So the iPad...

[pauljonze]

Dunno if it's already been posted but I'm getting pretty sick of the self-promoting pr*tt Fry all over the BBC and the Guardian waffling about how good it is - despite all the limitations he himself admits. How much help do Apple need to launch a giant iPhone anyway? The thing looks ridiculous enough without 'aficionado's' like Fry and the sycophantic BBC giving it publicity.

[pauljonze]

Has this one been sent already?

 

Adobe sounds off on iPad's Flash slap ? The Register

[richardp]

Ha ha Hitler not best pleased with Steve Jobs !!!

[flyinghaggis]

I know someone else posted a link to webpage with it on but it's so funny it deserves a direct link

 

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQnT0zp8Ya4&feature=player_embedded]YouTube- Hitler responds to the iPad[/ame]

[Arthur]

I completely agree with Fraser Speirs' comments regarding the iPad. This is a computer for people who want to get real work done and not have to deal with the additional complexity of "normal" computers. e.g. installing printer drivers, removing viruses, updating software or reinstalling the OS. Non-geeks don't want to have to deal with any of these things. They just want a computer that works. If you have ever worked on an average persons computer you will know this all too well.

 

Just like with the iPhone, the the first revision of the iPad is missing a few things (like an integrated SD Card slot - so you don't have to use a dongle for example). However, I'm sure the next revision will be a lot better.

 

For years we've all held to the belief that computing had to be made simpler for the 'average person'. I find it difficult to come to any conclusion other than that we have totally failed in this effort.

 

Secretly, I suspect, we technologists quite liked the idea that Normals would be dependent on us for our technological shamanism. Those incantations that only we can perform to heal their computers, those oracular proclamations that we make over the future and the blessings we bestow on purchasing choices.

 

Ask yourself this: in what other walk of life do grown adults depend on other people to help them buy something?

 

The tech industry will be in paroxysms of future shock for some time to come. Many will cling to their January-26th notions of what it takes to get "real work" done; cling to the idea that the computer-based part of it is the "real work".

 

It's not. The Real Work is not formatting the margins, installing the printer driver, uploading the document, finishing the PowerPoint slides, running the software update or reinstalling the OS.

 

The Real Work is teaching the child, healing the patient, selling the house, logging the road defects, fixing the car at the roadside, capturing the table's order, designing the house and organising the party.

 

Think of the millions of hours of human effort spent on preventing and recovering from the problems caused by completely open computer systems. Think of the lengths that people have gone to in order to acquire skills that are orthogonal to their core interests and their job, just so they can get their job done.

 

If the iPad and its successor devices free these people to focus on what they do best, it will dramatically change people's perceptions of computing from something to fear to something to engage enthusiastically with. I find it hard to believe that the loss of background processing isn't a price worth paying to have a computer that isn't frightening anymore.

[SYNACK]

Ask yourself this: in what other walk of life do grown adults depend on other people to help them buy something?

 

I know it is ridiculous, who reads reviews to help them pick out a car or talks to a mechanic to check its safety. Next they'll be saying that it would be a good idea to get a surveyer to look at a house before you buy it or to get a doctors advice before performing your own splenectamy. I just don't know what the world is comming to

 

The problem is that computers can do a vast amount of things, if you lock it down like that calling it a computer in the colloquial sense is misleading as it is not. It may contain one but its features are limited to a point it becomes something else. Perhaps even something 'more' to some people but so much less to others.

 

I am glad that it is out as now the other manufacturers, which have been waiting in part in case apple had something fantastic but also for Apple to use its brainwashed media to give tablets free advertising and also to let apple faithful carry the initial cost of pushing the components to volume manufacturing.

 

In time this will mean that places that build real computers (in the colloquial sense) will be free to release their products on the hype of the iWhatever using some of the supply chains paid for by Apples eairly adopters. This means more products cheaper as other producers can use Apples free (to Apple as well in most cases) advertising to push device awareness.

 

I want a Startrek PADD type device, it does not need lots of power but massive connectivity so that it can use all the resources of the local environment, wifi, bluetooth no matter which vendor produced them and I would also like it to be useful as a standalone device without a toll on every new feature. When someone releases that then I may get interested.

[ZeroHour]

LOL, so true:

http://www.nedhardy.com/wp-content/uploads/images/2010/january/ipad-nano.jpg

[torledo]

I completely agree with Fraser Speirs' comments regarding the iPad. This is a computer for people who want to get real work done and not have to deal with the additional complexity of "normal" computers. e.g. installing printer drivers, removing viruses, updating software or reinstalling the OS. Non-geeks don't want to have to deal with any of these things. They just want a computer that works. If you have ever worked on an average persons computer you will know this all too well.

 

That sort of reminds me of some comments i once read about how there'd be a big demand in the future where retiring baby boomers, who couldn't be arsed with the faff of assembling flat pack CD shelves and such like.....would pay for services which relieved them of these tedious, mundane - although frankly not difficult - tasks. The idea i think was that the retirees could presumably get on with more life affirming activities, and they had the money to pay for such services. And such services would be in demand where the opportunity hadn't really existed before.

