forum was filled quickly with ire from the large number of their user base whining in emails and threads about how they aren't included.. it was a big slap in the face.

With that said, I think for software devs for mobile devices, it's probably more likely for them to make money anywhere but the android market.. at least from my personal experience. with 10000 downloads and 4 out of 5 stars I made enough to buy coffee..
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Re: The Apple iPad launched today.

Post by Gambit37 »

Yep, the basic problem with Android is that a much smaller percent of its users actually buy apps. There may be fewer iOS customers but relatively they spend much more.
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