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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.
Which means no hulu.com, espn360.com or fancast.com. Somehow Mr. Jobs is touting this as a feature.
Isn't this just a big expensive iPod touch now?
This entire presentation seems a little disappointing. Really, it looks, acts, and feels like a giant iPod Touch. Whereas the iPhone and iPod really created a need , I don't see that this substantially innovate to make it a must-have. It doesn't seem to improve on anything so substantially that it is an obvious choice. Maybe I need to see a few more videos, but I don't see this pulling serious market share away from Kindle's targeted market segment.
So Apple is basically saying that we should stop buying MacBooks and iPhones?
What an unfortunate name. One could conceiveably think that Apple is delving into the untapped market of network-enabled feminine hygiene products... What was wrong with the oft-rumored "iSlate" moniker? Also, what's the PRICE on this thing?
"So after all this, you make my case for me. To end this stalemate, you must die..."
I may still get a Kindle because of this reason.
I've lost all my marbles except one & It's fun to test angular & centripetal acceleration in my skull
No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
A nice solid entry and a step ahead in the evolution of portable computing. Although, the usage of the keyboard perplexes me. Using a keyboard while the screen lays flat just seems awkward to me..
http://jimasks.me/if-you-could-choose-how-you-would-die-what-would-you-choose-and-why
I was looking at the iPhone the other day and I was just thinking that it would be so much better if it didn't fit into any of my pockets.
It's LCD. IPS, to be specific.
So help me god this thing better have multitasking
To see the whole page is phenomenal
I'm not sure "phenomenal" is the right term to describe "seeing a whole page". You would think that we've never been able to see a whole page before and that Steve Jobs is personally responsible for some entirely new experience.
I guess that's what they mean by the reality distortion field.
You can turn it any way you want.
Good god, you mean I can pick the thing up and actually turn it? I'm so excited I'm about to soil myself! Will Apple innovations never cease?
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
I'm just waiting for Apple to announce the new iPud. Is that an iPud in your pocket?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Watching the announcement live I was struck with just how absorbent the crowd was regarding iPad presentation. It's like this product has wings. I wonder how well the iPad will handle those heavy work flow days.
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
It might be a normal iPhone but Steve has shrunk
You can use this as a mobile device by tethering it over Wifi to an Android or Noikia device.
Universities and colleges all have strong wifi coverage
wait for Rev. B!
Apple will sell millions.
Now that we've gotten that out of the way, can we move on now?
Steve Jobs is still on stage in the middle of announcing this thing. Couldn't the Slashdot article have waited until they've finished announcing all of the features?
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
I have both an iPhone and a MacBook and I use and love both everyday. However, I've never thought to myself, "how great would it be to have a 10-inch iPhone?" After watching the live coverage for the last hour, that's basically all this is. The OS and UI are basically the same, just upscaled and optimized in some places for the larger screen. As far as I can tell, there are none of the clever innovations that are typically present in a new Apple product. The only people that I can see this thing appealing to would be people that have a strong fascination for touch screens and people that don't feel that they can properly lounge about with a laptop (as exemplified by Steve Jobs lounging in a love seat during the presentation). I think the only obvious application would be as an ebook reader (side note: I nearly had a fit when they decided to reuse the term iBook to brand their ebooks). The presentation still isn't done so there isn't a word on price, but if it can't come within range of the Kindle and similar devices, I'd say this thing is purely novelty.
It actually has a robust power source; it is powered almost entirely by the user's sense of self-importance.
Wireless. More space than a Nomad. Lame.
they do have 3g. just announced
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
What was wrong with the oft-rumored "iSlate" moniker?
"Ip ad" doesn't mean anything in English. "Is late" meant Duke Nukem Forever for several years.
"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?
No WiMAX. Same storage as an iPod. Lame.
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.
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.
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.
Its a convergence device. As such, its designed to be a better netbook than the Kindle DX, a better eReader than an EeePC, and a better portable media player than either.
