Slashdot Mirror
Apple's "iPad" Out In the Open
Reader oxide7 is one of the many to note that the heaviest speculation is mostly over (still waiting on the price, though) about Apple's anticipated new device (though there are surely plenty of questions about the device's hardware capabilities and the scope of its software and content marketplace): "At an event in San Francisco Apple released its anticipated iPad.'[It's] Way better than a laptop, way better then a phone. You can turn it any way you want. To see the whole page is phenomenal,' said Jobs." The (0.5") skinny: 1.5 lbs, multitouch, up to 64GB of flash, 9.7" screen, and a 1Ghz "Apple A4" chip (more about the A4 in Engadget's developing story). The iPad is closer in concept to an expanded iPhone (OS and all) than a miniaturized laptop, though it doesn't have quite as much connectivity as you might expect, with no 3G connection built in. (You'll have to make do with 802.11n, Bluetooth, and tethering.) Live coverage is ongoing at gdgt live, Engadget, and Gizmodo, as well as various others. Update by timothy, 19:58 GMT: Got the 3G part wrong; 3G is indeed an option. Prices run from $499 (16GB flash, WiFi but no 3G) to $829 (WiFi and 3G, 64GB flash). Should start shipping in 60 days (WiFi only), in 90 days for 3G. Surprsingly, no built-in camera.
Yep, this picture (http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2010/01/apple-creation-0128-rm-eng.jpg) pretty much spells it out.
The fact that they didn't even try to hide this during their usually precise demo of the product is surprising.
It is by my will alone my thoughts acquire motion; it is by the juice of the coffee bean that the thoughts acquire speed
It's LCD. IPS, to be specific.
Just buy a Verizon mifi and tape the fucking thing to the back, jesus christ. It's big enough.
Problem solved.
It is by my will alone my thoughts acquire motion; it is by the juice of the coffee bean that the thoughts acquire speed
I think it likely has as much to do with the impact of Flash's unquenchable thirst for CPU cycles on battery life.
they do have 3g. just announced
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
"There will be models with 3G support" according to Steve Jobs, so saying that it doesn't support 3G is just a bit, um, wrong.
Modding "-1, Troll" is not a proper response if you disagree with me. Try reason.
Notes from watching streaming event.
3G Wireless w/AT&T
$14.99 for up to 250 MB per month
$29.99 for unlimited per month
Discuss?
It has 3G on some models. $15 for 250MB / $30 unlimited. AT&T (yuck). No contract though.
But it doesn't.
I use a 1.2ghz Pentium M tablet PC running XP tablet edition (Less than $350 with a new battery). Why? because I can annotate PDF files, take notes with one note (PLEASE we need a OSS version of that app) and then at the end of the meeting I can simply email all of it via my corperate email. Those two apps are the killer apps most people that use a tablet professionally need. I can annotate the customers blueprints and send them and engineering a copy, Plus my notes in one note are easy to organize. All on something that costs less than this thing will even in it's el-cheapo form.
Unit is to start at $499 for 8Gb, $599 for 16Gb, or $699 for 32Gb models
3G enabled units $130 more
Data plans (with AT&T) are 250Mb/month for $14.99 (surely they mean Gb?), or unlimited for $29.99
Modding "-1, Troll" is not a proper response if you disagree with me. Try reason.
Nope.
Wi-fi versions are $499, $599, $699 for 16/32/64GB versions, respectively.
3G versions are $629, $729, $829, respectively.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Youtube serves up an H.264 version of the video to your iPhone. Not all videos are converted yet (google is massively numbercrunching behind the scenes to convert older ones). If the phone meets a video with no H.264 version it just says "cannot display movie at this time" or something like that.
You can use ClickToFlash on Safari in 10.6 to tell the Youtube site to serve the H.264 iPhone version to your browser instead of the flash version too - much nicer.
Exactly. Apparently this one costs $499. And it doesn't even have 3G (afraid of Nokia's patents?). Thats a major letdown for me, as I have cheap unlimited 3g and it would be perfect with a thing like this.
And the device is completely closed down like iPhone - if you want apps, you need to buy them from App Store.
I was waiting for the announcement, but meh. Not for me. I'll just wait for Courier.
I wonder if it could work with a Bluetooth keyboard
There's a dockable keyboard.
Here. It's not like this is GNU Hurd or something.
Not seeing it on the front page, but it's all up here.
Yeah summary mislead me.
"So $499 for 16GB of iPad," Jobs explained. "That's our base model. 32GB is $599, 64GB is $799. 3G models cost an extra $130. $629, 729, and 829 with 3G."
$130 extra for 3G. Geez.
I know this comes as a surprise to US users, but in many countries, you get multiple SIM cards on the same contract for no or little extra money. Put one in your phone, one in your reader, one in your laptop, etc. Nice, eh?
I assume you mean the QuickTime player because h.264 is just an encoding method, not a content player. Flash Player 9 supports h.264
http://www.apple.com/ipad/
--
I wasn't seeing this on the main apple page. Store hasn't been down today.
It's unlocked, which means it's unsubsidized. The 3G data plan is pretty cheap.
