I Pad

[katoeylover]

whats wrong with a netbook?

[JaiDee]

(Snick @ Jan. 28 2010,12:23) Jealousy is a horrible thing

Jealous about Apple owners??

I feel absolutely sad for them!

they have to deal with short battery lives, over-priced crap, shit that doesn't work, bad connectivity in the USA because they have a contract with At&T and other assorted, constant problems. you been away from the states too long man, every single person I know with an "I-phone" [and really, isn't their name for their shit just absolutely gay?] says they can do everything with it except hear people on the other end!!

Horrible company, horrible products; hell, if I wanted something from them I don't have to be jealous, I'd just buy it!! Fact is I have an Acer notebook which is smaller and does more things than this newfangled contraption and my smaller-than-an- Iphone Nokia which connects to the world works like a charm and the battery lasts 2 days! My friend got the latest Iphone when it came out and said his battery lasted 3 hours LOL.

How are these clowns still in business??

[katoeylover]

I agree

Everyone here is getting I Phones, loading them up with apps they will never use, then moaning their batteries are running out halfway through the day.

I have a laptop. desktop, NEW camera and phone. Why would i need one of these?

[Snick]

I was in the states recently, and I was shocked how bad the mobile phone coverage was.
When I got out of the subway in NYC it took upto 20 minutes to get a signal re-established.
I dropped calls, went straight to voicemail etc... all the time.
Bangkok is 100000x times better.

But that ain't Apple, that's the mobile phone companies.
I've had Nokias and SonyEricsons, there is no comparison the iPhone is much better as an entertainment/internet device. web surfing sucks on a Nokia and SE

The battery does NOT last only 3 hours, if you do nothing but use it as a phone it lasts 2+ days.
If you play games, then 3-4 hours
video, maybe 6 hours.

My MacBook Pro is great, but its a luxury brand costing 2x what a pc costs. Not for everyone.

[pacman]

I think Apple will sell a bundle of these iPads on the strength of it being the latest cool device in a gadget-mad world.

I like the idea behind it, a personal portable viewing device that can be used anywhere but what it really needs to take off is a killer app.

Once Generation Y cotton onto some invaluable use for the thing, watch out as the world beats a path to Apple's door demanding one.

Apple's shareprice has been in the clouds lately, how high can it go? $207.88 at the close yesterday, can it really reach $500 as some predict?

FOOTNOTE: I just read JaiDee's complaint against Apple. Here in Oz, the iPhone works brilliantly. The phone shops have only now caught up with the demand, every man & his dog seems to have one & I have heard very little complaint. Certainly nothing like the problems they seem to have in the States.

Connectivity here for the iPhone is excellent, both for telecommunication & data, while Nokia have been relegated to "loser" status as borne out by their first ever financial loss back home in Finland.

Sorry JD, no amount of personal animosity can deny the fact that the iPhone is dominating the cell phone market in Oz like no product has ever done before. Nor is ever likely to in the future.

[JaiDee]

(pacman @ Jan. 28 2010,15:28) Sorry JD

no need to be sorry!!
from either you OR Snick or anyone else who likes that company and it's great for all you pro-Mac people who like their shit; I am just dead set against anything they make!! I tried a Macbook at the urging of my Thai friends back in 2006 or so, because they loved 'em; I absolutely HATED mine, gave it to my daughter because she liked it and within 2 years of buying it the thing was stone-cold DEAD. So I got her a Dell which still works great to this day LOL.

I swore from then on I would never buy anything from that company, and I won't....can't think of even one reason why I would. Every PC I have ever bought works like a charm, never a breakdown and never a virus; and they are cheaper.



Snick; '' the iPhone is much better as an entertainment/internet device''

See, I have a Creative Zen which has 5000 songs on it, with room for 5000 more, plus 30 or so movies; and I never go on the web unless I have to work or check e-mail from home, so those 2 reasons mean nothing to me.I couldn't even imagine surfing the web on a telephone, hell I can barely see the digits as it is and if there is anything so earth-shatteringly important on the internet it can wait till I get home. My car has GPS, so no need to pull up Mapquest in the car either.

Hey, Apple is great for you 10% who love 'em ...... but they burned me once already and frankly nothing they have ever made [especially this new thing!] makes me wanna run out and buy one of their products.