Its not a better netbook than a dedicated netbook, or a better eReader than a dedicated reader (though, of course, Apple will try to sell it as being better in both these roles than the existing competition.) And maybe not a better portable media player for most uses than an iPod Touch. But Apple's bet is that the perceived price/utility it will provide is better than any of dedicated readers/netbooks because it does a good enough job in all three roles to be a one-stop multirole device.
Sounds like a close relative of the ARM Cortex-A8 and Cortex-A9: the line of ARM CPUs specifically intended to run end-user applications rather than embedded control software.
On a related topic, people who pray for the end of x86 should be careful what they wish for, because their desire brings completely closed platforms and proprietary app stores. There is one reason why you can install software on your Windows machine without a "developer key" or Microsoft's explicit approval, and that reason is backwards compatibility.
You're an immobile computer, remember?
I do.
I carry around my 17" laptop AND a 13" tablet. In meetings I use the tablet, plus I can do easy markup of a customers blueprints with them looking on and making their own notes directly to the screen, then email off a copy to them and the engineer.
I tend to steal a lot of contracts from the dweebs that only carry around a tiny light laptop.
it's all about putting productivity over whining about carrying a little more weight around.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Let's see: so in essence what we have here is an iPod Touch with a 10" screen, and still pretty skimpy storage space.
Plus, it's only useful if you jailbreak it, once people figure out how to do so.
Yeah. I get the feeling this is gonna fly like the Macbook Air did. Give 'em 48 hours and people will wonder what the hell Apple was thinking.
The 3G version has both.
That Divinyls song from the 90s, "iTouch Myself"
Not seeing it on the front page, but it's all up here.
Unlocked, MicroSIM compatible. SOLD
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?
It's unlocked, which means it's unsubsidized. The 3G data plan is pretty cheap.
This is exactly what happened when the iPod was announced: slashdot dismissed it as derivative while Apple quietly reinvented the freakin' walkman. One thing Apple generally gets right is marketing. There may be nothing technologically revolutionary to most slashdotters in the iPad but the fact is it's already shaken up the consumer world even before it was officially acknowledged as an existing product. At the Consumer electronics show in Las Vegas this year the upcoming Apple tablet was a bigger topic of excitement than any device that actually existed at the time -- Apple didn't even go to the convention and yet they managed to have a significant presence there. They have been very successful in the hype department without even spending a dime on advertising. Technological merits aside they will sell a boatload of these.
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.
This thing kills the MacBook Air.
On the other hand, I guess we now know Apple's premium for running an unlocked operating system. (iPad: $500, MacBook Air: $1500; you do the math)
obviously no deficiencies vs. no obvious deficiencies
I see nothing about stylus support, guess I won't be buying one then.
It would have been a perfect device with stylus support, now it's just not for me (although I do see a lot of possibilities for others).
/Mikael
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
The deal with AT&T is the biggest news. Holy hell that's fucking awesome.
$15 for 250MB
$30 for UNLIMITED DATA.
No contract.
I bet you just have to activate it on a iPad, then put it in any phone that will handle GSM and use VOIP for unlimited data and minutes for $30 a month.
AT&T will try and lock it but I imagine that we can get around that rather quickly. I'd consider going back to AT&T for that price.
Most people here don't see past their own noses... Myself, I like the iPad except for the fact that Apple decides what I can install... but that's the whole point.
The iPad is a platform, not a device.
Most people just want stuff to work, and don't want to care how. Most of the time, so do I. I don't want my stove in the kitchen to require a friggin manual to do basic cooking even if I could patch it to boil eggs 15% faster I never would be bothered. It's the same for regular people with all tech, computers included. People don't want to know the details, they just want to tap on a movie/book/app/whatever, confirm their transaction, and have it all just work.
The iPad can run iPhone apps, and the SDK is available now. App developers will be falling over each other to be first with new apps taking advantage of the larger screen.
