Excitement about iPad: A Large Screen Multi-Touch Platform

[-=XX=-Nephilim]

OMG I am so excited about iPad!!!

- no I can't multitask
- no I can't do video conferencing due to lack of camera
- no I can't install anything I want on it
- no I can't browse the net properly due to lack of Flash
- no I don't have USB port on it

But I am excited!!!

Well at least until I do reality check and see other Tablet devices from competing manufactures...

 

[SandynJosh]

The tablets running Windows 7 will also have an OS that in no way was designed to run on a tablet, which would be the same if Apple chose to use OS X. While these tablets might be more powerful in the sense that they do have a desktop OS, they do not solve the problem that the iPad is trying to solve, which is providing an experience that relieves the user of dealing with common PC (or Mac OS) issues while still providing essential functionality.

iPhone OS is the premiere touch-based mobile OS in the world. I don't know how anyone expected Apple to use anything else on the iPad.

Absolutely correct, AND the iPad buyers are often already familiar with the Touch OSX due to owning an iPhone or iPod touch, so Apple starts off with a potential user base in the 10s of millions, with over 140,000 applications, many of which the user already owns. All that is backed up by a gazillion developers that are familiar with the SDK, and who are assured a wide instant market.

The vast library of products on the Microsoft platform are not optimized for touch and few likely ever will be as the MS tablet market is virtually non-existent at present.

 

[Velin]

What a baloney PR piece. Much has been written about the iPad?

It sure has MacRumors -- why don't you at least mention the thousands of posts, in your own forums, where people are panning the touchtoy. How about some of the funny pictures?

 

[SandynJosh]

OMG I am so excited about iPad!!!

- no I can't multitask

So, get yourself a long extension cord for your mulitasking brand X tablet

- no I can't do video conferencing due to lack of camera

Have you EVER done one minute of video conferencing in your whole life? I thought not.

- no I can't install anything I want on it

Yeah the brand X tablet will allow you to install anything you want. One tiny little problem, there's practically nothing optimized for a touch screen.

- no I can't browse the net properly due to lack of Flash

Boo Hoo! Cry me a river. It hasn't bothered 10s of millions of iPhone or iPod touch users.

- no I don't have USB port on it

Gasp! Nor does it have a serial or parallel port, a floppy drive, or a modem port!! However if you want to plug it into a USB port, there's a cord for that.

But I am excited!!!

Well at least until I do reality check and see other Tablet devices from competing manufactures...

I hope you get a brand X tablet, you deserve each other.

 

[admanimal]

What a baloney PR piece. Much has been written about the iPad?

It sure has MacRumors -- why don't you at least mention the thousands of posts, in your own forums, where people are panning the touchtoy. How about some of the funny pictures?

 

[googolplex]

What a baloney PR piece. Much has been written about the iPad?

It sure has MacRumors -- why don't you at least mention the thousands of posts, in your own forums, where people are panning the touchtoy. How about some of the funny pictures?

I am devastated by the sheer amazing depth of your humour.

How about a MaxiPad joke? You got one of those?

Everyone is getting way out of control with the iPad bashing. Sure it could be improved, but I fail to understand the vitriol displayed by many people online. Why are people so angry? Why all the name-calling?

 

[W1LLk]

3 Words...

iPad.
Harmony.
Remote.


All I think you'd need is either a method of interpreting the signals via wifi, or even a 30 pin IR dongle, since the iPad automatically reorientates.

 

[Mackan]

I couldn't agree more. I hated the iPad on the first day, but I have since realized its huge potential.

Ingenious 3rd party apps will save the device and make the iPad a big success despite of many annoyances -- i.e. lack of multi-tasking, flash, USB, camera, etc.

I can see it all now. 140,000 fart apps will be rewritten for the iPad, now with even bigger butt pictures.

No, seriously. As long as Apple is in control what you can do with the device, what other devices it will work with (hint, only other Apple devices), what you can install, everything, I can't see a huge potential. Just a scary future, where everything becomes more and more controlled, to give the one and only experience - ' The Apple Experience'.

Someone should take the opportunity to ask Steve Jobs: 'Why can't you change homescreen wallpaper on the iPhone'. Steve; 'Because I say so, now obey, buy another iPhone next year, and shut the **** up'.

 

[bossxii]

I'll have 2 on pre-order when it's available! Whatever I can do on my 3.5" iPhone will be that much better on a 10" screen. The OS will evolve and truly "there is an app for that!" applies now more than ever.

- Flash, which I love Hulu. I don't miss it for my general browsing. I don't want it to kill the battery or the performance of the browser so no lost love here. Flash is being replaced slowly but surely. MS builds Silverlight, Firefox mobile drops Flash for "performance" reasons. Youtube rolls out it's site as HTML 5. Apple avoids trashing the browsing experience (and the battery) by excluding flash.

