Live from the Apple 'latest creation' event
engadget.com
engadget.com
It would be great if there were other tech companies with such well presented products and ideas that really made you say 'wow'.
Remember current Macs are more or less white NeXT boxes.
I run only linux in all my machines - but I think that until KDE can get a decent network manager up and working or UVC webcams start working out-of-the-box, I dont see an Apple like presentation.
- Looks like a giant iPod touch
- I'm not convinced the email is phenomenal
The touch keyboard is awfully slow. It is a very big step backwards, comparing to Blackberry or Android G1. And, I know, it sells under "don't expect that much it's a phone, you can live with it".
As for the tablet, a portable machine - something between a laptop, and phone, I expect an option to use the actual keyboard. Otherwise, it's going to be utterly passive machine.
Other disadvantages were, for instance, display which makes iPhone unsuitable for browsing the web, even in a bed. This is the lesson fully learned by Apple, though.
The proof will be in the pudding - but a device with a decent screen size, with 10 hours battery life, that I can use for browsing the internet from the bed/living room is great.
I have an iphone, I have an MBP, I have an Acer Aspire One (running Linux) But all of these are not quite perfect. The speed improvement of the 3GS over the 3G makes a big difference, but it's still not quite the perfect browsing device. My Acer never gets used - I agree with Steve Jobs that it's worse at everything. The MBP is pretty good - but it's a bit heavy at 2KG versus < 1KG iPad and most of the time the keyboard is redundant.
I want one :-)
Let others deal with the inevitable 1.0 bugs.
When dealing with new technology second best is best.
It won't be a business critical tool for me - I will happily deal with some of the teething issues.
Still want one ;-)
I'm an early adopter, so "The plural of anecdote is not data." But I don't need much more to want one.
Wonder if they have ever considered the idea and reject it simply for the aesthetics of having the simplest, smoothest device possible. Aesthetics is good, but if a small compromise can be made for much greater functionality, it would be a good trade-off.
I think some other companies might have come up with a device I described above, anyone here knows of one. I would consider buying it. A link would be appreciated.
The minute there is no middle man on a competent mobile device (Android is getting there), Apple could lose a lot of business.
Google is great at certain things, but UI is not one of them. Their user experience suffers the Linux Problem: it's perpetually unfinished and incomplete, and regular computer users just don't like it. (Techs love it though.)
So far, I wouldn't call what they showed "magical and revolutionary".
edit: still following the pace of the event, it really feels to me like there will be more. A little slow-down of the presentation, Steve Jobs will sum up a little bit what they showed and then, starts smiling and say "but there's one more thing that makes the iPad revolutionary". So far, it's really too fast. It would be an unusual rhythm for an Apple keynote. if it kept going like this until the end. (wishful thinking?)
2nd edit: I guess not… not that the product is not super cool and impressive. It's just that I feel it's harder to justify when you have an iPhone and a laptop already. The Kindle is threatened though.
Fox news had a very delayed high quality video feed which dropped several times. CNN had a feed which went to "back soon" as soon as I joined it. Ustream had a feed which was solid up to 16,500 viewers with good quality audio and awful video until it collapsed.
Ars Technica had a "LiveCoverage" plugin thing which fell over all the time, their IRC server timed out twice. Even Engadget who are by far the best site I found failed to load several times.
Twitter stayed up, but wasn't quite what I was looking for.
I ended up with a Leo Laporte laptop/webcam stream restreamed via justin.tv with unusable video and near unusable audio. They claimed 90-150,000 viewers at times, so well done to them.
What happened to 2010, broadband, P2P, multicast, memcached, cloud scalability? How can IRC crash with too many users? People have been shunting text around for several decades.
If multimillion dollar media press companies can't do this properly what hope does everyone else have?
I didn't want to see apps. I wanted to see packages. The NYT missed a huge opportunity to sell subscriptions just now, for example.
But I'd argue that "the first iteration of the mythical "tablet" was the iphone 3GS.
It's smaller form factor makes it the more exciting (and marketable) tool.
BUT - reserving judgement for Steve's infamous WOW moment (fingers crossed).
A dock, awesome multitouch, or something along those lines would help a lot.
My mother wants something that she can lie down on a couch with, read books, check email, be relaxed. You can't do that in the iPod comfortably.
Note that Steve's doing all this in a comfy chair. That's what this is. It's a comfy chair device.