I'm very tempted, but still skeptical I'll buy this myself. The closed platform is an issue for me. But most people couldn't care less about what they can't do on a device like this, if they just can do all they want. Freedom is great, but how many of us have truly bothered to go under the hood in our games consoles for instance? I can do all I truly need with our Wii even if I can't run SCUMMVM. Hell, I don't even have time to play all the games I've bought.
The iPad will be a great example of good enough technology. "The internet", in your lap, on this amazing looking little device. With movies, books, music and apps to boot. Joe and Jane Average are gonna think it's great.
.: Max Romantschuk
Because the article was written when neither the price nor the 3G feature were announced yet. Apparently slashdot wanted to be quick to report the iPad, so they did not care to wait for further details.
Here are the full specs: http://www.apple.com/ipad/specs/
Slashdot's color commentary on important Apple announcements over the years:
iPod - "No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame."
iPod mini - "Nobody is going to buy a 4GB external drive for $250."
iPad - "It's just a useless iPod touch with a bigger screen. What were they thinking?"
Exactly my thoughts, they've done the Tablet PC without including the pen, the reason that Tablet PCs are so useful.
Our Uni publishes all the notes online as PDFs, i load up aforementioned app and annotate right on the notes. But i can also insert extra pages, copy-paste and insert diagrams. My logic coursework and having the ability to copy/paste/edit previous lines, as well as doodle without wrecking it is so much more useful than a pad of paper. The brilliance of a Tablet PC is the pen, not the fact you can poke it.
My 3.5 year old Tablet PC has a 1.7Ghz Pentium M with 1GB RAM and is now running Windows 7. It blows the functionality of this thing out the water.
So it's some kind of fancy vibrator?
...was a bigger iPod Touch.
I stick by my earlier statement that the name makes it sound like digital Kotex. However, it mus be noted that Steve Jobs may have his first Edsel on his hands.
Seriously, the ASUS Eee PC T91MT gives you more of a computer for a bit less than the cost of this iPad (I chuckle every time I read or type that). REAL applications, REAL OS (not a "gadget" os), REAL everything! It's a tablet and a netbook at once. Approx $450 gets you 32GB SSD, 1GB RAM, and Win 7 all in a small package with a proven processor underneath it all.
$50 more get's you less drive space, an unknown amount of RAM, and a gadget OS running on what appears to be a 2010 version of the Cyrix MediaGX processor.
Steve needs to take some time off and rethink this one.
Fifty watts per channel, baby cakes.
I heard there is a bug that causes blurriness, but they plan on fixing it with an iPatch.
Check it out.
Edith Keeler Must Die
What gets me is the price step up for the memory ...
To get +16 GB the price increase is $100
To get +32 GB the price increase is another $200
So basically, we are talking $100 per 16GB of flash memory, when I could buy a 16GB USB dongle for any other device for $10 ???
And the $130 extra for 3G ? A lot of mobiles don't cost that, and have a hell of a lot more than 3G built in.
As usual, another iRipoff, and the fanbois will lap it up ... fucking mugs.
I have karma to burn, so do your worst, it won't change reality, only the visibility of this comment ...
Wow, Apple managed to invent the netbook only a couple years late for several hundred bucks more! Jobs' comments said that he wanted to establish a new class of device between smartphones and laptops. It's as though he was unaware that there's been such a category for years, and that it costs a lot less than $500, and that it doesn't lock you into one manufacturer's control so hard you can't even change the battery yourself.
The parent comment is right in that a lot of people will probably buy the thing, 'cause it's new and shiny and Apple made it. But it's an obviously inferior device as I see it.
(Now if only Asus will replace my $320 lemon eeePC now that I've mailed it in for repair for the fourth time...)
Revive the Constitution.
I don't think it's going to be another iphone, the market for tablets is not as big as that for smart-phones. But, I don't think it will be an apple-tv either.