[Torurot]

"while Nokia have been relegated to "loser" status"

Once upon a time long long ago (in phone time) Motorola was the must have brand. Along came Nokia with a better product (at the time). Better book readers will appear that do not have Apple stamped on them.

[Snick]

just 'cause I like having the last word

Just wait another year, maybe two...apple will be the dominant player in the tablet/ebook reader space
other guys will have to compete on price. Amazon,Sony,etc.. will have to come down to $150 maybe $100 to compete.

For $300 you get a Kindle its BW and reads ebooks (in future,maybe 100 apps if Amazon can get developers interested).
for $500 you get a iPad, ebook reader, video player, gaming platform, internet device + 100000 apps
And as pacman said, there will be apps for the iPad that we can't even imagine yet.

For technical and business reasons no one will beat Apple. The iPad is powered by an Apple designed chip (they bought PA-Semi a few years ago), and the economies of scale they have guarantee they can make the the device cheaper than anyone else, lock in LCD+RAM supply, and developers will (have !) flocked to them.

I hope Apple hits $500 (disclaimer: I own shares at $100), but $270-$300 is the target I hear mentioned.

You might not like Apple's "trendiness" , or think they are overpriced (they ain't cheap !!), but if you think the iPad will be a flop you are fooling yourself.

[ramboz]

It's just a color 'ETCH - A - SKETCH' !!

DANNO

[assist]

SHINY THING MAKE IT ALL BETTER    
28-01-10  

NEW shiny thing make everything all better, say clever science man yesterday.



Thing have telly!Science man say shiny thing is telly and books. And good for seeing photos of you and everyone, and also naked people who do mucky things.

Science man say shiny thing 'changes game' and now all the other science men must go away and be sad.

Science man say: "All things everyone have are rubbish. Look! Telly and books! That will be £400 please thank you."

Nikki, a girl who has had 27 birthdays and works in a big building, say: "Oooooooooh. It do telly. I will see telly on it and make it help me buy nice hats.

"And look! It fit in bag where I have keys and little talkie box and red goo I put on face."

Tom, all grown-up man from busy place, say: "I very busy man who need see telly on big metal tube that take me to busy job.

"But look! It also play game! I play noisy game on metal tube and be happy."

And Bill, really, really old man who sits in chair all day, say: "It make words happen by pointing at it. Oooooooooh.

"I will make it help me say clever words to newspaper about gypsies and Pakistan.

"AND IT DO TELLY!"

http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news....-better

[fleeing]

Took the words right out of my mouth

Post of the month if not of the year.

[robbo]

yet another useless pile of shite for the masses who like to waste their money on gadgets they dont really need or just want to duplicate what they allready have in one other form or another
pile of shite
i have a mobile phone it makes and receives phone calls and txt msgs.it does what i want.
ive no interest in wasting my time looking at someone that im talking to on the phone or feckin web surfing asking jeeves or feckin googlin feckin facebook,on top of this i dont want to spend hours/minutes fiddling around on it trying it to do the things it should when there are more important things to do with my time...and money.
another pile of shit,one mans verdict.go away ipad inventor geeks and invent something new novel and usefull you twats

[JaiDee]

But tell us how you REALLY feel!!  

  truth be told I agree with your sentiments;  give me a phone I can chat on, a PC I can get on twice a day to do my mail and some work, and an MP3 player for my tunes and I am happy; the rest of the stuff out there is nonsense IMO, and I watch very little TV and have never been into 'gaming'.  Just being outdoors is the key; lying in a hammock with a good book, or walking/biking/beaching/swimming is the way to go, and they are all basically FREE.

[assist]

Stephen Fry in the iPad

iPad about
By Stephen Fry

January 28th, 2010


iPad About

Well bless my soul and whiskers. This is the first time I€™ve joined the congregation at the Church of Apple for a new product launch. I€™ve watched all the past ones, downloaded the Quicktime movies and marvelled as Apple€™s leader has stood before an ovating faithful and announced the switch to Intel, the birth of iPod, the miniMac, the iTunes Store, OS X, iPhoto, the swan€™s neck iMac, the Shuffle, Apple retail stores, the iPhone, the titanium powerbook, Garageband, the App Store and so much more. But today I finally made it. I came to San Francisco for the launch of the iPad. Oh, happy man.