Actually, turns out it comes in 3G versions as well, so you can use it directly.
Wow, second post to say that, moderated up, and yet completely clueless. 3G means UMTS (if it accepts a SIM, which this does). UMTS is the standard that, everywhere outside the USA, mobile operators are frantically moving away from as they roll out HSPA (3.5G), which provides an order of more speed, or in some case LTE, which is another order of magnitude beyond that.
It also made me chortle a bit to see the prices that Steve Jobs was saying were a 'breakthrough' in pricing for data access. I didn't realise how overpriced data traffic was in the USA. You'd think that companies charging that much would have enough money to roll out HSPA...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I bet AT&T is getting a cut from every 3G unit sold in exchange for the availability of a cheap, non-contract data plan. Plus, I get the wifi-only version doesn't have a sim card, so it's not just the 3G antenna being added for 130 dollars; it's also the sim card and associated hardware.
On further note check the specs on Apples site. It shows you to be quite "clueless".
I think people generally refer to their iPod Nanos as iPods (not iPod Nanos). iPod Nanos aren't significantly different than other iPods. iTouch differentiates between the iPod Touch and other iPods which makes sense because it really is a different class of device--there really isn't a need to verbally differentiate between iPod 120GB and iPod Nano--it's simply your apple music player, or iPod. That's why I think most people use iTouch (and b/c iPod Touch is too many syllables to use every time you want to talk about your device).
I highly doubt Hulu or anyone else will ever support H264.
You mean except for the fact that Hulu currently does use H.264? Same with youtube?
From Hulu's about page:
Leveraging the H.264 capability of the new Flash Player
I highly doubt Hulu or anyone else will ever support H264. By the time they start to move away from Flash, there will be something else on the horizon.
You can watch YouTube videos on a Palm Pre because YouTube videos are also encoded in h.264 (the Pre doesn't yet have an Adobe Flash player).
My wife's netbook is half the price of the cheapest iPad, and it can play Hulu and Netflix Instant View.
This device is severely limited and would do a quick faceplant if it were not Apple. I don't say this as a troll; Apple creates a marketplace for their devices, and that's what makes them great.
This device NEEDS a dedicated app store to make it useful. There's nothing valuable written for touchpads right now - no decent OS support, no decent touch oriented apps, nothing. MS has been very lax in their support of touchpad devices because they've been chasing other things. WinMobile still thinks most people use a stylus on a PDA. They've ignored finger-driven phones for two full code cycles already. Most apps are desktop based (or laptop), so they're driven my mouse/pointer interaction. This iPad doesn't have a keyboard, so kb shortcuts that power users are used to are out the window. The lack of a WM app store means that practically anything you buy for a WM device is going to be $20-$30 per app from a 3rd party. It's hard to get a good stable of apps for less than the price of the phone!
It's Apple, so there's a single interface. That will get the accessory makers to make this thing connect to everything we already use (like the iPod is to car stereos...every heard of a Zune native interface on an mass produced aftermarket head unit?) By getting really good apps on this, people will find it useful, if not ideal. And ideal isn't what people want - they just want good.
Don't get me started on the cloud, though. I don't live in a major metro area, so finding 3G outside of my town is a bit dicey. That means 60-90kbps data rates, and I'm not going to get anything useful in realtime over a link like that. And if I don't pony up $360/yr (or tether my $1000/yr phone plan), I'm stuck with no cloud resources at all when I'm out of a wi-fi hotspot - which is practically everywhere. You can still use the cloud if you have local storage; you can't work off-cloud if you don't.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
The iPad supports 3G.
Here are the full specs: http://www.apple.com/ipad/specs/
It doesn't.
It will dock with a keyboard.
I don't know of any products with worse security records than Acrobat Reader and Flash.
Wait.. let me think hard... very hard.. Microsoft Windows? Nope, it was not hard at all.
No, Jobs won't allow his new baby to stutter, and multi-tasking is just asking for a less brilliant user experience. 1GHz on an ARM is going to be necessarily limited in horsepower, and dividing that between several apps is going to lead to poor input response. Besides, he doesn't want to hear you complaining that your 10 hour iPad only lasts for 2 hours because you left your folding-at-home app running in the background. :-)
I'm kind of amazed it doesn't have a gps. Google maps is going to suck.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Please show me exactly which flaws were fixed when compared with a graph of the sales records (preferably logarithmic, to help see detail in the early days), because I have this feeling -- well, more exactly a strong and precise set of memories as a person who was gifted a first gen. iPod and also held shares of Apple back in those days -- that you are completely full of shit with your revisionist history. Apple stock lagged the release of the iPod, however the iPod crushed the competition rather quickly and the later rises in sales was part of an overall major increase in mp3 player sales. The first gen. iPod was in some ways better than the following few generations -- in that it had the clicky-wheel to provide tactile feedback, and firewire which made it a good portable hard drive.
Where Apple spent it's money last year: Operating expenses: Research and development 1,333,000,000 Selling, general and administrative 4,149,000,000 Notice that they spent about three times as much convincing you to buy stuff as they did designing it...
Floating in the black seas of infinity without a paddle.
