IPad, the destroyer
roughlydrafted.com
roughlydrafted.com
But I have to say I like the impact apple makes on the industry. Lots of people are worried about all kinds of pads being uncreative and mind dumbing because apple is showing them to that direction. But there has always been mp3 players that don't require you to use iTunes. And there has always been laptops that let you choose your desktop backround color freely, not just from handful of options.
So people, don't worry. There will be cheap and crappy pads you actually can open. And there will be Apple's iPad. There will be kids who get a cheap and accessible pad when they are young and they became hackers. And there will be rich kids who just play games on their iPads. This whole pad thing might change the way computers are used, but not the way people go on with their lives.
PS. It has always taken a couple of decades for any industry to mature. After that things like usability and reliability and ease or repair starts to matter to the sales.
iPad is really interesting because touch interface is so much more natural for us then mouse or keyboard. We just have to wait and see how we will apply this new technology in our life...
We know of examples were new technology of delivering media killed old technology. CDs killed LPs, DVDs killed VHS tapes. (In the same way in which cars killed horse carriages – there are still some out there but they don’t really matter.) Other technologies fundamentally changed just how we use media. DVRs did that to TV.
So just why do we see certain change but not other kinds of change? My personal little theory is that certain modes of consuming media will pretty much always be useful, independent of the available technology.
Delivering just text will in certain situations probably always be cheaper than delivering visuals and audio (no need to produce expensive visuals or hire a speaker), I also think that it just might be more effective to take in certain information by reading rather than any other way. Consequently something like newspapers and books will always exist (with or without the text being printed on dead trees). You can make a very similar argument for Radio.
The big thing about computers has always been that they can potentially deliver everything. Just text. Just audio. Just visuals. Or all that in any combination you wish. So, sure, computers (and that includes the iPad) might just be able to kill newspapers, radio, TV, books. But just as we know them. There will probably always be devices which allow us to read text, listen to something or watch and listen to something.
This is hilarious. Pretty good satire piece.
Try writing a 500 page document, complete with TOCs, indices, tables, lists, footnotes, endnotes, references, etc. in something like Google Docs sometime.
Handling very large text files is something the old unix tools did well (I can load a 500Mb log file (don't ask :/) in vi no problems), but most modern applications still struggle
It has certainly been the case even in the past year or two that the happless art history major with a senior thesis project due soon, but whose machine doesn't have the resources to handle the document or have to deal with unexpected changes in formatting because they switched which printer they'll be printing to!
obvious they should be using latex over word :p, but the point is that theres a tradeoff on where the abstractions are and who has to deal with them.
Seriously though, anyone on HN who regularly writes large documents and cares about their formatting etc being nice, should have a go at latex! :)
Why, in this day and, would anyone want a 500 page printed document? Something that would need updating as soon as it's printed?
The only reason I use 500+ page things is to read them from my couch, something the iPad (and the Kindle, the Sony and the Nook) can do very, very well. In fact, I carry about 100 books in electronic form with me on my iPod (which could be described as an "iPad Nano")
And any reader can do even better if it's not a monolithic 500+ page monster, but a neatly organized and searchable website.
One thing which I don't see discussed as much as I thought it would be in IPad press has been the absence of something like electromagnetic induction stylus capability from the device. I certainly know a number of folks who would be much more interested in the if it had such functionality (and thus actually enabled a digital analogue of the pad on paper note taking abstraction)
I'm actually very much hoping that the microsoft courier product (if it ever materializes), allows that sort of setup !
edit: turns out the most recent lenovo tablets work thusly! http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/23/lenovo-thinkpad-x201-tabl...
Text books? I think iPad is the third or so to kill text books or maybe Text books have multiple lives.
Brochures? Is he outta mind or something?.
(stopped reading at Brochures.)
I know this is toungue in cheek, but it's also kind of true and sad at the same time. I speak as a guilty party :/
The iPad is expensive not everyone will be able to let alone want to pay that much.
Not with the current App Store model. We absolutely drool over the potential of the iPad/iPhone/iTouch for our applications, but there is absolutely no enterprise support. On top of that, you can't take over the device, or at least limit access (necessary in some cases), so that's a problem for some domains, too.
MS and HP could take a big chunk of this market with the Slate, if it is accommodating to single use applications.
Odd that Mr. Dilger forgot "The critical faculties of hordes of bloggers and journalists."