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Comment by nir | Hacker News Reader

OP does have some point in that Wilson's experience is hardly a common one - first, buying an iPad just to see if he'd like it, second, having email/browsing so important to him that he's even considering a 2nd iPad just to make the experience slightly better.

Basically, the early adopters have now bought their iPads and are sitting in the terrace with a glass of wine reading emails. It's fun, but it's not "this changes everything", it's "this gadget is so cool".

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Just wait until industry & manufacturing learns how to use the thing. Then it will change the game.

The iPad specifically, or slate devices in general?

The former I'm not sure about, the latter, quite possibly. My thinking is that if I were running the IT department in a manufacturing firm looking for ways to bring these devices into my factories, I'd be giving preference to touch-oriented web apps rather than iDevice applications specifically. You retain a bunch of advantages of web apps -- easier and simpler deployments, generally faster development, more choice of languages -- and once the Android tablets start to hit, you avoid locking yourself into a single supplier.

I was referring to slate devices in general, although I'm sure the iPad will remain the sexiest of the bunch for quite a while.

I think android tablets will have a problem of having non-standard interfaces. There are already point of sale machines using the iphone because all iphones have the exact same bottom connector so it makes it fairly standard to interface across. All android devices have different ways of hooking up to -- I don't know why device manufacturers always like reinventing the wheel when it comes to hardware interfaces. I already own a few dozen different phone chargers at home, the only one that hasn't changed is the iphone.

Disclaimer: I write PLC & SCADA system code for a living in the industrial and wastewater markets.

Real time plant floor control/monitoring is not an unsolved problem and an iPad/tablet accessible web app was not the solution. See page 12 of the link below[1] for an example of what industry really works with. In some applications seconds can cost thousands of dollars, a limb or even a life. I'd never leave that up to a web browsers JavaScript engine.

[1] http://www.automation.siemens.com/salesmaterial-as/brochure/...

I doubt the iPad has an Ingress Protection rating suitable for most industrial applications.

http://trendydigital.com/index.php?main_page=product_info...

http://www.medgestore.com/products/ipad-leisure.psp

It doesn't mention IP ratings but I guess you could use something like that. I never would and I certainly wouldn't submit that in a proposal to a client.

Oh, they already do... check out for example:

http://www.pencomputing.com/

http://www.ruggedpcreview.com/2_handhelds.html

Ummm...what? Businesses other than Apple stores would have to be out of their fucking minds to tie any part of their business-flow to a device that is as locked down as the iPad. Maybe if apple decided to change their licensing and it screwed up something that Lockheed Martin or IBM was doing, apple would help them out...but me? With my 200 employees?

Sorry, Ryan! Here's a $5 iTunes gift card!

I do not understand this fixation people have with the iPad mattering to manufacturing/warehousing people. We have solved this problem many many many many times over. Intermec, Symbol, Zebra, and Toughbook are the name of the game, have been for 15 years, and will be for the foreseeable future. If I can't drop the device from 4 feet onto a concrete warehouse floor or parking lot over and over and over and over again, all day, every day...then it is useless to me and nearly everybody else in the manufacturing/warehousing industry.

If apple pulls the stick out of their butt about user-replaceable batteries, opens the thing from a technical standpoint, and builds a rugged version of it...then maybe (hey, they could call it a toughbook!), until then, it's going to remain something that hip kids with more money than sense show to their friends and something that technophiles use to read their email while sitting on their terrace and drinking wine.

i didn't say "this changes everything"

i said "i've changed my mind"

i thought it was pretty useless at first.

now i'd rather use it than my macbook

i thought was worth sharing

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