Today had special resonance. In front of his family, friends and close colleagues stood the man who founded Apple, was fired from Apple and came back to lead Apple to a greatness, reach and influence that no one on earth imagined. But a year ago, it is now clear, there was a very strong possibility that Steve Jobs would not live to see 2010 and the birth of his newest baby.

With revenues of 15.6 billion Apple is now the largest mobile device company in the world, Jobs told the subdued but excited six hundred packed into the Yerba Buena Cultural Center for the Arts Theatre this morning. A few more triumphant housekeeping notes followed and then we were into the meat of it. Well, the whole event is available to be watched online, you don€™t need me to describe it. He picked up an iPad and walked us through. Afterwards I was allowed to play with one myself.

I know there will be many who have already taken one look and pronounced it to be nothing but a large iPhone and something of a disappointment. I have heard these voices before. In June 2007 when the iPhone was launched I collected a long list of €œnot impressed€, €œmeh€, €œbig deal€, €œstyle over substance€, €œit€™s all hype€, €œmy HTC TyTN can do more€, €œwhat a disappointment€, €œmajorly underwhelmed€ and similar reactions. They can hug to themselves the excuse that the first release of iPhone was 2G, closed to developers and without GPS, cut and paste and many other features that have since been incorporated. Neither they, nor I, nor anyone, predicted the €œgame-changing€ effect the phone would so rapidly have as it evolved into a 3G, third-party app rich, compass and GPS enabled market leader. Even if it had proved a commercial and business disaster instead of an astounding success, iPhone would remain the most significant release of its generation because of its effect on the smartphone habitat. Does anybody seriously believe that Android, Nokia, Samsung, Palm, BlackBerry and a dozen others would since have produced the product line they have without the 100,000 volt taser shot up the jacksie that the iPhone delivered to the entire market?

Nonetheless, even if they couldn€™t see that THREE BILLION apps would be downloaded in 2 years (that€™s half a million app downloads a day, give or take ) could they not see that this device was gorgeous, beautifully made, very powerful and capable of development into something extraordinary? I see those qualities in the iPad. Like the first iPhone, iPad 1.0 is a John the Baptist preparing the way of what is to come, but also like iPhone 1.0 (and Jokanaan himself too come to that) iPad 1.0 is still fantastic enough in its own right to be classed as a stunningly exciting object, one that you will want NOW and one that will not be matched this year by any company. In the future, when it has two cameras for fully featured video conferencing, GPS and who knows what else built in (1080 HD TV reception and recording and nano projection, for example) and when the iBook store has recorded its 100 millionth download and the thousands of accessories and peripherals that have invented uses for iPad that we simply can€™t now imagine €“ when that has happened it will all have seemed so natural and inevitable that today€™s nay-sayers and sceptics will have forgotten that they ever doubted its potential.

€œWhat can I do with it that I can€™t do with a laptop or an iPhone?€ they might now be objecting. €œToo big for my pocket, not big enough for serious use. Don€™t see the need. It€™s a solution looking for a problem.€

There are many issues you could have with the iPad. No multitasking, still no Flash. No camera, no GPS. They all fall away the minute you use it. I cannot emphasise enough this point: €œHold your judgment until you€™ve spent five minutes with it€. No YouTube film, no promotional video, no keynote address, no list of features can even hint at the extraordinary feeling you get from actually using and interacting with one of these magical objects. You know how everyone who has ever done Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? always says, €œIt€™s not the same when you€™re actually here. So different from when you€™re sitting at home watching.€? You know how often you€™ve heard that? Well, you€™ll hear the same from anyone who€™s handled an iPad. The moment you experience it in your hands you know this is class. This is a different order of experience. The speed, the responsiveness, the smooth glide of it, the richness and detail of the display, the heft in your hand, the rightness of the actions and gestures that you employ, untutored and instinctively, it€™s not just a scaled up iPhone or a scaled-down multitouch enhanced laptop €“ it is a whole new kind of device. And it will change so much. Newspapers, magazines, literature, academic text books, brochures, fliers and pamphlets are going to be transformed (poor Kindle). Specific dedicated apps and enhancements will amaze us. You will see characters in movies use the iPad. Jack Bauer will want to return for another season of 24 just so he can download schematics and track vehicles on it. Bond will have one. Jason Bourne will have one. Some character, in a Tron like way, might even be trapped in one.