It effectively kills the "electronic photo-book" market. People are paying 70-150 for those things, that is now gone. I like the leather-ish case which turns it into a keyboard type stand and into a photo-frame/tv stand, that seems like it will win some minds.
One wild-card in all of this is that it is the PERFECT computer to give your mom since it's got very simple icon entry into apps, and not too many complicated menus you have to sift through. That might just lift it into another category of sales. For people who use computer apps for different and varied tasks (say photoshop, or full-fledged spreadsheet use) this is never going to be enough. But for mom or grandma to keep photos rolling on her mantle so her friends can see them, to e-mail the kids, watch a few movies, maybe play some games, this may well be ideal.
My take is that this is not really designed for slashdot readers, it's yet another device to expand the market for apple computers to another type of user by offering a simple interface and the most frequently used features. I suspect they'll succeed, especially since the entry-price is reasonable.
-- Equity lord of the Trill Consortium
This thing would have been far more appealing to me if it ran a customized version of OSX...
He wasn't building it for you.
OK, snottiness aside, it probably would be much better for the geeks out here (and maybe a few professional Mac users out there) if it did have a full OS X running on it. On the other hand, most people don't give a rat's ass about what OS is on their computer. What they care about is (a) can it do what I want; (b) if it can't do what I want right now, can I easily get software that lets me do what I want; (c) is it easy to use; and (d) is it not a PITA to maintain/keep stable. The iPad, as a closed environment with a ton of apps and good enough connectivity (OK, good enough connectivity if you get AT&T to get it's act together) provides that. Most people won't care what OS it runs. And, in fact, as a device that converges music playing, e-book reading and movie watching I think he's hit the entertainment-oriented market he wanted to hit.
And for those who want a full-featured OS, there's still the Mac.
That is all.
And it is over hyped. First by every blogger out there, then by Apple.
There is NOTHING new here, and much that has been left out.
Apple has run out of ideas, and have taken to eating their young. This thing will kill off the iPod Touch sales in a heart beat, especially the low end wifi version.
It might server for Grandma who can't quite figure out that laptop thingie you gave her last year with all those buttons and stuff. The only time she uses that is when you call her up and ask her if she got your email last week.
Its a huge disappointment if you ask me, but this time next year they can add a front facing cam, a mic and maybe Grandma can talk to the grand kids over it.
Wait till next year.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
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?
I completely agree with you. This whole thing just asks for "fail". The whole thing is completely unintuitive, has the same closed approach as iPhone and doesn't have any technical or usability options one would think would be good. Missing a pen too.
And no, I do not want to buy every single software from an App Store that I would like to use. I want there to be freeware and shareware programmers, and I WANT TO DEVELOP SOFTWARE MYSELF. Even Microsoft's tablets are more open than this. Give me choice.
I won't be buying this. Ridiculous prices to pay even more for the software. It's funny to see what will come out of this. This will most likely be a slap on Apple's face and they will fall back to earth from their cloud castles.
Kind of amusing that you're bashing a $500 device when your $320 netbook has been in for repair FOUR TIMES. People always rail on the interchangable battery thing, but I've never carried spare batteries for ANYTHING I've owned. If you're on the move, do you really want to lug around a couple extra pounds? They list 10 hours of battery life including video playback, which, judging by my experiences with a 1st gen iPod touch, is believable.
This thing is more a web-surfing super eBook reader than a true netbook, but in my opinion, it looks awesome. No, it's not a hacker's dream come true mega-portable computer, it's a "normal" person's digital media device. It's for eBooks, music, photos, the web and email and it's designed to do those tasks in a sleek, sexy, simple manner.
This happens with every Apple product announcement. People speculate and expect it to have every feature under the sun, cost next to nothing and be 100% open source, cure cancer, make coffee and have its only environmental by-product be rainbows. Sorry, people, this is the real world. This product looks awesome for what it's designed to be. It's not going to replace your netbook for hacking perl on your favorite geek project and it's not supposed to.