But you're wrong. This doesn't have a niche. This is going to replace many, many niches. This is going to be what people buy instead of laptops. Unless I'm a hardcore user that needs pro tools, this will do everything I want a computer to do. And it will do it sexier, and sleeker, and it won't have any of the rough edges that my laptop does.
> 10:18AM "Now if I want to send a message, I hit compose -- up pops this gorgeous keyboard." Steve is typing, it looks very responsive.
I would be extremely disappointed in Apple if they produced a device that was supposed to be capable of handling email, and you couldn't type on it. I suspect they've managed to solve the multi-touch/OSD keyboard problem somehow, which would be neat.
They probably won't build up the same market lead they did with the iPhone, which has only been technologically overtaken in recent months.
That would have been a bad thing with a touch screen IMO.
The iPhone works because I can operate it with one hand. They effectively took the iPod Touch and scaled it up... this left me underwhelmed. If anything they should have made the tablet just a laptop without a keyboard... at least then I could dev on it.
The thing that made the iPhone stand out was that it was a completely new way to interact and use such devices. It gave phones a level of power that previously did not exist. People were comparing the iPhone to other phones. People are going to compare the iPad with other tablets/laptops and realize how limited it is.
This is why Apple doesn't do concepts and prototypes anymore. There is undoubtedly someone at Microsoft wincing every time someone says something like that, seeing as how they don't have a product to sell you along those lines in spite of being on their third try at tablets. (I don't mean that at a jibe at you at all--what you say is perfectly reasonable!)
People are going to compare the iPad with other tablets/laptops
True, but I'm not convinced that everyone will do so and that those who do will not decide in favor of the iPad.
I mean, it compares in some ways to smart phones, netbooks, laptops, gaming portables, eBook readers, and media players. Obviously it's not going to be the best at everything, but I think it stands a good chance of being a successful blend--Apple won't win everybody, but they might win a respectable share over from each. A $500 laptop or netbook might "do more", but is the battery life there? Is it pleasant to curl up in bed and read on? Do people want Windows or do they want the App Store? The Kindle DX is about $500. Are people going to weigh e-ink against everything the similarly-priced iPad does? Is someone looking at a $400 iPod Touch going to reconsider the importance of portability?
Toss in the ability to watch all the movies and the entire Prisoner TV show collection I have in iTunes... That's fairly compelling, I can see myself using it in bed before going to sleep. Watching movies with someone in my living room requires the big screen TV. But watching movies on my laptop is not a great experience because of its battery life, I need to have an extra power adapter in my bedroom and run the cord across my floor.
Finally, this could be a killer ebook platform. I won't say it's better than Kindle, but it seems like it could be awesome for viewing all the PDF and Gutenberg Project books I already have.
So... I think there might be something to the idea of a device that does a few things (browsing the internet, personal movie watching, and reading ebooks) better than an iPhone or a MacBook.
Most people have no need for Macbook computing power.
http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23/1816257...
I too am underwhelmed with it, but this is just the 1st version of a new /platform/. They can add all kinds of things later.
Also, I have good reason to believe that AT&T's exclusivity deal with Apple is ending around June. If that's the case, expect to see other data carriers run with this too.
Oh, right. You’re in the US. So you can’t :)
Of course that's the cell carrier's fault rather than Apple's, but it's still going to keep Apple from getting my money for one of these gadgets.
that is pretty impressive.
They can't use a mouse properly, the iPhone screen is too small for surfing the web.
If it gets hyped before it gets unveiled, consumers will get disappointed.
Where?
http://www.currentdirections.com/hardware/fujitsu/ipad100.ht...
I think Apple may have a little problem here in the trademark department.
Here's the Fujitsu TM: http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4004:kb...
And here's the likely Apple: http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4004:kb...
If the difference between two devices is screen size and preferred user interface (touch screen vs buttons) then I think one will have to yield.
EDIT: I thought those were permalinks. Sorry. If you go to the USPTO and search for iPad among the Live uses you'll soon see the Fujitsu one and one with many, many markets (along with one for bras, one for a medical device, etc). Though, check out iSlate. Similar filing info as the iPad but not as broad. Seems like if they were worried at all about Fujitsu they could have just used iSlate.
http://live.gdgt.com/2010/01/27/live-apple-come-see-our-late...
Their readers are technophiles who can figure out whether to be excited on their own unless it's not obvious. Seeing some of the stuff on the iPad isn't terribly exciting for me. They haven't shown the eReading capabilities yet though.