- Camera, don't really have a need. As someone stated no one video chats as much as they want to believe.

- Mutitasking, I'll keep hope alive this shows up via OS 4.0 on on the iPad.

Software dev's seem to be on board to develop and use the larger screen for all sorts of innovative apps. If the software dev's believe it the iPad, I sure as heck do.

 

[admanimal]

No, seriously. As long as Apple is in control what you can do with the device, what other devices it will work with (hint, only other Apple devices), what you can install, everything, I can't see a huge potential.

This seems like a silly statement given the success of the iPhone and iPod Touch with the exact same limitations.

 

[Marx55]

Just bring PowerPoint to the iPad! Ideally the full Microsoft Office in the iPad.

 

[bossxii]

I can see it all now. 140,000 fart apps will be rewritten for the iPad, now with even bigger butt pictures.

No, seriously. As long as Apple is in control what you can do with the device, what other devices it will work with (hint, only other Apple devices), what you can install, everything, I can't see a huge potential. Just a scary future, where everything becomes more and more controlled, to give the one and only experience - ' The Apple Experience'.

Someone should take the opportunity to ask Steve Jobs: 'Why can't you change homescreen wallpaper on the iPhone'. Steve; 'Because I say so, now obey, buy another iPhone next year, and shut the **** up'.

Everyone wants open platform and free crap until they realize no serious developers will waste their time putting out quality software when they know the kids will just hack their app, and give it away for free. Someone has to "control" the OS so you don't' end up as the Nexus One does within 48 hours... oops an app that steals bank information from people. The fact is open sounds great to people until they realize they have no idea what could harm their device, or their personal information. Teenagers just see FREE, because they don't have the funds otherwise.

I understand why the iPhone OS and Apple close off their system and control it. This is why the iPhone is such a good user experience. I don't have time to monitor every app to make sure it's not a virus, trojan or malware.

Sure kids love Skype and VoiP because they don't care if AT&T or Verizon, Sprint or any carrier ever gets paid as long as they get to suck up torrents for free, talk to their friends for free etc... Well guess what, some of us understand it costs money for stuff we enjoy. I don't remember the thing I got for free (legally) that was so amazing? If I win the lottery, I'll retract that statement.

$299 bucks you can develop any app you like. I'd say this is a pretty open way to let people develop whatever they want for their device. If you have all this time and energy to say what it can't do, maybe learn something about programming and make exactly what you want. Yes this does require people to work a little bit, I know that concept scares the hell out of todays youth.

 

[Mac Me Up]

I'll happily add my voice to this forum. In 3 years time people will be laughing at all the haters, that's where the real joke will be at. So enjoy your giant iPhone/maxi-pad jokes while you still can

The iPad is not a giant iPhone, the iPhone is a tiny, cramped iPad. As a developer I'm excited about the class of applications that will come to this platform, never before have we had access to such a large, glossy touch display with such a good SDK and OS behind it.

Magazines, Point of Sale Systems, Books, Email, Web, Twitter, Apps to control all sorts of funky things like TV's, entertainment systems, home automation, etc. Think about a simple example, a recipe app that shows you the recipe, then let's you interact with it (think video, images, interactive instructions). It's going to be one kick butt device.

I predict that the fanboys will all buy it first, but then after that (maybe 3-6 months in) there will be a massive wave of regular people who saw someone playing with one and just thought 'damn that's cool' they won't be thinking 'damn I wish it had a camera, or could multitask or could take blah blah blah'. A year later Apple will release an even hotter device, that perhaps has a front facing camera for video conferencing and then the haters will find something else to hate on. Sound familiar? That's because it's exactly what happened with the iPhone.

 

[Journojulz]

Just bring PowerPoint to the iPad! Ideally the full Microsoft Office in the iPad.

Tried Keynote?

Whenever the office want to to make their powerpoint presentations better - they send them to my macbook and i return them something more polished.

 

[toneloco2881]

Magazines, Point of Sale Systems, Books, Email, Web, Twitter, Apps to control all sorts of funky things like TV's, entertainment systems, home automation, etc. Think about a simple example, a recipe app that shows you the recipe, then let's you interact with it (think video, images, interactive instructions). It's going to be one kick butt device.

Great ideas! I mentioned the recipe idea to my girlfriend as she loves to cook and she thought it would be amazing. She's constantly looking up recipes on her iPhone but said it would be so much better to have some type of food network integration/etc. She was saying how it would be cool to place the iPad on a dock in the kitchen, and instead of having an old-school calendar with things written in, we could just take a glance at the iPad. Play some music while she cooks perhaps.