--Stupid Sig Here--
It's not meant for work.
It's a social signifier, meant for being seen pretending to read the Infinite Jest ebook in an overpriced caffeine boutique.
It's how a certain segment of the population can identify one another without having to expose their tattoos of improperly-used Chinese characters.
Think of the iPad as the tech version of eyebrow jewelery.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Pluses:
After reading the comments here and on Engadget, it just confirms that your average techie doesn't know a great new product when he sees it. So many people seem to be complaining that it doesn't have some certain deal-breaking hardware feature, yet they haven't even noticed the most important innovation: The software. The greatest part of this device simply flies over the head of so many people here because they have no understanding about what makes a computer great to use.
While I absolutely agree with you that the prices above the base seem exorbitant in comparison to the 'extra' parts you're getting, you're thinking of the prices in terms of construction, not marketing.
It's an annoyance, of course, but the simple fact is that Apple will have put an awful lot of effort into setting these prices: they don't want to sell for under $600 but marketing tells them that launching at less than $500 will hook the customers. Simple solution is to sell a base model at that price which fewer people will buy, but many will decide that they want. Once people have decided they want it and rationalised that they can afford it, it's much easier to upsell to the one that Apple intended on making all along, at the price they intended all along, by adding an extra $20 of hardware. Make them look at a $630 base unit and many people will write it off out of hand.
My thoughts exactly. The advantage of the Ipod is that it's small - making portable devices bigger? That's what people call a "brick". Yet it lacks the advantages of similar sized devices, most notably netbooks (proper keyboard, open and full computer OS).
This may sell okay to some Apple fans, but the hype over this is absurdly ridiculous and disproprtionate. I only hope it will return to normal coverage (as happened with the Air - funny how we never heard about that again, after netbooks appeared on the scene). Or I fear it may turn out like the Iphone - free advertising in the media, including daily Ipad stories (or more), even if it turns out to be one of the lesser seller tablets, compared to tablets that never get any coverage at all.
Apple uses glass in all their iPod, iPhone, MacBook and iMac devices. They switched in response to complaints about the iPod nano scratching, and the way those complaints translated into concerns about the iPhone when the originally announced specs included a plastic screen. Since then Apple has switched their entire line-up to glass, and routinely cites the use of glass in their environmental credentials. Given how widespread their use of the material in applications similar to this is, I doubt it is much of a concern.
If Apple were "blocking" Flash and Silverlight simply to preserve their media sales, they would be blocking any kind of streaming media, including HTML 5/ H.264.
Since they are not, it makes more sense that they really don't want any single company to "own" the delivery mechansim, especially if it is buggy, crash prone, or a resource hog.
Dear Europe:
You win.
You're better, and we suck.
We're closing up shop.
Sincerely,
The United States of America
P.S. You can now stop all shipments to us of your pricey cars and kitchen appliances.
"The more corrupt the state, the more it legislates." - Tacitus
And, in the end, the deals with Big Content will *still* make the Apple product a million times more successful than the open community's version can achieve, even despite superior feature sets. This thing's not for doing work on; it's a media consumption device (web, streaming movies, streaming tv, ebooks). I suspect the best use of the App Store on this machine will be semi-portable gaming since the iPad doesn't have the in-pocket portability of the iPhones and iPod Touches. So yeah... if this thing succeeds at all, it'll be thanks to Apple's ability to get its customers to hand over money to Big Content via iTunes, and the associated love that Big Content has for Apple.
I rather have Apple kill Flash.
If you're going to wish for something unrealistic and beyond their power, at least shoot for world peace.
Okay, so there are three possible visions of the future Web:
1. The AdobeWeb, where every page is just an empty shell around an embedded SWF. There is some risk that this may happen.
2. The SilverWeb, where every page is just an empty shell around an embedded Silverlight object. With ActiveX barely treading water, this is Microsoft's forlorn hope.
