Why Is Every Non-geek In My Family in a Froth About the iPad?

[Husar]

People buy pictures for thousands of dollars for similar reasons, you can do more with an iPad than you can with a picture.
Like I said above, one of the biggest flaws is the lack of flash, without flash it cannot replace a netbook at all.

[Tellos Athenaios]

I think part of the point is not that this device is intended to be an immediate killer product; just a product that finds some segment and does profitably well. Just like the original ipods and iphones, and more traditionally the macs: something that sensible human beings would ridicule at the combination of price and lack of performance; but that the more curious side would like to at least try out some day.

And when you do decide to let curiosity get the better of you and you buy one, Apple will be happy enough to pocket a $500,- and say thank you. And you will show it to others, and if you like it you will let others try that too. And others will get curious; and maybe decide to let their curiosity get the better of themselves and Apple will be happy to pocket from each another $500,- and say thank you as well.

[Subotan]

Good God! It's a pyramid scheme!

[Husar]

No, it's a snowball scheme!

Also I'm a very curious person, am i in trouble now?

[CrossLOPER]

How long before the price drop?

[Vladimir]

That's one thing that disturbs me as I learn more about it. Apparently you can only get software through Apple's official store - which they boasted about in the presentation. Do Apple Geeks really like only being able to buy from the company store?

CR

16 bits-what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt.

[Lemur]

Well, this is getting interesting. Amazon has deleted all McMillan books, not only from the Kindle, but from the Amazon store as well. Amazon claims it is over a price disagreement on the Kindle, but that doesn't square, not with them removing the physical books as well.

Let's get ready to ruuuuuumble!

[Skullheadhq]

Why does everything starting with an i get hyped immediatly at announcent, it isn't of exceptional quality, it only looks good, but that doesn't do it for geeks.

Anyway, women and non-geeks will still buy it because it's fashionable


LOL, when I clicked technical specs, it just said how thin it is, why care?
Also, the processor is only 1 ghz and is thus useless for everything else then reading, and with 12gigs you won't be able to install much, and with 1ghz processor and a filled hard drive, the boot time will be long, very long.

Anyway, for performance it's a no go

[Crandaeolon]

According to most preliminary reports it's blazing fast at what it does...

Lastly, there’s the fact that the iPad is using a new CPU designed and made by Apple itself: the Apple A4. This is a huge deal. I got about 20 blessed minutes of time using the iPad demo units Apple had at the event today, and if I had to sum up the device with one word, that word would be “fast”.

Web pages render so fast it was hard to believe. After using the iPhone so much for two and a half years, I’ve become accustomed to web pages rendering (relative to the Mac) slowly. On the iPad, they seem to render nearly instantly. (802.11n Wi-Fi helps too.)

The Maps app is crazy fast. Apps launch fast. Scrolling is fast. The Photos app is fast.

...

But: everyone I spoke to in the press room was raving first and foremost about the speed. None of us could shut up about it. It feels impossibly fast. (And our next thought: What happens if Apple has figured out a way to make a CPU like A4 that fits in an iPhone? If they pull that off for this year’s new iPhone, look out.)

Apple doesn’t talk much about the technical details of the iPhone. They never talk about CPU speed or the name of the chip being used. They don’t tell you how much RAM is in there. Part of their vision for moving computers from technical culture to popular culture is about getting away from defining these things by their technical specs. So the prominent talk about A4 is telling. This is something they want us to notice.

Original source (one of many): http://daringfireball.net/2010/01/ipad_big_picture

[Skullheadhq]

If compared to a cellphone (what your sauce did) it is quite fast, but AFAIK you can't call with a phone, it's more of a computer, and compared to a computer the iPad is dead slow.And for the same money, you could also buy a (cheap) notebook which is much better.

[CBR]

Here is a video of it in action: http://www.slashgear.com/apple-redef...-ipad-2871864/

Seems pretty fast to me. I guess that is the consequences of having an OS and apps that fits the machine (and the newly developed A4 cpu) instead of a bloated OS that is not needed for such a machine anyway. It will be interesting to see if Windows Mobile 7 can compete with it. Android is another option although I don't know much about that one. The latest Intel Atom should be able to compete with the A4 or can it?

So has Apple created a winner? It does look like it for now.


CBR

[Husar]

LOL, when I clicked technical specs, it just said how thin it is, why care?
Also, the processor is only 1 ghz and is thus useless for everything else then reading, and with 12gigs you won't be able to install much, and with 1ghz processor and a filled hard drive, the boot time will be long, very long.

