iPad: Your thoughts?
I know it's not out yet, but family was having a discussion about it last week.
From what I've read, the starting price for the iPad is [edit]$500, which doesn't include 3G cell capability. For that, it costs $150 more ($650 total,)[/edit] for the device and $15/month for service. You don't use the 3G for a phone, but rather for access to the net.
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First, let me comment about how people are talking about the iPad vs. Kindle. My wife and I have a Kindle, and let me tell you that it's much more like reading a book than staring at a computer. That means that you can read for hours and not get eyestrain. With that in mind, I think the iPad would be a bad ebook reader because staring at your iPhone/iPod Touch for hours would give you a headache, I would think. Not to mention the Kindle's battery life lasts for days and weeks, not hours.
Second, it's no more than a giant iPod Touch with 3G access. That's all. It's like a tablet PC with the iPhone OS. Why would any current iPhone/iPod user buy one?
...My Dad says that he thinks it's going to be a big flop. What do you all think?
From what I've read, the starting price for the iPad is [edit]$500, which doesn't include 3G cell capability. For that, it costs $150 more ($650 total,)[/edit] for the device and $15/month for service. You don't use the 3G for a phone, but rather for access to the net.
....
First, let me comment about how people are talking about the iPad vs. Kindle. My wife and I have a Kindle, and let me tell you that it's much more like reading a book than staring at a computer. That means that you can read for hours and not get eyestrain. With that in mind, I think the iPad would be a bad ebook reader because staring at your iPhone/iPod Touch for hours would give you a headache, I would think. Not to mention the Kindle's battery life lasts for days and weeks, not hours.
Second, it's no more than a giant iPod Touch with 3G access. That's all. It's like a tablet PC with the iPhone OS. Why would any current iPhone/iPod user buy one?
...My Dad says that he thinks it's going to be a big flop. What do you all think?
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The iPad might wobble out of the gate, but I think pick-up-and-use computers which can also modularly couple with other things and serve other functions, like hte iPad, have a shot at being a big thing. That's my opinion at least.
Overall for me I'd say that the iPad Exactly Meets Expectation
I think an IPad is good for people who can't use or doesn't want use an IPhone or IPod (If the IPad address the complain they had with the IPhone, that it), and I think that actually is what Apple want.
So then it's a Big more Expensive iPhone that makes calls if you download an App.
Something in that Sentence isn't right.
Sure, someone could maybe use that in their house on a table, but could you imagine someone walking down the street, talking into an iPad as they hold it up to their face? The thing is 9.5"x 7.5"...
I can imagine it, and in my imagination it looks retarded.
A coworker of my husband's was interested in getting an ebook reader, but she said the iPad might work better for her because she wants to highlight stuff (she want eto use it with etextbooks mostly).
I made a comment that she'd be better off getting an ebook reader that has that option (and they exist, even some with the option to take notes and stuff).
So it's funny you should start a thread about the iPad and compare it to ebook readers as well.
Anyway, I have no interest in the stuff but I'm not sure it will fail. Apple has a good history of selling expensive stuff with less functionality than the cheaper options.
That being said, I'm not a big fan of having something that is meant to resemble a tablet computer, but isn't able to do multitasking. Apart from that the missing flash thing kind of scares me off. I don't care if its the worst that ever happened to the internet. It is part of the internet.
Last but not least if the iPad works like the iPod Touch or the iPhone you have to synch your Apps through iTunes, which also means that Apple will have, once again, complete control over what they want on their gadget and what not.
Time and dropping prices will tell if its awesome or not I guess.
1) Flash on an apple device has always sucked, adobe needs to get a decent unix team together before they expect to be developing for portable apple computers.
2) Most people only ever use flash for youtube, and
3) all the good flash games are Apps anyway.
I will be a happy human being once laypeople understand that flash is capable of so much more than showing video on websites or small minigames.
I will be a happy human being once 80% of the stuff commonly built in flash is moved over to html 5!