There€™s much to like of course. The physical beauty and classy build quality, as in anything designed by Jonathan Ive. The shockingly low price €” $499 for the basic model. The contract-free, unlocked nature of the 3G version. But there are two chief reasons for its guaranteed success.

1. It is SO SIMPLE. It is basically a highly responsive capacitative piece of glass with solid state memory and an IPS display. Just as a book is basically paper bound together in a portable form factor. The simplicity is what allows everyone, us, software developers, content providers and accessory manufacturers to pour themselves into it, to remake it according to the limits of their imagination. I€™ll stop before I get too Disney.

2. It is made by Apple. I€™m not being cute here. If it was made by Hewlett Packard, they wouldn€™t have global control over the OS or the online retail outlets. If it was made by Google, they would have tendered out the hardware manufacture to HTC. Apple €” and it is one of the reasons some people distrust or dislike them €” control it all. They€™ve designed the silicon, the A4 chip that runs it all, they€™ve designed the batteries, they€™ve overseen every detail of the commercial, technological, design and software elements. No other company on earth does that. And being Apple it hasn€™t been released without (you can be sure) Steve Jobs being wholly convinced that it was ready. €œNot good enough, start again. Not good enough. Not good enough. Not good enough.€ How many other CEOs say until their employees want to murder them? That€™s the difference.

Slightly annoying that the iPhone autocorrects iPad into upas €“ which is a kind of poison mulberry I believe€¦ you can bet that omission in the iPhone€™s glossary will change with the upcoming release of iPhone OS 4.0.

I have always thought Hans Christian Andersen should have written a companion piece to the Emperor€™s New Clothes, in which everyone points at the Emperor shouting, in a Nelson from the Simpson€™s voice, €œHa ha! He€™s naked.€ And then a lone child pipes up, €˜No. He€™s actually wearing a really fine suit of clothes.€ And they all clap hands to their foreheads as they realise they have been duped into something worse than the confidence trick, they have fallen for what E. M. Forster called the lack of confidence trick. How much easier it is to distrust, to doubt, to fold the arms and say €œNot impressed€. I€™m not advocating dumb gullibility, but it is has always amused me that those who instinctively dislike Apple for being apparently cool, trendy, design fixated and so on are the ones who are actually so damned cool and so damned sensitive to stylistic nuance that they can€™t bear to celebrate or recognise obvious class, beauty and desire. The fact is that Apple users like me are the uncoolest people on earth: we salivate, dribble, coo, sigh, grin and bubble with delight.

No, I don€™t have shares in Apple. I came so close to buying some as an act of defensive defiance in the early 90s when every industry insider and expert in the field agreed that Apple had six months to go before going bust. But I didn€™t. If I had done I could now afford to buy you all an iPad. Yes, I do like and have tried to champion OpenSource software. How can I square that with my love of Apple? I€™m complicated. I€™m a human being. I also believe in a mixed economy and mixed nuts. I love our National Health Service and the National Theatre, but I also love Fortnum and Mason€™s and Hollywood movies. €œApple,€ Steve Jobs said, €œstands at the intersection of Technology and the Liberal Arts.€ This statement confused non-Americans who are not familiar with the phrase Liberal Arts (you can look it up here) but I think shows the fundamental cultural seriousness of Jobs and Apple which in turn explains their huge success and impact. He might perhaps more accurately have said that Apple stands at the intersection of Technology, the Liberal Arts and Commerce.€

You may or may not be in the queue for an iPad in March, April, May or June. Or you may decide to stay your hand for version 2.0 or 3.0. But believe me the iPad is here to stay and nothing will be quite the same again. You should know, however that plenty of industry commentators disagree with me. They have pronounced themselves less enthralled. It is perfectly possible I will be proved wrong about its enduring, game-changing place in the landscape and that people will gleefully rub my nose in this blog in two year€™s time. I€™m certainly not wrong about how soul-scorchingly beautiful it is to use though. And that, for me, is enough.

GoogleBless

Dear old Google. Sounds silly to feel sorry for them. But their text transcription service has a long way to go. I was asked to do s Skype interview for the BBC€™s Newsnight programme today and I gave the producers my Google Voice number. This Google service isn€™t available outside the US, but is basically a phone number that you can use as one number that directs itself to all your phones. It will call your handsets, whether landline or cell, send SMS texts and voicemail to accounts and so on.

