All those things are interesting little doodads. Useful? Not so much, and virtually nothing that wouldn't work just as well on an iPhone or iPad Touch, or one of the thousands of actual computers that are scattered throughout any given modern hospital.
No, that wasn't the point I was making. The point is that medical content for the iPad (or other PDA's) is rudimentary - perhaps valuable to someone like a medical student with a limited knowledge base and in need of what we call a "paper brain". The kind of stuff that a medical student would find useful because they're newbies. I can assure you that after your girlfriend has been in practice for a few years and has some experience, she'll put the Merck Manual away too, whether it's the paperback pocket version that medical students and residents have been carrying for 30 years, or the electronic version on her iPad.
The problem is that this "new-fangled iPad", cool as it is, just simply isn't useful in medicine. Yet.
Maybe it will be someday. That would be cool. But those of you who think some 15 year old just has to sit down and write an app for that....you don't even begin to grasp the complexity or expense involved in developing computing devices that would be day-to-day useful in patient care. I've seen this same song and dance over and over and over going back to the original Palm Pilots, and how pundits predicted how doctors would now have an entire hospital in the palm of their hand. Every single medical meeting has at least a couple of exhibitors with some new interface software. I was at a meeting two years ago. A fancy exhibit for a monitoring package that would wirelessly interface operating room monitoring functions with a Palm device (don't remember which one). It was VERY cool, and I lusted after it. It was $250,000 for the package. Hospital CFO just laughed when I proposed it after I got back.
So you're making post after post after post whining about the iPad because YOUR $250 K gadget wasn't accepted and the iPad is.
You can claim that it has no medical uses all you want - that doesn't make you right. Doctors are buying these things by the thousands. There are quite a few applications:
- Data entry
- Accessing reference works (drugs, drug interactions, diseases, etc). I'd rather have my doctor have immediate access to all this stuff than just going with what he thinks because he doesn't want to go back to his office
- Accessing patient records via VPN off the main, protected server
- AND WHATEVER ELSE THE DOCTOR THINKS HE CAN USE IT FOR
It's a tool. No one said it was going to revolutionize medicine. But anything that makes a doctor's life easier is a good thing. And real doctors think it's useful, so all your whining is nothing more than sour grapes.
What an idiotic statement about netbooks. It does EVERYTHING the giant iPod Touch doesn't. In other words, it's a computer. Not just a giant single-threaded overpriced joke. LOL at the Apple fanboys trying to pass their turd off as a computer.
LOL at people who have no clue what the iPad is. Try standing at a trade show talking with a customer holding a netbook in your hand and showing them a presentation. Now, try the same thing on an iPad. Try doing touch screen data entry for things like surveys on a netbook.
It is not supposed to do everything a netbook does. Apple learned years ago that making a device that does EVERYTHING is a sure route to failure. Rather, it does some tasks better than a netbook while eliminating those things that are unnecessary for its main purpose - content delivery.
Frugality is much more gratifying for me currently and I don't seek to be materialistic.
Why would I buy something that wouldn't make me happy?
No one ever said YOU should buy it. If you don't want to spend the money for ANY reason (frugality, not having money, being a luddite, whatever), that's your prerogative. I simply objected to your statement that it has NO use and that NO ONE would buy it.
The iPad IS supposed to be the answer to the netbook market but it fails at completing all the requires tasks.
It is small (9.7" which is SMALLER then my Macbook Mini at 10.1")
Has a decent screen resolution (imagine what could be with 2" more?)
Small keyboard that is usable ONLY because of the addition keys on different pages (my HP is 92% standard size. With 1" more you could fit a standard iMac keyboard)
Hell, Apple even has made accessories to make it more like a netbook. Keyboard docking station. 32 pin connector to USB port for adding photos.
But Apple has limped it's way into the market because of it's lack of being able to use more powerful apps that people WANT to use.
I couldn't even attempt to try and describe to you how the two operating systems could combine to create the best user experience ever. The only way that I could put it for you to understand is this: Simplicity like an iPhone, application prowess like a Mac.
If you can't imagine a perfect blend of what's best from both, I feel sorry for you.
The problem is that adding all those features takes away from its main purpose. Apple is masterful at distilling devices down to the bare essentials and weeding out functions that don't add to the results. The fact that they have a long string of very successful devices supports that.
You don't make a Ferrari a better performance car by adding 4 wheel drive, 20" mud and snow tires, off road capability, a back seat, and 5,000 pound towing capacity. Simply starting with a device and saying "I could make it better by adding this, and this, and this" indicates simply that you don't have a concept of the fact that every design feature has tradeoffs. I'll take Apple's understanding of that over yours any day.
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