iPad i couldn't resist

padraig_f wrote: »

The iPad was never going to be something you could put in your pocket.

My point was that a lot of the negativity towards the iPad seems to be because of unrealistic expectations. With the amount of hype, I think people were expecting the monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey to be released.

And while the release was a bit underwhelming, an iPhone-like device with a big screen will be very useful. On the list of things I use my iPhone for, talking on the phone is way down the list, but I often wish the screen was bigger.

What unrealistic expectations?

All people wanted for it to do more then one thing at once and not use the Iphone OS! How is that unrealistic? it sounds to me like alot of people just take what they are given when it comes to apple.

aidan_walsh wrote: »

What's the alternative? The full desktop version of OS X would be horrible to use on a device like this. A modified version of OS X designed for touchscreen? Oh look, thats iPhone OS.

No its not, at least a modifed version of OSX designed for touch would have multitasking. I know some people wanted a full OS X desktop and this is a stupid idea but the IPhone OS is the biggest bottleneck on this device.

People were hoping for something more functional and customisable then the Iphone OS.

Theta wrote: »

People were hoping for something more functional and customisable then the Iphone OS.

Which was probably pushing their expectations a bit high. It's very much a Joe Bloggs consumer product and aimed at that end of the market. So the ability to hack and tweak falls very much down the list.

Multitasking is a little bit of a pain in the ass when the end-user doesn't have low-level access to the OS. Even something as simple as a background process crashing or freezing could eat up battery power and stay like that for months until the owner reboots the phone. The battery issue is a big enough problem and if the end-user has no idea what multitasking it or how it operates, it could lead to very bad press for Apple and an unnecessary increase in call volumes.

For example, Joe B buys his iPad with its ten hour running time, multitasking and is very happy with it. Because he doesn't really care about what and where he installs things, he picks twenty or thirty apps and installs them. Half of them are single-use, crappy apps such as, "Find out how big your index finger is", which have for no particular reason decided to incorporate a background thread to periodically search for updates.

After six months or so of installing these apps, Joe's iPad moves like a turtle through sh*te and the battery only lasts 2.5 hours before needing to be charged. Joe storms into the Apple store complaing about how crap the iPad is and how he demands his money back. The store guy points out the background apps, removes most of them, and suddenly Joe's iPad roars back to life.
However Joe's not happy. "Apple should have warned me about this, look at how much time I've wasted trying to get this sorted".

And then this is replicated across the world by every braindead technology journo, competitor and anti-Apple activist until the iPad, despite being a perfectly functional device, becomes known as the iTurtle or the iPaperWeight, simply because its target audience were too dumb to use it correctly.

Someone in Apple had the cop-on to see this, and I'm sure they did their best to try and provide some degree of multitasking via the API, but the potential nightmare outweighed the benefits.

I do think however that they should supply (for download) a more open version of the OS that allows people with more tech-savvy to have more access to the device, on the understanding that you have no warranty or phone support until/unless you wipe the phone and reinstall the standard OS.

The reason to buy an iPad (if you've money to burn and like classic games)

Cool idea. Does give an indication as to what more adventurous devs could get up to with the device!

PC Mag video review: http://vimeo.com/10595371?hd=1

David Pogue video: http://video.nytimes.com/video/2010/04/01/technology/personaltech/1247467509736/apple-ipad-town-meeting.html

did someone just call Andy Ihnatko a ''journo''?

Blasphemy.

Em there is video of woz waiting for iphones and for the ipad. You gonna say that was a double?

You can get that whole twit ihnatko interview on youtubes twit channel also - if you cant stream that file.

Sad Professor wrote: »

The iPad 1 won't even be released worldwide until the end of April. And that probably won't include the 3g model. Then there will be several months of the usual "the demand is so high, we've no stock" bullsh*t that is still going on with the iPhone. Then Christmas starts in September (or is it August this year?) and the "no stock, pre-order your iPad now" bs will start again. Apple will wait until all this dies down before releasing the next gen.

Yup. Then they announce a new one next year, release it a few months later (allowing, in those months, for hype to sell the first-gen models as supplies dwindle). Also keep in mind it's likely that we'll have a new iPhone launch in two months, or thereabouts. If rumours are to be trusted it'll have the ARM chip inside and OS4 powering it with all sorts of Jesus-Phone-esque apps to cater to a more mature audience with more business applications to boot. This will compete with the iPad in some respects, so Apple need that market to mature too, and then get them to migrate to iPad2 next year.

I really wanted the 1st Gen iPhone when it was announced, but didn't have the cash. Then every yuppy asshole I knew got one. Now, coming up to 4th gen, I can finally afford one w/ bill.

Can't flippin' wait.