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Comment by viraptor | Hacker News Reader

> Think about students going off to college. They want an Apple product, but their parents don't want to spend that much. Now they have the ideal thing. They can go to college and someone may have a whacked-out $6,000 laptop, but the guy with the iPad will get all the attention.

Good to know that the main reason for having a computer in college now is about showing off a gadget with a known logo. And not about silly things like reading, writing coursework, sharing information, taking notes, communicating with others... (where iPad is almost useless in most of these cases)

Are we seriously at the stage where people want "an Apple product"?

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> Are we seriously at the stage where people want "an Apple product"?

Hahaha, way past it. Computers are complex products, and optimizing your purchase when there is variation among 30 different features (ram, CPU, screen size, screen resolution, OS, price, etc etc) is daunting. Shortcuts are taken, one of the most common no doubt being approval from peers.

one of the most common no doubt being approval from peers.

Another is buying an Apple instead of a PC. I recently replaced one of each, and the difference in the quantity of decisions and amount of technical knowledge required to make them intelligently was staggering.

Once I decided to buy the Mac, the whole purchase took about 5 minutes. The PC took hours. Once again, choice was a nifty double-edged sword.

> Are we seriously at the stage where people want "an Apple product"?

In my experience, yes. My younger sister recently decided that she wants to buy a new mp3 player, and she asked me for advice about which one to buy. It very quickly became obviouse that she only wanted me to provide validation for her decission to buy an ipod nano. I showed her several other brands (sansa, creative, etc.) that were about half the price for the same specs, but she would only say that those brands were not 'cool enough' and that she wanted an ipod.

Ya, I felt the same thing with my younger cousin. I was using my sansa clip and he was convinced the iPod shuffle was superior, but couldn't explain why.

My college had plenty of 'proper' computers that students could use 24 hours a day. If I was in college now I could easily see myself using the iPad for reading and note taking in class and then going to one of the workstations when I had to do more demanding work.

Yeah... there are schools that have all the equipment you need. But you can consider yourself lucky. In the first place I went to, there were probably 10 computers available for students in total. In the second place there were 3 floors of library full of computers, but it was still very hard to find a free one during exam weeks. It would be a mistake to rely on them being available every time you need them.

Depends if your doing something with comsci classes in it to. There has never been a time I couldn't get a computer at uni but if you didn't do comsci classes you can't get into those labs and the library has a lot but usually all being used around peak times.

my school has a 24 hour computer lab, but due to the budget cuts in CA, the library is closed twice a month, so the computer lab is always packed. I know (hope) that this wont last long, but it has been a problem this whole school year for me.

It is a bit disappointing but it is the case for everything. There was a recent onion article about that:

http://www.theonion.com/articles/report-14-trillion-spent-an...

Computers are not nearly the worst of it. People would spend much more on a status symbol of a car, or something silly like a handbag.

You can just take advantage of the situation by not buying an apple product and getting things done for much cheaper.

1. The Onion… is satire. 2. What's wrong with people spending their money on things that they like, exactly?

It was somewhere in the blog of Sun's former CEO: "all technology ultimately becomes a fashion item. It has happened to timekeeping, it is definitely happening to computers and telecom"

Is he seriously at the stage where he thinks laptops cost $6,000? Even Apple won't hit you that hard.

No, he said that even if you spend that much, nobody will think "hey, that guy has a cool machine". If you want people to think that, a "cheap" iPad will do the trick.

That's his contention anyway.

Are we seriously at the stage where people want "an Apple product"?

... when was the last time you talked to a college girl?

(where iPad is almost useless in most of these cases)

That remains to be seen.

It can be used for reading. I agree.

Writing coursework - do you really want to write more than a couple of lines of text on a device that doesn't have a physical keyboard? (you cannot rest your fingers on the screen without causing "touch") Same argument works for taking notes. I cannot possibly imagine working with a spreadsheet or graphs on the iPad.

Sharing information - you cannot run more than one non-stock application at once. I expect it's hard to share anything in that kind of environment.

Communicating with others - by default you're left with IM. Unless you buy an additional Apple-approved camera (cheapest laptops include webcams these days).

Doing any proper research - that needs at least a browser and text editor running at the same time. (unless you take notes on paper)

There are additional keyboards of course, cameras, etc. but why bother? Any half-decent netbook is much better suited for learning purposes than iPad. I can understand not being able to spend $6k on a laptop. Not sure what the situation is like in US, but in UK you can get both 3G dongle and laptop on a 2 year contract for £35/mth. That's just above $1k spread over 2 years (with internet included). Are we talking about education, or are we talking about expensive toys?

that needs at least a browser and text editor running at the same time

App idea: split pane browser/text editor. Automagically associate notes as they are written with the open web page. Bonus points: saving local copies of PDF's viewed with reference metadata.

Your other points are weaker - for long-form text, you can buy a hardware keyboard; not sure what sharing issues you have, I'm sure copy paste and email work; communicating with others - your phone still works even when you buy an iPad.

App doesn't exist in the standard browser. A custom app would probably conflict with the existing functionality of a browser (not allowed/not approved). Users will not be able to open other students' notes (.doc / .docx)

About the keyboard itself - if you have to carry your keyboard to a meeting with other people just to take notes quickly, I think what you need is a laptop/netbook really. (you also need a stand for the screen itself since you cannot hold them both)

You're just making stuff up. There are tons of alternative 'browsers' using the webkit view on the iPhone, so that won't be a proble.

You can already read .doc documents on the iPhone. Not sure about Pages on the iPad, but it might be able to import and edit them.

I'm not saying that the iPad would be ideal for a student. But you shouldn't make up arguments.

I'm not following iPhone / appmarket news, but last I heard people had problems with (for example) camera apps rejected because they duplicate existing functionality. If it's not the case anymore, I stand corrected.

About .doc files though - I can also open them in OpenOffice on my box. But many lecturers sent me documents which were displayed completely incorrectly and contain auto-shape created graphs. Most students don't care either. That means I have to find MS Word to read them anyways. I don't expect this to be any better on iPhone/iPad, unless you can run OO or MS software on them.

Pages.app (for Mac, at least) can usually display most .doc(x) files properly. The only issue that I've run into is when a professor uses a font that doesn't come with a Mac. And, in that case, Pages defaults to Lucida Grande, rather then Calibri or whichever other font was used.

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