"Monster" iPad.

[iEvolution]

With Apple you never know what kind of things they are scheming up.

Its funny though every new idea that gets suggested here is thrown out as "stupid" or "would never happen".

The same thing was said about the ipods, look how that "stupid concept" pulled Apple out of the gutter.

That being said, 18.5" doesn't seem to have a big advantage over the current iPad, it definitely wouldn't be handheld friendly. 18.5 is kind of a misnomer, its a size thats not easy to hold, yet its not big enough to have much advantage over the current iPad.

 

[Zcott]

Back in the real world, back OT, and back to being serious, I would like to see an "iPad HD", and by that I mean a 16:9 screen with the same vertical (landscape) height as the current 4:3 iPad, yet a little longer (wider in landscape mode). Then, HD video would finally make sense on the iPad

The problem with that is although video makes sense, for everything else, it looks terrible. For book reading, it's too small, for web browsing, it's too narrow, and for portrait games it's just too long. Not everyone watches videos on their iPad, and 16:9 just isn't great for web browsing.

Here's a picture of the JooJoo beside an iPad:

Yeah...think I'll stick with the iPad.

 

[r-sparks]

A big iPad wouldn't be great for content creators unless Apple fixed the touch response times. You can't even write by hand on an existing iPad screen unless you do so VERY slowly. Do it at normal speed and the screen just can't keep up. Drawing and designing can be very frustrating. Video editing might work better, though.

Take a look at this Microsoft Research video which illustrates the issue:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOvQCPLkPt4

(FWIW this is why I'm always surprised gamers like the iPad -- it's so slow and laggy that it must be very frustrating when playing action games.)

I suspect a larger screen will have even worse response times. I notice that my iPhone is much more responsive than my iPad screen for quick taps, for example.

So, if there is a larger iPad, at this stage in the evolution of the tablet, I suspect it will be simply so people can consumer larger media. That's the thinking behind the Kindle DX, for example, and notably that hasn't been a huge success.

 

[Sylon]

I've play with the Microsoft Surface it is pretty amazing, I can certainly think of many working situations where a table top size iPad would be useful.

The Microsoft Surface is pretty sweet from what I've seen in videos. I heard its in a few NYC bars where they use it for ordering, etc. It just seemed so sci-fi. Kinda like that table and room in the movie Quantum of Solace when they are talking about the marked currency.