Since I have no idea what I talk about, I quote something of the internet which I heard from a few people.
Sure, it could be them being butthurt that S.J. trashtalks "their" thing, but on the other side it could hold a grain of truth as well.
What's happened? For some reason some people, apparently from their computers at work, cannot enter to the page because they can't install flash in their computers (Mostly because the politics at work don't allow them) and I had to change all the neat effects with some Javascripts I found and some imitiation with CSS.
And that's why I mostly avoid use Flash in some webpages right now: It's reducing the ammount of people who can watch the site, and, considering that page was been using as well to promote the initiative to possible Sponsors, that become critical. It's true you can do a ton of neat stuff with flash, but, in some cases like this one, is just bothersome. (And they don't have to install the javascript console, it's comes with the browser!)
You can't do very complicated games in HTML right now, but people are doing things very reminiscent of early Flash games using HTML 5. I don't expect HTML to fully replace Flash, but I do expect Flash's prominence on the web to lessen significantly, and for it to take up a sort of hybridized place between the web and desktop apps (which seems to be where Adobe is trying to take it as well, with things like Adobe Air).
Some of the ideas of the iPad are neat, but the implentation leaves a lot to be desired, I think. I want multitasking, I want a(relatively) open platform, and I want the internet to "just work", without relying on the web to change for my sake.
I, for one, would love to play Sam & Max on a tablet like the iPad. And with Telltale's recent wholehearted support for the Mac, surely iPad versions of Telltale games must be a realistic possibility when the iPad user base picks up?
It seems you got your wish granted
I agree with this. But I also think that in order to support the ideas for further development, there has to be support for the early implementation of those ideas.
There's nothing terrible about trying out something unknown. If they don't like it, they can sell it. At least they're not saying, "Because it's magical!"
I get the same sort of answers when I try asking people why they liked Avatar.
I just thought of an idea for a (potentially damaging) app for it; a coaster app that lights up a ring around the base of your drink. Think about it.
What? Canabalt was designed as an iPhone game. I play it there all the time.
Flash isn't supported within the iPhone OS's web browser, but people use Flash to compile standalone games for it. Canabalt was one of the first.
Why then wouldn't someone buy a small tablet pc instead of an iPad? That would make a heck of a lot more sense.
The recent HTML5 Quake2 "port" relies on WebGL for the rendering (i.e. it's using OpenGL) so it's performance is no big surprise.
The flash DOOM port does the rendering all by itself, like the original DOS version did, with no hardware acceleration at all... and still manages to run at 30 FPS here, so "can barely run the original DOOM" is quite inaccurate.
np: Bomb The Bass - Beat Dat (Freestyle Scratch Mix) (Into The Dragon)
Here's my point, simply put: Tablet PCs suck.
Windows 7 (or vista, or XP) was never meant to be run on a multi-touch interface. On that note, 99.9% of Windows Applications weren't meant to be run on a multi-touch interface. The iPhone OS (and every last one of it's programs) was designed from the ground up for enhanced multi-touch manipulation of it's features. I've used a Windows Tablet PC before, and it was the most unpleasant computing experience I have ever had.
EDIT: With an attitude like that, it's hard for the technology industry to evolve. Do you remember when the iMac originally came out? It was very controversial because it lacked a Floppy Disc drive. Now, weather this was a convenience or an inconvenience is irrelevant, the point is: Apple dropped the format of the past (in this case, Flash) for the format of the future, Compact Disc (in this case, HTML5). And for those who say I'm comparing "apples to oranges", HTML5 and Flash both play games and web video. The only difference for me is that Flash sucks on Apple products, end of story.
I don't have a floppy drive in my tower now, no. I have a USB floppy drive, but not an internal floppy drive. Why? The world adapted to not need floppy drives, NOT because Apple paved a golden future for every one of us, praise be to the Apple, but because the CD tech was better and eventually reached the point where it had a big enough market share that it was profitable.
When will all the Homestar toons go to HTML5? When will Newgroiunds switch to an all-HTML5 site? When will flash all of the Flash-based menu navigation sites that litter the web completely disappear?
