Tiger Airways flight 308 (Singapore – Hanoi). Jan 31, 2010.
Just out of interest, although this couple were watching a movie together on an iPhone screen in an impressive display of marital harmony, they did have his and hers iPhones regardless. Perhaps even more impressively (if you are Steve Jobs, anyway) all five people in my row on the plane were at one point using iPhones or iPod touches simultaneously. I think all of us would have our experiences enhanced using the larger tablet.
On the other hand, Apple victim as I am, I don’t think I will be getting one myself. For me, the killer issue is the lack of an SD card slot. Normally, I travel with a netbook, and I am constantly taking photographs and backing them up. I do not want additional accessories that I have to remember to bring with me and can lose along the way. I certainly do not want additional accessories that have proprietary Apple connectors and that I cannot replace in obscure shops in strange parts of the world. No SD slot but works with USB card reader = annoyance. No SD slot and card reader with proprietary connector = deal breaker.
This is a shame, because iPad as media player, web browser, and photo management tool that would import my photos to iPhoto and then sync with my Mac when I got home would be great.
Plus there is the small matter of VLC and a bit-torrent client, which for unstated reasons that are fairly obvious, are much more useful to me when on the road than when at home, but let’s not mention that. This may be less of a deal breaker, as I suspect there are teams of jailbreakers and hackers on the job already.
iPad is silly. Apple has jumped the shark.
I can’t shake the niggling feeling that the iPad was a rush job as a ChromeOS spoiler. Contrary to all the “Google takes on MS” hype, I’m pretty certain it’s aiming at exactly this market, and by the time of next year’s Synod of the Church of Steve the devices should be shipping. I won’t at all surprised to see them without keyboards. But with USB ports and SD slots.
The iPad is a risky and bold move on Apple’s (and Jobs’) part in a bid to expand their content provide/gatekeeper business, which has brought them quite the chunk of change via iTunes. In a way, it almost seems like they’re trying to reverse engineer their clientele into a situation spookily reminiscent of AOL during the days of dialup angst.
The overall design and strategy of the device (and series of devices, beginning with the iPod) is hostile towards open source and user choice – Jobs has allowed his inner Configuration Manager dictatorial instincts to completely run amok.
Based on the visuals (haven’t touched one yet), the design is dead bang on target for the styling and design that the public LOVES about Apple devices. Despite the “looky what it’ll do” spin from the company, however, the product turns out not to be the portable computer many have dreamed of, but a hobbled, inadequate dumb terminal designed to only really work well with the Apple controlled content delivery schemes. They’ve even been caught out trying to dodge the most egregious ommision, the lack of ability to handle Flash content, by using ‘mocked up’ simulated displays of sites with Flash content displayed – something the device won’t do. They changed the promo material when called out on that one.
The lack of ability to ‘multi-task’, i.e. run multiple apps simultaneously is something Apple claims to have gotten around via ‘suspending the state’ of ones not displayed when you have to hop back and forth (in, say, a cut-n-paste operation). Yeah, well that’s all well and good, unless you’re really an enthusiast of the multiple workspaces function of OS X (and Unix and Linux, btw) and perform ‘side by side’ comparative activities, which don’t do so well shutting programs on and off repeatedly.
The inability to acquire software from anywhere besides Apple is particularly annoying. The Configuration Manager logic run amok position Apple has taken may well be internally justifiable from a technical and support standpoint, it doesn’t sit well with people that want actual choice – for instance, Firefox or Chrome, instead of Safari. Open Office instead of iWork.
Here’s hoping that flattish sales give Apple enough of a smack upside the head to make the changes necessary to make the iPad the wonderful full function mobile computing device it has the potential to be, but not so flat that Jobs’ has a ‘take my toys and go home’ hissy fit and drop the concept altogether.
While an SD or CF slot would be nice, the iPad doesn’t have enough memory to store lots of travel photos, at least not from my 12MP camera.
As to Flash: good riddance.
I was reading someplace where someone pointed out that part of the problem is people are confusing the iPad which is a “Computer Appliance” with an actual computer. The computer is hidden from the user utterly and completely, and I think that there will be a huge market for these types of things. There is a large population of people that will be quite content with using what the App Store will provide to them. It’s easy and the apps are tested and more or less bug/malware free. The majority of these user types don’t give a crap about open source, if they even know what it means at all.
The iPad is a giant iPod touch, nothing more, nothing less.
Wind: Sorry, no. Flash is bullshit. Unstable, hoggy, buggy bullshit.
(What’s Flash going to get you on an iPad?
Video? Any video worth watching is already in h264.
Games? Flash games tend to want mouse and/or keyboard, and thus almost all of them completely suck on a touchscreen.)
Flash should be abandoned completely, not demanded on everything, just like floppy disks.
Back on the main topic, Duncan nails it – the iPad is a disappointment as a full-power mobile laptop replacement.
Because it isn’t one and isn’t meant to be one.
It’s either a supplement to a laptop for people who have one already but sometimes prefer a much smaller, lighter device that does typical core tasks (browsing, mail, media, occasionally light “work”) – or a replacement for a netbook (either an existing one or precluding a new sale).
Thought of in that light, it makes perfect sense as a product. Given my netbook experience, it would be an admirable replacement for mine, at least, given my uses.
Road Warriors like Mr. Jennings who are always in “obscure places” and use a netbook as a backup device for a camera won’t be buying one… but they’re not the market anyway.
The lack of a real keyboard on a device this size is a show stopper in my opinion. Tablets have been around a long time but have failed in all but very niche markets. This is not due to the operating system but due to a very key way that people interact. With words (text). My netbook keyboard itself is only barely usable (but is at least usable). I don’t really see that the ipad brings anything new to the table, it’s simply the wrong interface for a device of that size.
Could be wrong though 🙂
Reminds me of the days of yore, when I had a Commodore computer and needed adapters for almost any accessory. I don’t want to get back into that. Give me standard, widely-available, connections — like USB and SDHC ports.
I refuse to be a captive of Apple, just as I worked my way away from Commodore.
To answer the complaint that lack of an SD card reader precludes backing up photos from your camera, there simple wireless solutions. You can probably use Bluetooth to transfer the files if you have a Bluetooth-enabled camera.
Or get an Eye-Fi SD card and beam your pics online to Facebook or Flickr over Wifi.
Ipad is new and many people these days require bigger and portable devices. Using a small gagdgets that has small screens my strain the eyes and can be uncomforting.
I will be reviewing the Apple Ipad my self and my blog http://www.inetseed.com if any of you interested.
camo: The iPad certainly isn’t precluded from being used a Photo backup device. (With respect to tehag, you are taking a lot of photos if 64Gb is not enough space. Anyway, next year’s model will no doubt have 128Gb). For one thing, Apple is selling an SD card reader as an external attachment, so this is simple enough. Bluetooth may be a standard camera feature before too long, but it isn’t yet, and Bluetooth can be fiddly. Eye-Fi cards are great (and external backups are obviously really valuable) but I don’t have the immediate ability to look at my photos on a larger screen, edit, e-mail them etc that I do if I have them stored on my local device. Apple have delivered a product that is almost perfect for me for this purpose, but just not quite.