Yipeeeeee - it's arrived

[Tony_Mc]

I bought an iPad a couple of weeks ago and have used it a lot since, watching movies on the train, writing mails at home and using it as a touch screen hifi thing in my B&W Zeppelin....

 

I have had SO much grief from friends and family, I have been called names and the like and for the life of me I cannot work it out....

 

I bought something I could afford and wanted to give a go and all I seem to get is abuse..

 

can someone explain why this is?

 

are kittens and puppies ground down to powder to make them?

 

What did I do wrong!?

[pauljonze]

Try standing in front of the mirror whilst holding it (the iPad!) and take a long look at yourself. If you still feel the same then don't worry and just carry on...

[Tyiell]

are kittens and puppies ground down to powder to make them?

 

They are now!! They used bunny rabbits at first, but after they made them extinct throughout Northern America they had to move onto kittens and puppies!!

 

Seriously though, I don't have a problem with them as such I just don't personally see the attraction. Or the point - I mean it's not like asimilar (and some would say better) product wouldn't do the same thing right? My point was people seem to buy them because they are apple and "pretty", not because they are useful. I'm sure there are exceptions to that, and at the end of the day: each to their own!!

[Pete10141748]

I openly admit I took the following from a mate of mine's blog detailling how he has been using his iPad. It was the first thing I read about the iPad that didn't leave me feeling indifferent or thinking "meh, it's cool but doesn't do anything new" :

 

You wake up, your iPad is sounding an alarm, you slide and it tells you it’s 8am, open up the menu and the weather for today pops up letting you know it’s sunshine for the next 7 days. You grab your iPad from it’s dock next to your bed and carry it to the bathroom and pop it in the dock there, you open up some music and do your daily business, shower brush teeth etc. you grab a towel, dry your hands and go back to the bedroom with iPad in hand still playing music, you dock it while you get dry and dressed, it blaring music through your 3rd party dock speakers. You tie your shoes, grab your iPad and head down stairs. Poor some cereal and switch to the BBC news app, reading the days going ons while you eat. you finish slam bowl in sink and head to the car. in there you connect it to the radio via an FM device and your music plays through the car stereo. Get to work, transfer the work you saved to it the night before and all those other files you’ve got for the day. While at work, it keeps your email updated on your person even when away from your desk. Work finishes, head home with iPad once again playing your music in your own car. Straight in the door, you head to the kitchen poping the iPad on a dock and bring up the Jamie Oliver app; now it’s a recipe book, showing you how to cook something nice for you and your other half. You switch to iTunes while you eat and do the dishes. Off to the front room, you plug in the TV adapter, now your iPad is streaming a locally-saved movie to your HD screen. You take your iPad upstairs, turn the light out and read some comics while the wife sleeps (and the iPad is GLORIOUS to read comics on). Switch to the alarm app again and pop it in it’s dock, ready for tomorrow tio do it all again.

 

So for all those haters, just think, think for five minutes of the possibilities, they are truly endless. How you could integrate this into your life, it all depends on how and what you want to do with it, how much you would use it. Thus, I think anyone buying one is well justified and it’s a cool £429 well spent. Well spent indeed.

 

The key thing for me is, yes, all of these things can be done at the moment by something. But this is one piece of tech, not several.

 

He also found a very cool blogging app that makes the iPad look exactly like a datapad from Star Trek

Edited June 14, 2010 by Pete10141748

[ovek]

Jealousy

 

Just point them to this picture...

 

http://easyaspi.us/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/haters.gif

[jamesb]

Evangelism is the main reason I get annoyed. I have the same reaction to Jehovah's Witnesses. Plus there's nothing actually new.

 

That blog entry for example - this would cover my day more accurately.

You wake up, your Nokia is sounding an alarm, you slide and it tells you it’s 8am, open up the menu and the weather for today pops up letting you know it’s sunshine today. You grab your phone from it’s charger next to your bed and carry it to the bathroom, you open up some podcast and do your daily business, shower brush teeth etc. you grab a towel, dry your hands and go back to the bedroom with phone in hand still playing Red Panda, you put it down while you get dry and dressed, it playing audio through it's own fairly powerful speaker. You tie your shoes, grab your phone and head down stairs. Poor some cereal and open the ebook app to catch up on the novel you're reading while you eat. you finish slam bowl in sink and head to the car. in there you switch it to FM transmitter function and listen to your show on the car radio. While at work, it keeps your email updated on your person even when away from your desk. Work finishes, head home with phone once again playing your music in your own car. Straight in the door, you head to the kitchen and cook something nice, possibly from a recipe book or experimenting on a whim. You switch to Spotify while you eat and do the dishes. You take your phone upstairs, turn the light out and play a quick game before bed (and there are some lovely games). Leave the phone charging, since you don't need to switch apps for them to function, and prepare for the same tomorrow. Except that tomorrow's a cycling day so you quickly load up SportsTracker and set up a workout when you cycle in.

 

So for all those haters, just think, think for five minutes of the possibilities, they are truly endless. How you could integrate this into your life, it all depends on how and what you want to do with it, how much you would use it. Thus, I think anyone buying one is well justified and it’s a cool £0 well spent with a cheap 12-month contract. Well spent indeed.

 

So what exactly makes the iPad so much better that I have to accept praise of it without questioning?If people stop trying to convince me that it's so much better than everything else out there, I won't argue with their point of view.

[PhillipHamlyn]

One of the things which puzzles me about the i-series devices is why they are so popular with the same groups of people who champion open-source and lower cost computing. I understand that they are very desirable consumer products and enjoy playing with mine (iPod Touch), they also do bring together a synthesis of features (such as solid state, always on - always a bugbear for mechanical based computers with HDDs). In balance though, the purchasers are buying into an ethos of manageed, closed, computing rather than the open general purpose computing platforms that industrialisation and competition has driven operating platforms to achieve in the last 20 years.

 

Examples; on an i-series device you can only install applictions which have been approved by Apple and are for sale through their proprietary app store. Those applications must have been written in Objective C on a macintosh operating system. There are license restrictions placed on developers of such applications which abritrarily limit the technology (and innovation) they are permitted to deploy, and even the development tools they are permitted to use. (see Apple lifts iPhone code ban (for chosen few) ? The Register for a biased view of the current situation summary). Interpreted code is banned (flash, silverlight, .net, java).

 

I personally can't imagine Unix/Windows/Linux gaining any headway at all with such restrictions placed on developers and purchasers; and for this reason I conjecture that these restrictions won't last very long because consumers will start demanding innovation, and the expectations that competition will drive costs down and choice up. Without support for established industry technologies these will remain consumer oriented devices, not business oriented devices.

 

Possibly this is the root of the gulf between i-series fans and haters - the i-series fans don't really care that their device is not the equivalent of a general purpose computer, whereas other people wish Apple had made it even better by making it a general purpose computer.

 

(All opinions are my personal view, and do not represent the views or policies of Capita).

 

Phillip Hamlyn

[pritchardavid]

Gots my one now, got it yesterday