Anyway, one of the Newsnight people left this message on my phone:

Hi, Stephen, it€™s Natasha from BBC Newsnight in London. Just to say I€™ve sent you two texts. One is to say that we could do it at eleven am your time after the launch, or any time sooner after the launch, or we could do it at midday as we suggested earlier. I, er, if you could text me back about that, and I€™ve sent you the details of Skype that you need to do too. If you could give me a call back. Enjoy the launch and I€™ll speak to you after that. Thank you Bye.

I€™ve transcribed it from the voicemail sound file that resides online on my inbox on the Google Voice site. All fine. I have also ticked the option for Google Voice to send me a text transcript of any voicemail. Below is their interpretation of Natasha€™s message€¦ it€™s rather endearing how hopelessly wrong the largest company on earth gets it.

Hi Stephen. It€™s Jeff from BBC needs in nuns. And just to say I sent 80 tax, one, if to say we could do it. I left in i a m your time off to go into any time soon, or the court and full we could grab me today as we suggested at. A. F. I. If you could text me back byebye. I€™ve sent you the details of skylights that you need to 3 T if you could give me a call. Bye. Enjoy the loans. I€™ll speak to you after that. Thank you. Bye.

Bless


Producer note: All comments both negative or positive are welcome but please bear in mind that if a comment is abusive, contains swearing designed to offend, is deliberately aimed at upsetting others or is troll-like, I will delete it. Stephen Fry visited the Apple event as a private individual and was not paid. Best wishes, Andrew Sampson

Horp says:
28 January, 2010 at 11:27 pm
Okay I just noticed the post above the last one I left. You€™ll not believe me, and I wont waste my time trying to convince you, but I hadn€™t even read that when I posted. I was responding to the various posts in response to my own.

I€™ve never been to Stephen Fry€™s website before today (to the best of my recollection) and only came here today after following various debates about the ipad on various public and private forums where I saw a link to Stephen€™s posting on the subject.

To my mind, Stephen€™s post stood (and stands) in sharp contrast to everything€¦ absolutely everything else I have read today, and a lot of what I read today came from the people who were there at the event as well. So shoot me for asking if I should jump to conclusions. Go on, shoot me.

I have an essential accessory for internet communication. Its one that I think a lot of you could benefit from. Its low tech, solid state, multi-platform, always on, and doesn€™t require a power supply. Its a thick skin.

To have a blog with open comments and to expect only agreement an sycophancy is foolhardy. To treat every dissenting opinion as an attack and to get upset, personally upset, about it, is utterly pointless and you are wasting your own nervous energy.

Let me reassure you Andrew, and Stephen too if necessary, that I wont be visiting your site again€¦ not because I don€™t want to or am opposed to it in any way€¦ I am a big fan of Stephen Fry€™s work€¦ I will log out now and not come back so that you can stop feeling quite as invaded and vulnerable as you appear to be getting.

I would advise that you take measures to moderate more closely in future to be honest. I still don€™t consider anything I€™ve said to be at all unacceptable or shocking and frankly there€™s a whole lot of horrible stuff out there in the big wide world that could come crashing here to rattle your sensitivities to the core.

Best Wishes and keep up the good work.

makepeace says:
28 January, 2010 at 11:30 pm
Dear Stephen,

Although I love you as a brother, I am afraid that this blog is almost unreadable on an iPhone, which is rather ironic! Specifically all is well till you get to the bottom of the page where the €œ1 2 3 4″ page numbers are pretty much impossible to click and there is no €œNext > € link as there is on the regular page€¦

Even stranger (for one so enamoured of the mobile browsing experience) you seem to have disabled the pinch-to-zoom feature so it is impossible to enlarge that part of the screen so that it is more clickable with a finger tip.

Just thought you would want to know Love the blog, totally agree on the iPad of course, people are so blinded by what they know, they cannot see all the things people will do on their iPad that they are not doing on any device today€¦

Andrew Sampson says:
28 January, 2010 at 11:36 pm
@horp Well that€™s marvellous, I€™m so pleased you achieved what you intended to and now wish to back out of the site having wrought a little destruction. I do not return your best wishes. Goodbye.

