As many have side I find it very surprising that people are making such a big deal of the RAM. Apple invests a lot in R&D, more than most and they are innovating more than most. Look at laptops, cellphones, and desktops over the past several years and you will see outside of apple there has been very little change. It is actually quite shocking how little innovation there is. Netbooks are literally small laptops. They make parts smaller and components more powerful, but no one has challenged the core of what a computer or phone is.
Before the iphone there was windows mobile, and nothing improved for years, it was difficult to keep stable, performance would tank without clear reasons... The iphone changed the whole picture, look at every phone being released now and they are all copying it (I have no issue with that, competition will make it all better, but no one can pretend it was not all driven by apple). And for those saying apple is just trying to suck money out of us (of course they are, they are a company), but the iphone was the first real phone that you could easily and regularly upgrade to the latest os and get the latest software features. that never really worked with window mobile or any other phone, you got what you bought and got a new phone when needed. Even android is not so straight forward because of all the different manufacturers.
The ipad is doing the same for the netbook type computer as the iphone did for phones. Don't know if it will succeed but they are trying. There is a lot of innovation in these products and they do cut corners on some specs to keep the price down, but the reality is there is nothing like this on the market, if you like it great, if not wait and see where it goes.
Point is you do pay a premium because of the high quality parts (9.7" touch screen is not cheap either), and also for the overhead it takes a company like apple to create these products. I a pretty sure a first gen ipad will work well enough 2 years from now, but the newer ones will be much better. But who is anyone trying to fool if you don't think that goes for all computers, every year the standard ram balloons, hard drive sizes go up, software takes up more space and ram, bluray comes out... all tech gets old fast, nothing unusual here.
And I am not a fanboy, all my computers are windows 7 (really like it), but think Apple is amazing with gadgets/cellphones, and not iPads
Peter
Before the iphone there was windows mobile, and nothing improved for years, it was difficult to keep stable, performance would tank without clear reasons... The iphone changed the whole picture, look at every phone being released now and they are all copying it (I have no issue with that, competition will make it all better, but no one can pretend it was not all driven by apple). And for those saying apple is just trying to suck money out of us (of course they are, they are a company), but the iphone was the first real phone that you could easily and regularly upgrade to the latest os and get the latest software features. that never really worked with window mobile or any other phone, you got what you bought and got a new phone when needed. Even android is not so straight forward because of all the different manufacturers.
The ipad is doing the same for the netbook type computer as the iphone did for phones. Don't know if it will succeed but they are trying. There is a lot of innovation in these products and they do cut corners on some specs to keep the price down, but the reality is there is nothing like this on the market, if you like it great, if not wait and see where it goes.
Point is you do pay a premium because of the high quality parts (9.7" touch screen is not cheap either), and also for the overhead it takes a company like apple to create these products. I a pretty sure a first gen ipad will work well enough 2 years from now, but the newer ones will be much better. But who is anyone trying to fool if you don't think that goes for all computers, every year the standard ram balloons, hard drive sizes go up, software takes up more space and ram, bluray comes out... all tech gets old fast, nothing unusual here.
And I am not a fanboy, all my computers are windows 7 (really like it), but think Apple is amazing with gadgets/cellphones, and not iPads
Peter