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Ugh, no alarm clock?

Surely one value add for the iPad is docking it next to your bed, and having it wake you up in the morning with your favourite track, with the weather and news ready for you to read before you're out of bed? Yeah, I'd like an "early morning, it's a new day" display too, with headlines, weather, todos/meetings/agenda, and more on it.

I mean, a decent digital photo frame can cost around £50, a decent alarm clock can cost a few quid too, and training the dog to bring the newspaper to bed is rather difficult when you have a cat. The iPad becomes worthwhile by incorporating these features.

I am not sold on a widget layer, although I thought it would be added with iPhone OS 4 previously. This is mainly because it could be awkward operationally (unless it is done like Android - the widgets drop into the launcher icon area seamlessly). However I wouldn't mind applications running in a "window" on the iPad's screen if they can't have a decent full-size UI.
 
Someone just needs to design an app called "clock, weather, stocks, calculator" that does all 4 things at once, each in a seperate quadrant of the screen.

LOL yeah!

It would be called "Clwockulator"
 
Initially I thought, "What no calculator?" Then I figured, you know what someone will probably bundle those together into one app that looks ok and be done with it.
 
While I will undoubtedly purchase the ipad, I got a lot riding on OS 4.0. Developers should be able to develop widgets. Companies and developers should be able to create ipad themes with various screen savers, backgrounds and interface overlays. Let me personalize my stuff!
 
Gah, the iPad just seems more and more unfinished.

I guess Apple wants to the be the first to the market for these new types of tablets, but 3.2 is going to seem half-baked for iPad owners.

Without the Clock.app you can't make the iPad's iPod.app sleep after a set number of minutes. I use this feature all the time.
 
Dashboard may come the iPad, but it will only come to support Apple's apps/widgets. It would never support the thousands of Widgets that are on Apple's website because that would cut into the 30%/70% that apple/developers get.

It's a shame because there are some really nice widgets that woud be awesome to have. I wish there were a better way to browse Widgets on Apple's website actually. I wonder how many people still create and support their widgets.

Sidenote: I'll never forget when Konfabulator got sold to Yahoo and they made a little cartoon website about being sold to Yahoo! I just found it... enjoy it here...

http://www.konfabulator.com/cartoon/partOne.html
 
sad

I use all those functions all the time!
I guess some can be replaced by third party apps but I use the clock/timer every day, several times a day! That cannot be replaced since it runs in the background and Apple doesn't allow third party apps to run in the background. I was so wanting to just leave my iPhone docked and charged, and use my iPad until I left with my iPhone fully charged. SIGH
I love how the weather app uses pages to see different locations and I just flip through the pages to see how the weather is doing at friends and relatives locations. I am sad these are not going to be present in the iPad and I was also soooooooooooo wanting widgets/dashboard.
:(:(:(
 
I use the calculator on my computer and my ipod and my phone all the time. I'm not buying an iPad, but it seems silly to just leave it off because it doesn't blow up well.

I agree, I know we can always buy a calculator app, but I am going to be very surprised if Apple ships the iPad without a built in calculator.
 
Wow...

The iPad seems like it was made to have some kind of Dashboard functionality! Sure I can go to each of 4-5 Apps each morning on my iPhone to check weather, stocks, news, etc., but being able to pick up this new device, watch it fire up, and voila!: there are the latest news stories, portfolio value, weather, rss feeds, etc, all in a single Dashboard format. Sure, I can go into specific apps for reading, playing, etc., for more details or functionality, but this kind of 'quick view info' seems like a no-brainer for this larger format device. :(
 
This is so stupid. Why don't they do like the dashboard on mac? or scrolling with 4 fingers and then all those stupid apps (stocks, weather...) appear on the screen like it does on mac!

Don't they know how exhausting could be to open-closing all this apps all the time..

I usually check all of those apps but stocks in the morning and all that opening-closing apps is a waste of time and energy.

Is apple giving us more reasons to not get this product? It certainly looks like it.
 
Dashboard may come the iPad, but it will only come to support Apple's apps/widgets. It would never support the thousands of Widgets that are on Apple's website because that would cut into the 30%/70% that apple/developers get.