Lisa Spangenberg says:
28 January, 2010 at 11:38 pm
Safari for iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad has tabbed browsing now; it€™s just not the same UI people expect. You can have multiple Web browser windows open at once. There€™s a little rectangle with a number that tells you how many you have open; touch it to navigate/select between windows.

Goatherd says:
28 January, 2010 at 11:43 pm
An interesting point of view, as always. There´s no doubt Apple know how to put on a show, and have a knack of producing very beautiful designs, coupled with well designed (and sometimes ground-breaking) interfaces. They seldom produce anything new €“ rather pick & mix features from pioneer devices. Why has iPod become synonymous with portable music, if Diamond€™s Rio players where around 3 years in advance? The afore mentioned reasons help to explain this, but also clever marketing, sheer brand value, and the devotion of millions of Apple fans. Just like Harley-Davidson in the bike market, it doesn€™t matter if it under performs, doesn€™t have half competitor€™s features, it will have a number of people guaranteed to buy it for the status it confers, etc, etc€¦
Is this a sin? No. But I€™m in my early forties, and have accumulated a ton of junk over the years. I dream of achieving zen-like detachment where I see things for what they are, and only buy devices that I really need. In this context, the iPad looks like a bit of fluff, and can effortlessly be replaced & outperformed by a cheaper netbook. I€™d like to buy devices based on real features, and not brands. But it€™s soooo difficult to see straight, when everyone is this partisan.

JohnnyBoy says:
28 January, 2010 at 11:50 pm
I wasn€™t going to be able to afford to change over to a Mac for at least another year. Now, not only can I, but I€™ll have one I can use on my lap (unlike my, ahem, laptop). And they€™ve given me enough time to save up for it.

And I€™m happy to fall in with your line, Mr Fry. Whether the specs and experts suggest it€™s better to wait a while for the 2.0 or 3.0 iPad or not I€™ll always be at the front of the line when people like you are handing out such high-grade enthusiasm.

That other bloke earlier reminds me of a boy in my class who complained when having to walk in line in front of two girls that it was going to be all ponies and rainbows. If he€™d asked, I would have happily swapped places with him.

groogan says:
29 January, 2010 at 12:00 am
@jezebel is correct €“ your criticism of the Google Voice transcription service is unwarranted. The service is only available in the US and optimised for the vernacular.

JeffStewart says:
29 January, 2010 at 12:03 am
Such a beautiful thing and so few people who understand how it will change the game. So many unable to see beyond their own tech literacy, their ownership of a phone and a laptop and more.
The one thought I had again and again as I read the hype was: I hope it€™s cheap. And at $500 Apple has delivered like never before.
Apple has delivered what for millions and millions of people will be their only computer. The only computer they need. The only computer they want. The only computer they buy.
We don€™t need multi-tasking. We don€™t need a file system. We don€™t need E Ink.
What most of us need is a computer that€™s simple, so we don€™t lose files. A computer that, after a few years is just as fast and responsive and fun to use as when we bought it, even though we€™ve bought a load of apps to play with. What we need is a new way to connect.
Just think of the millions of text messages and tweets we send on cramped keyboards, or on machines that we watch and wonder at while they boot up. And then think how different it will be when a useful keyboard is there instantly at the slip of button, and we can share and enjoy so much more.
What we need, after all, is to be part of the internet, part of the greatest advance that humanity has ever made. To touch it and have it touch us.
And when the world €“ and not just us gadget geeks €“ realises that the thing that makes all this possible is a computer as beautiful and responsive and simple as those candy-coloured iPod Nanos that people went mad for a couple of years back, the revolution will truly have arrived.
Enjoy it. Remember it. In a few years we will know that, for all the hype, that dotcom booms and the social networking, the internet revolution really only began in January 2010, when Steve Jobs stood up at an Apple event and launched the iPad.

jTemplar says:
29 January, 2010 at 12:14 am
I will stick with my iPad Mini for the time being