Bad comparison, it doesn't have a hard drive, it has flash memory, the GHz alone doesn't say much, it's not running vista but a version of the iPhone OS, my iPhone(3G, not GS) can run that with only 412 MHz AND my iPhone can run run games as well. So why would the same software not run on a device that has more than twice the CPU power? You're completely forgetting that all the software that you can get on the AppStore is pretty much optimised to run on the device (or an iPhone/iPod Touch, both of which are slower, the 3GS has 600MHz). Now of course the graphics cards are another issue but I'd expect it to have at least the same as the iPhone 3GS(which is faster than that of the 3G), haven't seen that mentioned anywhere though.

[Crazed Rabbit]

The Onion, as always, delivers:

Frantic Steve Jobs Stays Up All Night Designing Apple Tablet

CUPERTINO, CA—Claiming that he completely forgot about the much-hyped electronic device until the last minute, a frantic Steve Jobs reportedly stayed up all night Tuesday in a desperate effort to design Apple's new tablet computer. "Come on, Steve, just think—think, dammit—you're running out of time," the exhausted CEO said as he glued nine separate iPhones to the back of a plastic cafeteria tray. "Okay, yeah, this will work. This will definitely work. Just need to write 'tablet' on this little strip of masking tape here and I'm golden. Oh, come on, you piece of shit! Just stick already!" Middle-of-the-night sources reported that Jobs then began work on double-spacing his Keynote presentation and increasing the font size to make it appear longer.

CR

[Crandaeolon]

compared to a computer the iPad is dead slow.

Proprietary silicon, proprietary OS, custom software, no multitasking. Any monkey could optimize applications to run fast on that environment. And, Apple's target demographic is non-geeks; people who care about out-of-the-box functionality and, incidentally, "looks" and "sleekness."

[lars573]

Of course they weren't the first, but they were so far ahead of the competition in ergonomics and functionality that they single-handedly changed the market for those products. MP3 players had almost no market share in portable music players before the iPod, and afterward the industry exploded. People quickly started buying MP3 players in general, even other brands, because of the impact the iPod had. For the iPhone, there was almost no consumer market for smartphones before it was released. It was used a lot for business work, but the consumer market was practically non-existent. Now, consumer smartphones are huge money.

Netbooks and laptops are already gigantic product sectors. There's no market niche missing from that picture for Apple to exploit. So, instead they're going to be going up against the established products that everyone knows and everyone already uses. Which is exactly where Apple failed with Apple TV and the Macbook Air.

This is Apple's tablet PC/netbook. And COULD turn out like the ipod and iphone. That is Apple's creation of an "i" decive will take them to the mass market.

[Skullheadhq]

I bet there will be no overclocking the processor or any other tweaking the stats, amirite?

[KukriKhan]

This is Apple's tablet PC/netbook. And COULD turn out like the ipod and iphone. That is Apple's creation of an "i" decive will take them to the mass market.

lars573 nails it, I think. This thing is designed to fit in a purse, not a pocket.

[naut]

lars573 nails it, I think. This thing is designed to fit in a purse, not a pocket.

Must be a good absorbent then.

[KukriKhan]

Must be a good absorbent then.

You have seen that skit, right?

[Lemur]

Well, my brother, who is the only other bona-fide geek in the family, was so underwhelmed by the iPad that he's ordered a Nook. The DRM situation on the Kindle is a no-no (sez him) and the iPad isn't very good at anything. Besides which, after doing far more research than I will ever do, he claims that the epub format is the future.

[Beskar]

Lemur, do you know any good devices for the UK market? The kindle and nook look like both require the American market.

[al Roumi]

I love the fact that everyone who thinks they are funny/clever has knocked the ipad. Personaly I'd be more cautious about eating humble pie when the people, as in the link below, notice that "it do telly too" and it vanishes off the shelves:

SHINY THING MAKE IT ALL BETTER

[CBR]

Lemur, do you know any good devices for the UK market? The kindle and nook look like both require the American market.

Sony got several good eReaders and they should have ePub support IIRC. But 2010 will bring several 9.7 inch eReaders so that might be worth waiting if 5-6 inch is too small for you.


CBR

[Furunculus]

lots of 9.7" readers announced so the price will drop, but ironically it is the ipad that will squeeze ereader prices right down. so april would be a good time to buy; lots of choice and low prices.