iPad!

I write on my Tablec PC all lectures. The math symbols show up fine. I can switch to the internet or some computer learning system, and everything is recorded if I want to. Students can then go over the recorded lectures over and over.
 
Having owned every version of the iPhone, I can honestly say this product is not for me. I know Steve Jobs wants to create a new product category and as a Kindle killer this product is awesome.

However, aside from the screen size, it lacks so much that the iPhone currently has, i.e. gps, phone, camera. As an alternative to a laptop or netbook it lacks in functionality. As an in-between product it seems to do a lot of things none of which it does particularly well. Having said that, I think this product has a lot of potential and look forward to the 2nd or 3rd generation.
 
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Look, Apple's goal is to produce a unit that has the best fit & finish possible. They sell on whole product rather than individual features, which makes them not only successful, but also industry leaders. They make, and others follow–thus it has been with the original Mac OS, the ipod, iphone, and now the ipad. Plenty of people won't buy this new device for its lack of x y or z feature, but Apple, like any company, doesn't need to please everyone, only enough people to keep Apple profitable.

This ipad will sell like hotcakes, and so will the accessories and applications. Amd music, moveis, tv shows, and now books. That's the business model–even if they don't make a huge profit on each device, they will make a percentage on ALL media sold through it. And that's one of the reasons it's a 'walled garden', why there's no sd card slot, or anything else. They are willing to lose that segment of the market for the profitability that comes with a closed system. Is it the best situation? No. Don't you wish all lenses worked on all cameras? Wouldn't that be great? Sure... but this is the market, and Apple is the one putting the time, money, and effort into creating really great user experiences. It's as simple as that. Everyone else is now playing catch-up.

And wrt the flash thing. See the linked article in my earlier post. Really, Apple will never allow flash on the ipad or iphone because they won't take the performance hit. They need the brand to be great, the public perception that the device works well. They won't give that up to Adobe, ever. Flash crashes my mac browser often enough...! And, by not allowing flash, Apple disallows free video from many providers, and encourages more purchases through itunes. It's really a win-win for them. And if flash dies as a result, and is replaced by open standards, the web will be a better place. The process might be annoying, is all.
 
dcsang said:
1) Camera
- a front facing camera, sure, I can see that if you wanted to have an iChat with your iFriends or such but a REAR facing camera? Have you ever seen a 4x5 or 8x10 view camera? Can you imaging holding this 6x8" tablet up and using it like a camera phone? How dumb would that look? :)

3) Touch Keyboad

4) No HDMI Out

6) Adapters

Cheers,
Dave
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Dave,

I have to say, #1 is a CRAZY wild great idea. I wonder if anyone would build a wifi camera module for it....:eek::rolleyes:

#3, they have a dock with a keyboard built into it. I'm not sure if the dock will have a USB or a way to charge it, hope so.

#4, they will have some type of video out for her. Not sure of specifics but the app director said there would be one for keynote.

#6, I'm not sure but I think you can gain access to stuff on a thumb drive via the one for a camera adapter. There might need to be a hack/utility written.

She's not perfect for everyone, but then neither is a Mac or a Netbook or a cloud. Great points though.

B2 (;->
 
semordnilap said:
And wrt the flash thing. See the linked article in my earlier post. Really, Apple will never allow flash on the ipad or iphone because they won't take the performance hit.
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There are plenty of low-power computing platforms that support Flash, including several brands of handheld Internet tablets, so the performance it isn't really an argument. You can't run more than one program at the same time anyway. The reason why Flash is not present is that Flash would allow people to run programs that Apple can't control. There was a guy who wrote a C64 emulator for the iPhone, and Apple rejected it from the App Store until the guy removed the BASIC interpreter. The guidelines for the App Store specifically say "no interpreted code". If old C64 BASIC programs in an emulator are already considered a threat by Apple, Flash is a big no-go. With Flash anybody would be able to write their own software, which Apple apparently is extremely against. Apple are control freaks over their platform, much more than IBM ever was in the 70s and early 80s.
 
dazedgonebye said:
Wait till they put college text books on it....
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I'd buy it if they did that, paying a small fortune for books as it is now is bad enough. If they'd put books on it in such a way that I could rent them for a semester at a reasonable price instead of buying books at strongarm robbery prices to be further raped when they buy them back for less than 20% of my purchase price it'd be worth it. This thing would also kill my back less as well
 