Do give my love to Jonathan, please, Stephen )

benbro says:
29 January, 2010 at 12:16 am
Saying that Stephen has again produced a perceptive and delightful post always seems somewhat redundant, but it€™s true again €“ thank you!
Looking at the iPad (and can we all just grow up on the feminine hygiene thing please?) 2 thoughts come to me €“ the first is a simple observation that my mum and mother-in-law should have one, as after the huge drop in familial tech support calls when they were forcibly migrated from windows xp I can see me becoming redundant completely with such locked-down hardware and software. I€™m already looking forward to it€¦
The second is more work related. As a doctor in a university hospital I can see these devices going a long way, if the security issues can be addressed. I could sit with my patients in clinic or on the ward and show them their results, x-rays, or CT scans on a device with better resolution than the CT scanner they came from€¦ simple, scaleable, but with powerful enough CPU/GPU to allow scrolling through image slices at the bedside. If my patient is shortsighted, I can just touch the image to resize. This process is next to impossible on the current IT infrastructure €“ to the extent I often wheel my patients to the only worthwhile workstation on the floor just to help show them what is happening in there€¦
On an easily cleaned, wipedown portable device with a huge battery life I can get the blood test results at the bedside in ICU or the endoscopy suite. I can use (iphone enabled PACS viewers like Osirix) to plan procedures. The vast array of medical resource, from reviews to journal articles and the whole panoply of PubMed literature is searchable from an iPhone program such as the excellent Papers. I have ready access to guidelines, best practice, evidence based medicine as if the papers were on my lap €“ with better and more accurate recall than I ever get from my brain. The few weighty but indispensable reference tomes on my office shelf can be there in all their virtual glory. And then the med students would be there with their iPads of reference books, annotating and lining cheerfully in their tutorials, lectures, and rounds. No camera suits the medical market fine, thanks; and multitasking whilst iTunes plays rarely reassures the patients or improves my productivity!
So to those saying €œiMeh€ in various ways because of a lack of Flash, or a camera, I say think about how this device has the potential to revolutionise healthcare and education. Not to say it will, of course, especially given how mac-phobic my hospital employers are, but the potential is there €“ just like the initial iPod and iPhones, we can€™t always foresee the direction we are heading but I€™m sure it will be fun€¦

Rzah says:
29 January, 2010 at 12:28 am
Consider yourself bookmarked

Upon first discovering that the iPad was basically a big iPod Touch I must admit to some initial disappointment, this clearly wasn€™t the doodah I had been dreaming about, and this feeling was only heightened as I watched Mr Jobs walk us through what were in essence, enbiggened versions of the apps we cherish, yet are so familiar with from the iPhone.

It was only after thinking about it a little that I realised €˜a big iPod€™ is basically exactly what Frank Poole held in his hand to read the news in 2001, that Jean-Luc tossed on his desk every time someone disturbed him with some space trifle, when you think about it pretty much every time Hollywood has taunted us with a tablet it€™s essentially been a big iPod touch with a nice app.

I€™d imagine this realisation caused it€™s own share of headaches at 1 Infinite Loop, It would have been far more satisfying to sell a whole new concept, instead they found themselves having to pitch the unlikely truth that the perfect mobile experience is €œwhat we already done but bigger€

I held out 6 months when the original iPhone came out, I knew what it would become right from the moment Steve revealed it at MacWorld, I wasn€™t holding out for V2, I was hoping it would get cheaper (It didn€™t), still think it€™s the best gadget I€™ve ever owned and while that MKI iPhone doesn€™t have all the bells and whistles of the later versions what it does it does well and it still has a heft, a tactility to it that€™s unmatched by its more capable successors.
The seemingly obvious device is going to change the computing landscape and I for one can€™t wait to unbox it, hopefully before iPad2 comes out.

Kirk says:
29 January, 2010 at 12:33 am
@Horp

I think it€™s fair to disagree, and have an opinion, but frankly, you weren€™t constructive, you just turned it into a personal attack, without any justification. Stephen, did not warrant such an attack, and you, are a bad person for doing so. Simple.

GreyCells says:
29 January, 2010 at 8:45 am
@insertjokehere Yes, I€™m aware that USB/SD have adapters, but why? How long before they get broken off or lost? Something else to carry with you or forget to take. Gets in the way when you want to see the photos/video from your camera.

And why not spend an extra $8 on a low grade web-cam? I€™m sure it€™ll be on the v1.1.

It€™s the deliberate omission of standard interfaces that grates. There€™s no technical, design, ergonomic or (insert excuse here) reason for it. It€™s just making things awkward for customers for the sake of a proprietary socket€¦

[farangbah]

Reading this thread, somehow "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" comes to mind . . .