"I’ve made this suggestion before but let me try this again: Why don’t you fucktards just stop trying to predict what we’re going to put out? Why not just show up like everyone else, sit there with your notebooks on your lap and your hands in the clap position and just wait to hear what the fuck we say and then cheer wildly like a pack of idiots when we give you the "applause" cue? Is that so fucking hard? I mean, Mossberg and Pogue manage to do it, right? How hard can it be?"
http://www.fakesteve.net/2009/10/gruber-grubers-self-gets-do...
This was probably the most predictable Apple "new product" release I've ever seen. I'm not really thrilled about it, but then again I'm not really a gadget kind of guy
People from Boston have had ipaaads for years.
I can see an amazing play for the casual gaming market and taking a cut on the distribution with the app store.
Edit: The $499/629 seems appropriate, not too high.
Tablets can keep up with regular computers on everything, except text entry. Writing with a stylus is still imperfect, and so are touchscreen keyboards. Long emails, command prompt usage, and essays are frustrating without a physical keyboard. Apple is good at simplifying UI and interaction, so wouldn't they be the one to tackle this problem?
And what do you know, they didn't even try. This isn't a tablet. It's just an big iphone with more focus on media.
With a pure tablet like ipad (no physical keyboard) I would expect the stylus to be more useful especially for tasks like writing emails.
Handwriting recognition is also approaching perfection, but it's not quite close enough yet. Maybe for some people with good handwriting it is 'there', but I'm not one of them, and I have to stop and correct a word too often. Plus, symbols recognition is tricky, along with words not out of the dictionary, so command prompt and programming are not fun.
Yes, stylus + touch screen > touch screen, imho. However, correct me if I am wrong, but Mr. Jobs did not show a stylus once during the presentation.
I say it's a winner.
Think I might spend my money on a new imac and/or iphone4 this year.
That's the wow moment I was waiting for.
Apple brought nothing new to the table today. They didn't solve text entry on tablets, they didn't make it easier to video chat (or even voice chat for that matter), and they didn't come up with a new form factor that is better than a big flat slab of metal.
It's bad when the biggest wow moment for a product is the price and data plan.
http://www.engadget.com/2008/04/23/apple-buys-chip-p-a-semi-...
Now they got the whole world in their hands. Probably not worth it to get in the mucky memory market.
EDIT: Ahem, it's 2010 now, so that would be two years ago ;)
It's supposed to be an ARM chip. Motorola did PPC, no?
Also, Apple bought chipmakers PA Semi a few years ago. The Apple A4 CPU is probably built by the former PA Semi.
That's a fundamental difference and e-ink lends itself to reading much more than to interaction.
Also, the kindle has a battery life that this device can't hope to match and works well in various light conditions.
EDIT: I am a Kindle owner btw.. I even wrote a blog post defending it against the new Apple tablet but after seeing this I have to change my mind. I had no idea that Apple was pursuing publishers to this extent. That was Amazon's greatest strength but it appears that position is greatly weakened by this news.
Kindle-killer? Don't think so. If I had to bet on Apple vs. Amazon I'd put my money on Amazon.
That's true, but why does that matter for digital stuff? (I'm assuming you're talking about Amazon's ability to distribute physical goods). I don't necessarily disagree with your point but I don't see how Amazon's infrastructure is a factor.
What the iPad can do to improve on the Kindle is allow for interaction with reading materials. Note taking, discussion forums based on specific paragraphs/sentences in the text, real-time highlighting, audio/video playback, color photos. All a dream for a college student. None of this exists for iPad yet, but it'll probably come in version 2.0 of its OS. The best Kindle can do in return is its clunky text-highlighting, which isn't saying much.
So my point is, they're far apart in pricing and capabilities. Kindle will probably stay popular among book lovers, which are a fickle bunch. iPad seems like a Kindle with a zillion other capabilities. The iPad is to an iPhone as the Kindle is to a normal Cell Phone. One's very flashy and has some cool capabilities at a cost, and the other is cheaper but does a simple thing relatively well. I don't think they'll eat each other's lunch, but we will have to wait and see to be sure of course...
(1) $470 Kindle DX aside; I'd grab an iPad before a DX any day.
"Just like a iPhone. Except bigger so we'll make even more money!"
"Last time there was this much excitement about a tablet, it had some commandments written on it"
And still a locked-down platform? Color me not impressed.
I love my iphone but between email and browsing so far the larger size doesn't matter to me . . .
Reserving judgement for rest of presentation though. . .