iPad
Stopped by Best Buy the other day for some office supplies. Had a opportunity to play with the iPad. It was slick. Fast, pretty, easy to handle. I was impressed. I’ll probably never buy one because it is 1) made by Apple and 2) while it’s neat, I have other things that are cheaper that do everything it does and more. But it looks like Google is getting into the tablet game. Seems like it would be a good product to release Chrome OS on. But, no, they’re releasing it with Android. So, like the iPad, it will be a big smart phone that is too awkward to use as a phone.
And another company looks to hit the tablet market.
April 13th, 2010 at 9:35 am
I would love a cheap, sharp, USB tethered tablet to bring on shoots (cameras, that is).
Show clients right away; check my work. Use it as a portfolio–
I wonder if they’ll ever have a little bluetooth keyboard for thumb typing (like I’m doing now)?
April 13th, 2010 at 10:05 am
Blasphemer! The iPad is the greatest thing since the Newton!
April 13th, 2010 at 11:30 am
It looks like HP’s tablet will blow them all away. Instead of a phone OS, it will have a real OS (Windows 7) right out of the box, plus USB ports, etc. (although if I did get one, I’d probably put Ubuntu Linux’s netbook remix on it).
Why buy an oversized iPod Touch when you can have true multi-tasking and full applications in a similar package?
April 13th, 2010 at 12:01 pm
Moses had tablets, look what good it did the Israelites – they still wandered lost in the desert. The Ipad is the greatest thing since the Lisa.
April 13th, 2010 at 12:36 pm
Jake–if it is fast, WANT. Do you know when?
April 13th, 2010 at 2:16 pm
AFIK they haven’t given a release date yet. I would expect it to come out in the next few months, and I’d be very surprised if it wasn’t out in time for Christmas shoping.
April 13th, 2010 at 2:18 pm
Johnny: The iPad supports bluetooth keyboards in general. So, sure, it should support the tiny ones, though you’d have to rig up your own attachment or support somehow if you wanted to hold the device and thumb type at the same time.
And Apple has a Camera Kit for it that supports SD and USB (not sure if it does “live” tethering, though).
Jake: Ten hour battery life, real world. That’s why. Turns out, you see, that most people, especially non-computer-geek people, don’t give a damn about “true multitasking” or “full applications” for a network appliance.
If you stop thinking of it as a laptop replacement, you’ll stop being confused about it. Because it’s not one, isn’t intended as one, and isn’t marketed as one.
Much like one should not confuse a pickup truck with a roadster with a passenger van.
(Hell, I’m a computer geek, and I don’t care about multitasking very much, for an appliance. The service-based pseudo-multitasking in iPhone OS 4 will more than suffice, without killing available ram.
If I want to multitask For Reals and pretend I’m doing Office Work, or make some builds, I’ll use my i7 desktop, not an internet/media appliance tablet.)
April 13th, 2010 at 4:35 pm
Sigivald: So, what is a “network appliance” supposed to be and do, anyway?
Given it’s size and cost, I think most people would expect it to at least approach the capabilities of a netbook. Right now, it doesn’t even have flash, which makes a lot of websites that might be perfect for it unusable. I’ve played with it in the store, and it really struck me as just an iPod with a bigger screen.
April 13th, 2010 at 6:34 pm
Speaking as someone who is a part-time geek and very interested in an iPad-like device, I can honestly say I am quite interested in multitasking, and the ability to plug things directly into it without having to pay through the nose for yet another Apple-branded hunk of plastic, and that I can tinker around with without violating some stupid EULA and potentially/probably breaking the law in the process.
Especially at that price.
For a lot of people, though, the iPad is exactly what they are looking for, and more power to them for it. For a lot of other people, they want a little more for their $500, and I can hardly blame them.
And, for those of us in the latter category, I am very happy that HP is working on their own incarnation ,and I was happy that Google was as well, until it came out recently that they will probably be using Android as its OS.
April 13th, 2010 at 6:52 pm
Just curious why you won’t buy an Apple product. Do you really enjoy the blue screens of death, incessant spyware and virus problems, system crashes, cruddy performance, and general painintheassedness that Windows products all but uniformly offer?
Never owned a single Apple product until about 8 months back, when I got an iMac and an iPhone for work.
Non tech stupid user opinion–they really are just better. Like…in every way. My iMac has crashed ONCE since I turned it on. My Dell XP machine crashes once a day. There’s just no comparison. I hate to admit that any sort of marketing schpiel has merits…but those cutesy little ads with the geeky guy and Justin Long are pretty much on the money.
April 13th, 2010 at 7:16 pm
I like my crap compatible with my other crap. And I don’t like a computer telling me i can’t do something. And their bizarro closed source thing is a nuisance.
April 14th, 2010 at 12:16 am
+1, +1, and +1.
Linux is stable, extremely flexible, and it works with all my hardware just as well as Winblows – except, of course, for my iPod. I have to shut down and reboot into Windows to do anything with that.
I only have an iPod at all because, when I got my first MP3 player, iTunes was the only way to legally get songs without having to buy and rip the whole CD, and – being an honest person – I wanted to pay for the music I was getting rather than steal it (a concept so many people just don’t seem to get) – so a large portion of my music would only work with an iPod. Then, of course, by the time I was ready to upgrade to a player with more memory, it was more of the same. I was locked into Apple because of the whole DRM scheme.
Don’t get me wrong. The iPod was probably the best music player out there when I first got one, and it probably still is the best music player you can get, but the tightly closed and extremely restrictive nature of it can be very irritating – and Apple seems to have a tendency to do that with all their products. So I try to stay away from Apple products.
April 14th, 2010 at 12:53 am
??
Windows is full of examples of incompatibility, and quirky “you’ll do it my way or the highway” requirements.
You’ll find that on any platform (you might notice it a little less on the monopolistic platform that dominates the market, but it’s there).