What? The Dashboard Widgets on Apple’s Web site are free. Apple allows free apps in the App Store. Where’s the conflict?
 
Without the Clock.app you can't make the iPad's iPod.app sleep after a set number of minutes. I use this feature all the time.

You are making a pretty big assumption here, based on a rumor. One thing we know for sure is that the iPad will have a clock.
 
The iPad seems like it was made to have some kind of Dashboard functionality! Sure I can go to each of 4-5 Apps each morning on my iPhone to check weather, stocks, news, etc., but being able to pick up this new device, watch it fire up, and voila!: there are the latest news stories, portfolio value, weather, rss feeds, etc, all in a single Dashboard format. Sure, I can go into specific apps for reading, playing, etc., for more details or functionality, but this kind of 'quick view info' seems like a no-brainer for this larger format device. :(

I never used or understood widgets before I bought an iPhone. Then it all made sense. It seems to me that iPhone apps like weather and stocks are widgets.
 
Clearly, a Dashboard is planned at some point. They’ve been shipping Dashcode with the iPhone SDK for a while now. It’s currently limited to only creating web widgets that only work in Safari, but surely they plan on breaking this out at some point.
 
Stocks and Weather info can be found using internet, so is there reason any need for these as applications

Agreed. I'm actually glad the widgets have gotten the boot. I don't use the SMS, weather and stocks (I have better apps), but yet I can't remove them from my iPhone springboard. So I have to stick them on their own screen, sort of my home for abandoned apps. The less we're *forced* to have, the more choice there is.
 
You are making a pretty big assumption here, based on a rumor. One thing we know for sure is that the iPad will have a clock.

You can look at the screenshots yourself on Apple.com. There’s no Clock.app shown. I highly doubt they’re going to add a sleep timer to the iPod.app.

I don't have access to the SDK, but couldn't the clock be part of the calendar app in some way? At the very least, you should be able to set alarms and alerts in the calendar app... right?

I’m sure alarms and alerts are in the Calendar.app, but it doesn’t look like there’s Clock.app functionality integrated in.
 

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Apple "Beta" products are considerably more advanced and better than Microsoft Marketed Products...:apple:

Marketed Snow Leopard was a lot buggier than W7 Beta. Is there someone who is going to deny that there were very embarrassing bugs in SL?

Please let me know when you wake up from your sweet dream.
 
Oh how terrible... you mean we're going to get freshly designed apps that will be fit specifically for iPad??? :rolleyes:

A 10" 1024x768 calculator with big buttons is handy for the elderly I guess but most of us prefer our calculators to be about the size of say, oh I know, about the size of a pocket calculator, perhaps. :rolleyes:

Making something 'fit specifically for iPad' might actually mean the type of application or widget is no longer fit for purpose.
 
What? The Dashboard Widgets on Apple’s Web site are free. Apple allows free apps in the App Store. Where’s the conflict?
True -- I hope you're right. I would love (A) lots of options for more free stuff and hopefully (B) a "store" that is a better browsing experience than what we have now. Apple could call it the "Widget Lounge" instead of "store".

I stand corrected.
 
I never used or understood widgets before I bought an iPhone. Then it all made sense. It seems to me that iPhone apps like weather and stocks are widgets.

They should be but they ended up as Cocoa applications instead in the first iPhone. Rumour at the time was that they were simply too slow as widgets. That shouldn't be a problem on the iPad though.
 
Stocks and Weather info can be found using internet, so is there reason any need for these as applications, especially if you have the 3G iPad, or tethering the WI-FI version with your ( non apple ) phone?


Shame there's no dashboard, this would come in very useful, especially if you could run current iPhone apps as Dashboard apps, or, run multiple current iPhone apps at the same time ( maybe 'window'ed? )

Sorry, but there should have been a complex alternative to the iPhone app. I actually use the Weather app and then I use Wundergound's mobile web app for anything more serious. The stocks app could have been made to rival Bloomberg's app. This wreaks of laziness.

Your second paragraph is more important. I would've thought Apple would have used widgets as a way to have background tasks without fully launching the app. I don't think they will offer true multitasking but I still hope for it.

If Apple doesn't at least offer background apps then I will switch from the iPhone to Android. I love Apple products but not to the extent of my own detriment.
 
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