That's just one usage case from someone that when I was speaking of getting her an iPhone, she said it looked like it would be overkill. I distinctly remember her asking me "why would I ever want to install an app on my phone", as justification for why she just wanted a 'dumb' featurephone. Now she has more apps than me and calls the iPhone her best friend!

 

[Ardoptres]

If this thing could be the opportunity to play serious games, like on a PSP or something like that, it could be quite an investment. No flash just sucks though.

 

[SandynJosh]

No, seriously. As long as Apple is in control what you can do with the device, what other devices it will work with (hint, only other Apple devices)...

You must have been busy enjoying your iFart app while Jobs was saying, "...your Mac or PC..."

 

[SachaS]

While I can understand why there is disappointment in the lacklustre specifications of iPad I find it hard to believe that people do not recognise that it has serious potential on a lot of fronts.

On these forums I've discussed the limitations of the iPhone as a gaming device and how it would be incredibly difficult for Apple to seriously compete with Nintendo/Microsoft/Sony in the gaming industry. With the iPad they have a very, very good shot claiming a large share of the handheld gaming market. It's basically a vastly superior PSP. Sony have lost the handheld market - it's down to Apple and Nintendo.

And it's not that far-fetched to see Nintendo ditch the handheld hardware market altogether and simply start making games for the iPad within the next decade.

Personally I love the device. However it definitely needs another two revisions before I would be completely happy purchasing it. Not because of multi-tasking, the camera, the name or any of the normal reasons. I wanted it to have e-ink technology similar to a rumour story on this site some weeks back whereby when turning off the back-lit the screen turns to e-ink. If this gets implemented in the future it will be a killer device and a winner on all fronts.

 

[mac ath]

i would love to get an iPad but i don't see the point yet.
if it had a hybrid between iPhone OS and OS X would be great cause i live in a country where there is an iTunes store but it does not support movies and tv shows. so without the OS X there is no easy way to fill it with content. can't download something from internet etc. but now, its just for music - at least for us - and pictures.
Then again i read somewhere that they are negotiating a European iTunes store. if that happens then yes, iPad would be great even without OS X

 

[javierbds]

getting work done: multitasking or plugins

For all the tablet can be useful for, there is one thing it will have to solve:
either it has multitasking or it embodies a model like a general environment with plugins (a la web or IDE) or the use of multiple pieces of functionality to get a job done is going to be a pain.
I do not know how iWorks works in the iPad (so maybe Apple has or is solving this) but I hope I do not have to be launching and stopping each app every time I want to use a tiny piece of them to build my piece. In desktops, we "solve" that via mutitasking ...
The idea of sw as independent bundled products is a marketing and building requirement but it does not provide the best user experience.

 

[Microsoap]

Publishers embrace iPad, but revolution unlikely

Book publishers predicted on Wednesday that Apple's iPad would boost interest in online reading. But observers doubted the novel tablet computer would immediately revolutionize electronic publishing like the iPod changed music listening.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE60R0GS20100128?type=technologyNews

 

[normwood]

I don't want to buy a whole new device in order to enjoy multi-touch apps. I want multi-touch on my Mac which I'm comfortable with and which I'm going to use most of my time anyway.

Apple, please don't invent new devices in order to make us pay more. It's a shame to waste your wonderful technologies by separating them from each other.

Sorry....as much as it seems hard for many people to fathom here.....and elsewhere on the internets......Apple is in business to sell stuff....period. They are a business pure and simple that sells products and services for PROFIT!

There...I said it....PROFIT! I know it's a dirty word for some....but turning a profit means that Apple can research and design cool stuff, pay their employees a decent wage, keep their investors happy and occasionally let Steve out on stage to get his happy on showing us the cool stuff we're going to be drooling over next.

Steve

 

[Journojulz]

How did the iPod win the game?

3 things - Ease of storage, playback and a simple tune store.

It made music compact and easy for non-techies.
The iPod reached beyond the generations like no tech had done before

Didn't happen overnight - but now the whole music industry model has changed.

I expect in 10 years time the leisure publishing industry to have gone through a similar transition. All it needs is huge userbase and it will go where the money is.

At the price the iPad has come in at - a huge userbase is going to happen very quickly.

It costs a quid to print a 35p newspaper. the savings are immediate and huge.

 

[steve-p]

You're not buying laptops for 1000 employees, and worrying about what happens to your companies data when somebody (at least one) loses a laptop.

That's not a worry now. Enterprises who care about their data use disk level encryption technology. Those that don't, don't care if they lose their data anyway, evidently.

 

[Stella]

You aren't preaching to the choir, you are preaching to the blind and deaf.

Most of the people here have completely unrealistic expectations and have zero knowledge about what it costs to build these devices and what's conceivable possible based on Apple's overall business strategy.

I don't think there's unrealistic expectations for a front camera and multi-tasking.

Add those two and you'll make a lot of people happy.