 

I thought that sounded ridiculous although not necessarily inaccurate, just as much as i can't get my head around the idea of a Windows or OSX computer being too complicated for productive people.

People who use the things every day. although i know such people do exist in great quantity. And they don't so much multitask as use computers to read emails, compose a word document and browse the web. And increasingly they can do all three without leaving the browser, so for them the limitations of such a device aren't necessarily in it's choice of OS and software stack. So long as it has a browser, and a browser presumably that can handle Ajax type stuff.

 

Or am i missing something ?

[scgf]

It is Microsoft which has the bizarre idea that we need Windows on everything. They don't get the Apple paradigm of making things easier to use and using a sub-set of OS X to achieve that. The Windows they want on everything is of the full blown variety, hence we get the ridiculous start button concept on a mobile phone, and a media centre which is full-blown Windows with a few extras.

 

An end user has certain things they want to do on a connected device - they don't need all the extras a full OS would provide. After the iPad was announced I sat down and thought of all the things I do on my laptop - practically all of them would be covered by the iPad with fewer overheads and an instant-on OS. 10 hours (claimed) battery life too.

 

I know of several almost computer-illiterate people who have embraced the iPhone and are doing all sorts of things with it they couldn't hope to do on a PC (or Mac) unless someone carefully set things up for them.

 

What Apple do very, very well is that interface between human and machine. Why make it more difficult than it needs to be? We don't expect our washing machines or TVs to need so much setting up and maintaining as the average computer.

[Grommit]

Sounds like a womans sanitary device... LOL

[ZeroHour]

and a media centre which is full-blown Windows with a few extras.

Erm mac tv....

An end user has certain things they want to do on a connected device - they don't need all the extras a full OS would provide. After the iPad was announced I sat down and thought of all the things I do on my laptop - practically all of them would be covered by the iPad with fewer overheads and an instant-on OS. 10 hours (claimed) battery life too.

 

I know of several almost computer-illiterate people who have embraced the iPhone and are doing all sorts of things with it they couldn't hope to do on a PC (or Mac) unless someone carefully set things up for them.

 

What Apple do very, very well is that interface between human and machine. Why make it more difficult than it needs to be? We don't expect our washing machines or TVs to need so much setting up and maintaining as the average computer.

But this flys in the face of the huge amount of netbooks sold to people who want to do more then there smartphone can. You do want to do more then a mobile can do as people do find it limited.

BTW its not imo, a instant on OS, its just an OS in sleep just like the iphone. The iphone boot boot (3g) takes ages tbh to boot and its not turned off until you really power it down so its not instant on in the truest sense. And yes the iphone needs to be reboot every few days like all things otherwise it starts to get a little messy.

I dont doubt you can do plenty with the limited apps but I cant see why you would pay the same price to do less...

Yeh people want simplified but they generally see cut down as cut down.

[sidewinder]

Sounds like a womans sanitary device... LOL

 

I see you're going for the retro angle and bringing back last weeks joke

[gshaw]

Is it only me who gets filled with dread at the thought of having to use a flat onscreen keyboard for "proper" typing

 

Using a touchscreen of any type for text input usually brings out an agry madman in me that wants to punch whatever \ whoever is in close proximity for the next 15 minutes after using it... oddly enough after all the touchscreen only phones I seem to be seeing more and more with slide out keyboards now... is the fad over before it started?

 

To me it's a scaled up iPhone but with less features... had it been a funky OSX based netbook killer with a custom touch interface then maybe it could be revolutionary but as it stands it seems rather lame to me tbh

[localzuk]

It isn't designed for 'proper typing'. The typing is one input method. Speech is another, gestures etc... For the purpose it is designed, typing on a touchscreen should be fine.

[gshaw]

It isn't designed for 'proper typing'. The typing is one input method. Speech is another, gestures etc... For the purpose it is designed, typing on a touchscreen should be fine.

 

Speech recognition... no-one seems to cracked that one after more 10 years of trying

 

Some people are suggesting the iPad could be used for productivity apps, for me that suggests some length user input above and beyond iPhone levels? If it's not meant for that use, not particularly great for multimedia what exactly is it meant to do?

[Arthur]

Sounds like a womans sanitary device... LOL

What about ThinkPad?

[srochford]

Is it only me who gets filled with dread at the thought of having to use a flat onscreen keyboard for "proper" typing

 

 

I reckon that's just because you're an old fogey :-)

 

Every day I see people standing on the bus, quite happily typing on their iPhones etc so it's obviously possible to use a touch keyboard without too much difficulty.

 

Speech recognition works pretty well for me just using the stuff built into Office. It's not something I could ever see myself using in our shared office and probably not on the bus (although as people quite happily make phone calls I'd guess they'd equally happily dictate emails etc)

[scgf]

Erm mac tv....

 

Exactly!! I have Apple TV and it doesn't run a full version of OS X - it isn't meant to be used like a computer, it is set up to do a specific job. I have this unit and love it - I have a US account and rent the latest movies in HD for less than I could get them at Blockbuster and a darn site easier too.

[gshaw]

I reckon that's just because you're an old fogey :-)

 

Haha I knew it, past it at 23

I'll stick with my Touch Pro keyboard any day!