1.
You do sound more than a little whinny.
People always say things like that when they don't like to hear the truth.
Yes the iPad is grossly under powered, but you are wrong to imply it was a mistake to release it in the state it is. For one there simply wasn't a better processor choice available. Two; I don't think you have a clue about what it takes to get a completely brand new product to market. I've said it before and i'll say it again iPad is Apples best rev one product ever, but it is still rev one.
I didn't say anything about the actual power of the device. I'm talking about how it shipped with an extremely outdated OS for what it is and how its not right that those of us who spent so much money on this device have to wait so long for it to finally get what it should have had out the door.
If you don't heed peoples warnings about rev one devices then you really have no basis to complain. It is simple as that. Almost every rev one device has been underpowered, or only implementing a partial vision. The examples are endless from the original AIRs to the original iPhones. Even the original Mac could be seen as a very rev one device.
The difference between the iPad and other devices is that Jobs and others new the iPhone 4 was coming out with dual cameras, the main iOS team had multi-tasking and all sorts of other neat new feature coming, and the iPad got screwed out of all of this for sake of secrecy and profit margins.
It's not like they released the iPad and a year later completely revised it. They released the iPad, showed a significantly updated version of iOS just a few days after launch and proclaimed iPad would have to wait several additional months to receive it, and within weeks of iPads launch, iPhone 4 is introduced with every feature, save the retina display, that should have been included on the iPad.
Again, Jobs and company knew what was in the product line yet they chose to keep the iPad limited for sake of profit.
The thing here is if something is obviously missing a feature you might want then why buy it?
Being somebody who bought an iPad on launch day, it was a little too late to return it by the time the iPhone 4 was announced and it was clear that every single iPad owner had just been shafted.
And the iPhone 3GS should have had a front facing camera, a retina display, and so on and so forth right? That's technology bud, no one forces anyone to buy anything.
As I said, this isn't a case of the product being released one year then being revised a year later. Jobs and others knew exactly where they were going with the iPhone, iPod touch, and eventually the iPad. But they intentionally held the iPad back for sake of profit margins. Within days of the iPad's release, we get word of iOS 4 and it not being ready for the iPad for several months after initial launch. Then a few weeks later we see iPhone 4, making it clear that all iOS devices will have dual cameras and "FaceTime".
Why didn't the iPad ship with this? Because it's better to debut it with the iPhone 4, since that is Apple's biggest money maker, and try to get as many iPad early adopters to upgrade next year.
Then sell it, be done with it and stop annoying the crap out of the rest of us who don't care about pathetic people like you. By the way, you can't build a PC that can out perform a Mac Pro for that price point. A computer's cost also includes the time to build it. Unless you work for minimum wage, the cost to build a computer and install the OS is not cheap. Not to mention, a Mac Pro is much more stable than a poorly cobbled together PC from cheap parts.
Well, I hate to break it to you, but the only thing that sets the Xeon apart from Core i7 is the ability to use ECC memory. Apple uses the same chipsets and such as everyone else. In some cases, Apple uses lower quality parts than others. Case in point would be the Panasonic (Matsushita) DVD writers.
Contrary to popular belief among Apple forums, GOOD PC parts can be had for dirt cheap compared to Macs. Once you have all of those parts it barely takes a few minutes to throw the entire computer together. Installing the OS? Well, considering how much bloat OS X ships with (Several GB worth of printer drivers still installed in Snow Leopard, as well as language translations and other things), you have to reinstall OS X as soon as you get a Mac. So installing the OS and downloading updates is a moot point considering OS X has you download a few GB worth of updates out of the box. I just reinstalled Snow Leopard recently, when iLife '11 came out. Wanted a clean start. I still had over 2GB worth of updates to download.
So you
knew it but bought it anyway.. who's fault?
Had my iPad on launch day. Didn't find out about FaceTime and such until I was weeks passed the return window.
Didn't find out about iOS 4 until half way into that return window and didn't think we'd be waiting until almost the end of the year to finally get that update. Thought September at most, since that is usually what Apple refers to as "Fall".
Edit: To put it in perspective, we're about two and a half months away from the one year anniversary original iPad announcement. And we're still running the same software shown in that demo. In that same time, the iPhone and iPod touch lines have received two significant software upgrades that have changed how those devices are being used.
My iPad, that cost me over $400 more than my iPhone 4, sits basically unused because the lack of multi-tasking and non-working EQ for music kills its usability for anything other than being a very expensive eReader.
