Waiting on that wow moment, still basically just a huge ipod touch . . .
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.
They probably won't build up the same market lead they did with the iPhone, which has only been technologically overtaken in recent months.
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.
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.)
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?
That would have been a bad thing with a touch screen IMO.
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.
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 :)
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.
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.
They can't use a mouse properly, the iPhone screen is too small for surfing the web.
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?
that is pretty impressive.
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.