-doomed- said:
I'd buy it if they did that, paying a small fortune for books as it is now is bad enough. If they'd put books on it in such a way that I could rent them for a semester at a reasonable price instead of buying books at strongarm robbery prices to be further raped when they buy them back for less than 20% of my purchase price it'd be worth it.
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Hear hear. However, Apple would need to put a lot of work into their PDF reader first. I use a lot of scanned literature at the moment; I've set up a project with a couple of photographers where we've digitized about 20% of the field library of my institute, which boils down to about 500.000 pages, as PDFs with text recognition (in Cyrillic). One PDF is between 80 and 250 MB. I'd love to be able to use those with the iPhone. However, firstly it's super awkward to get PDFs on the iPhone because Apple's sync mechanism is only for music, pictures and videos. And secondly, Apple's PDF viewer chokes on big files. Apparently it's no problem for them to write a program to open 750 MB video files, but a 250 MB PDF is asking too much. So, no research library and no college textbooks either for me.
 
f16sunshine said:
Are we supposing then that if one has an iPhone with a 3G plan with AT&T another 3G plan would be needed for this device?
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Yes. Or you switch SIM cards around.

You could also sit and wait if a new iPhone might support tethering; in this case you'd need to buy a new iPhone. Or you could hope that Apple makes it available through a software-only update. The rumour that iPhones might support tethering has been around for a while, though, and so far they don't.
 
rxmd said:
There are plenty of low-power computing platforms that support Flash, including several brands of handheld Internet tablets, so the performance it isn't really an argument. You can't run more than one program at the same time anyway. The reason why Flash is not present is that Flash would allow people to run programs that Apple can't control. There was a guy who wrote a C64 emulator for the iPhone, and Apple rejected it from the App Store until the guy removed the BASIC interpreter. The guidelines for the App Store specifically say "no interpreted code". If old C64 BASIC programs in an emulator are already considered a threat by Apple, Flash is a big no-go. With Flash anybody would be able to write their own software, which Apple apparently is extremely against. Apple are control freaks over their platform, much more than IBM ever was in the 70s and early 80s.
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Yep. Basically said that, but regarding control of profit, in the sentence after the one you quoted. Regardless, I do think the performance is an argument. Maybe not the only one, but one for sure. Long story short, if there's no profit in it for apple to run flash on the iphone/ipad, they won't. And there isn't... plenty of iphones have sold without flash. People get very heated about Apple, and sometimes pretend that Apple=Steve Jobs, thus assuming all sorts of psychological reasoning behind Apple's decisions to do this or that. But it's a company whose motive is profit, not "control", and it is a company that knows its business. As an aside, there is an entire framework for iphone webapps that exists totally outside of the control of Apple. So the arbitrary control argument just doesn't hold water. I do think, anyway, that the whole flash thing is part of a long-term strategy to influence internet video delivery.

Regarding tethering, yes iphone does support tethering. Here is the o2 page on tethering pricing for uk customers:
http://shop.o2.co.uk/update/internet.html
It's AT&T that hasn't turned tethering on in the US.

And finally, included in the ipad is a book reader, so hopefully pdf support will be much better in that! I think there are already textbook publishers signed up.
 
zumbido said:
Incorrect. The iPhone allows for tethering everywhere but the US (or is planned to shortly). It isn't allowed here because AT&T is rightfully afraid of their network collapsing, because they suck.
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I have one. iPhone 2G, non-US contract, 3.0.x software. So far the tethering hack hasn't worked here. I guess it's jailbreaking then.

pachuco said:
Wait... rxmd, are you Bill Gates? :D
(If so can I get a grant from you?)
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Nope on the first, and I guess that settles it for the second :)

I've been an Apple user for quite some time. The computers are OK hardware-wise, the OS is really good, the iPod is OK except that it's designed not to be repaired, the iPhone is mediocre. That's my personal opinion.
 
Double Negative said:
Yep, v3.1 puts the kibosh on tethering (for us AT&T suckers). The hack basically involved replacing the carrier file and syncing. Voila! There are other methods as well as I recall.

Supposedly it might make an official comeback - with new and improved charges, I'm sure.
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Tethering works just fine for me, with no jailbreaking or hacks. Might be something to do with not being in the USA, of course ;)
 
rxmd said:
.....The rumour that iPhones might support tethering has been around for a while, though, and so far they don't.
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This is a large issue for folks who want to have just one plan and use it for work-stuff that is done on another system (read Windows Laptop).

I think they could increase the market another 2% or more with just that move.

B2 (;->
 
The iPhone support tethering... it's AT&T that's held the whole thing up. Steve Jobs announced it a long time ago and it was supposed to be by the end of the summer... thanks to AT&T it hasn't happened.

And Flash? Everyone knows (or should know) it's a CPU hog. There are much better ways to design websites and the majority of flash these days is obnoxious advertising. Any geek with a Mac has flash turned off anyway - LOL - best free software ever is "click-for-flash" so you only have to see flash when you want to... and for me, that's like 1% of the time, if that.
 
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