All of my computers support Flash and HTML5. My browsers are ready for both types of content. Chrome OS is ready for it. Almost all other commercial tablets are ready for both types of content.
Apple is fighting the battle of "World, change to MY product's design". You generally can't get away with that, but it's Apple, so who knows? But out here, in the real world, when I go to a website and it doesn't work because there is no Flash support, that doesn't feel like innovation. That feels like Apple locking me out of another thing because it's not good for their bottom line.
I'm not going to buy a toaster that only toasts future bread. Future bread may be AWESOME, and there may even be a few companies making future bread. But if I go into my grocery store and the stock of future bread is intermittent and unreliable, with only promises of "big things" in the future, I'd rather have a toaster that could handle the bread I can get from my grocery store NOW.
Technology moves forward fairly naturally, as cost goes down and availability goes up. No slapping consumers on the wrist and saying "You don't want that" required.
The best place to be on either of these graphs is generally Early or Late majority. At some point along that top of the curve, the technology is heavily supported, costs and has less problems overall. If you're going to adopt the tech early, don't pretend the still-prevalent tech does not exist. The early adopters that pretend floppies didn't exist or were stupid were in some trouble when someone wanted to transfer files via floppy, which still was the norm and had been the norm for ages. And what of people who adopted early to Betamax? To HD-DVD? To Laserdisc? To...oh, that one video format where you slid in the cartridge thing and the disc came out into the player? Whatever that was called. There was a first-generation iPhone, what happened a year later? New tech categories are at the very least risky in the short term.
Have you ever read anything by George Saunders? I reckon he would LOVE that paragraph.
I first read Pastoralia by him but it was this that really won me over.
http://www.amazon.com/Persuasion-Nation-George-Saunders/dp/159448242X/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1270488585&sr=8-2
You can read a few pages there.
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Why not just get something that does Flash, you know, well?
You don't make a toaster that doesn't fit bagels because you assume bagels will be phased out for a breakfast item that accomplishes the same general goal of a bagel. People will still want to eat bagels while the SupahBagel™ catches on. People who wake up every morning to eat a Sun-Dried Tomato Bagel aren't going to like waiting for the flavor to start being produced in SupahBagels™. Also: yes, I missed breakfast this morning.
A device whose primary purpose is to experience web content should not be locked out of the vast majority of video and games on the web. Flash is a currently used development platform, and it has been used for a large variety of the web's most famous and consistently-visited content. HTML5 may be the future, but Flash is the present, and the idea that Apple is going to be the shining knight that will smite the evil Flash dragon and fill the entire web with the glorious riches of HTML5, leading to world peace and happiness and glory for all...the idea seems somewhat unrealistic.
The current web is not designed with HTML5, and it is only now starting to get its first big steps. I don't even need to know or care WHY Flash is not supported on the iPad. I don't need to know WHY Apple decided to lock me out of my means of watching television shows(Hulu), deciding that I should instead go to iTunes and give them a 30% cut of a paid purchase for the same episode that I can view for free on Flash-compatible devices.
If Flash is so horrible on Apple devices, I see no reason to own one until either Flash DOES work on them, or Flash is as phased out as the floppy disk. Either way, the iPad is a horrible device NOW, and why should I care what the reason is? Why should the reason convince me that I don't need 50% of the sites I regularly visit? I'd rather wait for a web-centric device that works with the WHOLE internet, not the parts Apple doesn't find harmful to their revenue stream.
Apple isn't the one doing flash wrong, Adobe is. How is it Apples fault that Adobe doesn't know how to program properly on Apple hardware? That's nonsense. Rather than delay the release of the iPad for a few months while Adobe works on something that probably won't work right, how about apple makes a bold decision like not adding flash support? It makes perfect sense.
And you keep implying that the internet has to change for the ipad. And guess what? It will! So many websites have become iPhone-compatible in the last few years, and it will happen to the iPad as well.