Pluses:
No HD Video (1024x768)
Actually, it does output 720p via a "Dock Connector to VGA adapter http://www.apple.com/ipad/specs/.
It can even output the video and show something completely different on the unit's on-board display...
Dude, H.264 is proprietary, and that's what Apple want as part of the HTML5 specs. Also, it's what the Youtube et al HTML5 betas are running.
Be smart, help people!
better resolution that iPhone
Actually it has a WORSE resolution than the iPhone (132ppi Vs 163ppi), the screen is just bigger, but not as sharp.
There's also the question of how you get non-online movies to it, doesn't appear to have USB or SD card the like so you have to transfer everything wirelessly from your desktop and then save them on the small internal memory.
One of the accessories for the iPad is a SD card reader - I would assume that this would allow you to access music, movies, ebooks, and documents stored on the SD card.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
The mobiles don't cost that because they're subsidized (I'm assuming US here). The iPad's data is contract free, and so it basically contains an unsubsidized 3G card, and so costs more.
But the iPad is unlocked out of the gate -- no contract and no provider lock-in. Whether or not AT&T gets a cut, these data plans create interesting competitive price pressure.
The PixelQi screen is not OLED. It uses existing LCD fabs and is very low cost to produce.
Video of an early prototype from CES using the PixelQi screen with a touchscreen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zy9fPc1yGSU
All of us wannabe geek with CS graduate degrees and years (13+ in my case) of IT support and management experience, respond with a firm, "STFU."
http://daringfireball.net/2010/01/apple_adobe_flash
Advanced > Subscribe to podcast... > enter RSS url.
Next question?
Here
Because Flash is so widely used and commonly loaded, it crashes more than anything else on the mac, according to Apple's crash-reporting data. It's one of the stated reasons why apple made Safari load plugins seperately from the main application in 10.6 (the other being 64-bit compatability), because they crash so much. And the most used, most-crashy one is Flash.
You can be sure that the solid state drive in the ipad isn't just a USB stick - it would wear out too soon as those cheap USB sticks are made from Multi level cells and typically there is a 10000 write cycle lifetime per cell. It is very likely that the ssd is a full blown drive of the single level cell type...with a 1000000 write life per cell
I wonder if it could work with a Bluetooth keyboard
There's a dockable keyboard.
and a Bluetooth keyboard... so, yes.
Your comment is very misleading: Sales, General and Administrative is not merely marketing expenses. It includes, among other things, the salaries of everyone at the company (thus the word general) and numerous other expenses. Therefore it is not accurate to use SG&A as a substitute for marketing costs. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SG%26A
$130 is the standard price for just about any 3G add on to a netbook/laptop (at least that's what Dell charges, and I think that may be only with a plan purchase). $4/GB for a reliable SSD seems to be about retail, about $3/GB at discount, Dell charges $5.10/GB for an SSD in their laptops. This is closer to $6.75/GB. Not really a huge premium over another integrator, given that this is a "hot" product.
You should be. indeed, be modded down as troll. I'm about the last person you'd find defending Apple, but the pricing really isn't far off from what should be expected. Feel free to argue about how annoying it is that you can't add the memory yourself, or change he battery, or that they didn't bother to include 3G/GPS out of the box. You could say they did, and for less than the rumored $999. They just offered a cheap, stripped down version like Dell does. You know, for the metrosexuals who are out of a job right now.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Really? So you have never heard of Microsoft and Windows.
I guess this is the old thing about forgetting the failures and celebrating the successes. NeXT, iPod HiFi, G4 Cube, etc.
Hi Joost, you confuse the iTunes for iPhone with iTunes for OSX or Windows. Subscribe to rss url is not possible in iTunes for iPhone or iPod.
Your video has been yanked (as expected). You mean this one?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8eF0y0IfpPU
"The display resolution of a digital television or display device is the number of distinct pixels in each dimension that can be displayed."
Like it or not, that's the definition. PPI/DPI/pixel density/etc refers to what you want, but resolution is raw pixels.
You mean use WPF? No thanks, HTML5 + Canvas can do an awful lot, check out the NES emulator, or the 3d Rendering, or GPS and mapping, etc. And remember, for millions of us, Silverlight can do nothing as we are unsupported.
Not to rain on your parade, but...
e-ink is much better in direct sunlight than backlit screens (especially if they are shiny)
Nah, "synergy" was a mid-90s buzz-word. Nobody buys synergy anymore.
We in the hipster computing community have moved onto newer buzz-words. What we want is a "cloud computing" turd*! And we'll settle for nothing less than that! Everything else you said was pretty much dead-on, though. I can't believe how many people are obsessing over this iPad even though it was a total let down, by nearly all expectations.
* Today, that is.. Tomorrow we'll pick up on some other meaningless marketing term and demand it whether it makes sense or not.
"And one more thing! With the iFece, your shit literally will not stink! It's the Apple-lovers dream!"
Actually it has a WORSE resolution than the iPhone (132ppi Vs 163ppi), the screen is just bigger, but not as sharp.
Actually, it has a better resolution than the iPhone (1024x768 vs 480x320) but a larger dot pitch. Don't try to correct someone unless you're sure of the terms being used.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?