iPad: Nothing Creative
tbray.org
tbray.org
Adding a USB-attached camera is even worse: two more things to carry plus a cord to add leverage for stressing the adapter.
Tethering a peripheral (e.g. camera) via bluetooth or WiFi would get around the adapter part, but it still is an ugly solution.
I agree with Tim, Apple's target audience isn't me, it isn't him, and it probably isn't most of the people on HN. It is consumers, not creators.
I'm not sure I'm going to get a first gen iPad either unless I find five hundred dollars on the ground. But, I see the potential for getting one in the future. It's perfect, though, for my daughter to use for school work.
The iPhone and the iPad are just what portable devices look like after crossing the chasm: no multi-tasking (a massive number of people I know do not grok multi-tasking), minimally-complicated input devices, and obviously: no developer tools or software freedom.
Because "being able to run whatever software I choose" is only great when the user belongs to that n% (where n is small) of people who know what they're doing. I will be "selling" (as in recommending) these iThings to many friends and relatives, and at the same time, I don't think I'll ever buy them myself.
It's easy: a. don't buy one, or b. if you accidentally do buy one, then think of something creative to do with it.
It seems there's a large number of people at the moment who can't see them selves buying one of these (sorry, still can't bring myself to call it an iPad) for whatever reason, and they're working hard at mentally positioning those who may buy one as 'stupid', 'couch potatoes', 'dumb', 'fanboys', 'not creative people', 'want to be cool', 'gullible', 'buying it just because of the marketing' etc. I'm sure you've read the endless swathe of similar comments today. Why? Why is is so hard to accept that whilst a product ay not be for you, it may be just what someone else wants?
[Disclaimer: I'm in the group of those who probably won't buy one. I can't see a use case for it yet]
No way these are even remotely in the same space.
Are fingers the only way to use the iPad. Perhaps you could still use some kind of pointy device to draw?
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/tny/2009/05/jorge-colo...
And simply because Apple don't supply a stylus with the device, doesn't mean that you can't use one with it.
That stylus is just a passive device to touch the screen, the styluses (sp?) attached to professional tablets are active, carry pressure sensitive tips and usually have one or more buttons to modify the function of the touch by the tip.
There is a big difference between 'finger painting' and professional production grade artwork.
As always, a 'real' artist will be able to do things with a medium that others can only dream of, just like Yehudi Menuhin would be able to get more music out of a crappy violin than a skilled amateur.
But that would most likely not have meant that he would have abandoned his Bussetto for some piece of junk.
I expect the same holds true for people that use tablets professionally or for serious drawing, instead of using it to show off what you can do with advanced finger painting.
There just is no comparing.
The capacitive stylus has very poor resolution, and is difficult to contrast with the part of the hand that you use for support on the screen. It would be simpler to use an optical,sound, radio or inertial add on.
Wow! Your crystal ball must be a lot better than mine. I figure early adopters several tens of thousands, most of them people that want to be seen with the latest gadget.
Then they find out that it is cumbersome to have something like this because it requires a carrier, it does definitely not fit in your pocket, which was the reason Jobs was railing against netbooks not all that long ago.
And I actually agreed with him, now it seems he disagrees with himself.
The wacom tablet computers sell in the thousands because they are a niche device, the apple tablet for now is a niche device too, until the opposite has been proven.
This is not an iphone, and the iphone is not an ipod.
Iphones and Ipods are selling as good as they do because they fit their niche (pocket devices for entertainment and connectivity) very well, this device is in a completely different class.
EDIT: one of my Graphic design buddies says he's hoping to get one for mockups and day to day sketch work (and see how it goes for more hardcore design)
Not really, a low end wacom tablet sells for < $100, and will interface with everything between 'paint shop pro', and the gimp all the way up to photoshop, illustrator and autocad.
> (and see how it goes for more hardcore design)
If that works out then you will still have to implement roughly 80% of photoshop before there would be any significant threat from this to the tablet market.
Seriously, I hope your friend gets a kick out of it and I hope that he will be inspired to do great stuff but I really can't see a serious threat here. I can see the 'rough sketch' work, but no way this thing will be used to produce final artwork in the near future.
There are some vertical market applications that are interesting though.
Couldn't you just use the iPad as an input device for a desktop PC?
It's a device that is mostly geared towards consumption.
If there is going to be interoperability like that then I'd expect that to come from the same people that right now have 'jailbroken' iphones and other renegade stuff like that.
The day Apple sanctions their tablet to be used strictly as a dumb input device I'll buy you a beer.
It's a good idea though, I'll grant you that, I definitely would like to see that happen. Especially if you could use the bluetooth connection for doing it.
Car pc in the booth, use tablet as the user interface via bluetooth.
That'd be a nice niche. But I'm pretty sure it would require some 'warranty voided' hacking.
If some smart aleck manages to get Ubuntu NBR running on the 3G model it would suddenly be a whole lot more interesting to me.
There are a couple of drawing apps which already implement a good portion of it.