3. The iPhone Web, where every page is HTML+JavaScript and scales nicely to small screen sizes.
Personally, I like option 3 the best. And only Apple (and possibly Google, eventually) are backing this horse.
$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?
Wow, I'm a bit disappointed :) Yes, with the iPad a bit, but more so with the idea that this is Slashdot and barely anyone has thrown a spotlight on the Apple A4. This is an ARM, high performance, low power CPU with integrated graphics, and more importantly the first piece of processing silicon coming out of Cupertino. Regardless of how much i like the Intel Atom, i think this will be a viable competitor on the ARM front. Too bad it is under lock and key with the iPhone OS :p
Cue 2010. Remember how everyone said it was much easier to develop applications for the iPhone OS rather than Android because all iPhones had the same 320x480 screen resolution? Now Apple launches iPad, with more screen resolution, and they have two backwards compatibility modes. One where apps run as a tiny rectangle in the middle of the device, another where everything is upscaled, maintaining the same application resolution.
Uniform hardware specs are so much better. Right?
There is a theme to some of the comments which I wish to rebut. Essentially the theme is that Apple products really are not that good and they sell well only because Apple does such good marketing. The implied assumption here is that if you buy Apple's products, such as the iPod, you are just a sucker fooled by Apple's marketing campaign. Since I have bought Apple products because I thought they were the best products available for my needs, I see these statements as declaring that I am also a sucker and lacking in any real tech smarts. Essentially I feel like I am being called an idiot.
I remember when this debate was between Linux and PCs, and the Linux crowd was trying to argue that nobody should need to run Microsoft software to do their jobs or get things done. This was at time when you could not get Linux to legally read a DVD or use algorithms to do reasonable font rendering. Of course, these limitations were because of licensing issues, some of the most useful software productivity features were protected by commercial licenses or patents. The Linux advocates would argue that I should not be running such software in the first place because it was not "open" software. But that is a different argument. I have far more sympathy for the argument that running Linux is a superior moral choice. But arguing that Linux was a better OS for getting my job done was nonsense.
I am going to come at my argument in a backwards way. Instead of touting features of the iPad, I am going to describe artfully chosen limitations. The biggest limitation is that a developer cannot develop an application that can run as a persistent multi-threaded process. Any application that is not being used at any current moment is torn down and a new one instantiated. This is even more limited than the old Windows 3.x OS with its event driven model for task switching (for those you who don't remember -- Windows 3.x had only one running thread and all applications shared memory). Another limitation is that applications cannot use a shared file system or use shared libraries. You cannot build an application out of other applications or write applications whose purpose is to interact with other applications in useful ways. A user cannot even freely write code for their own application, build it, and run it.
For anybody who likes to tinker with their computers (I consider myself somewhat in that breed, I do programming for a living), this seems almost mind boggling stupid. But there is a method to this madness.
So what do you get back for these choices.
1. A very stable device that does not need to worry about applications doing semi-permanent bad things to your computer requiring a reboot. It is not stable just because applications have a hard time doing bad things, but the basic logic of behavior is so simple that you can "audit" and control it in a way that you cannot control a standard modern OS. This eliminates tangled logic scenarios that come up when you have interactions between device drivers, OS interrupts, glitches in hardware, and complicated applications. Also, it is far easier to write protections against hostile software, especially if you control the distribution of all software for your device.
I think many in the Slashdot crowd underestimate the importance of stability in a portable device. I reboot computers all the time because of glitches of various sorts. It is true that the OS is rarely to blame, it might be the device driver for my mouse, or a disk glitch, a misbehaving network router, or a bad application but generally such issues are fatal. And because of the complexity of the OS, the OS really has no chance at diagnosing the true cause of the problem.
That is not something I will tolerate in a lightweight portable device used for limited but useful activities. I have heard rumors that Android phones, once you start trying to run some of the same application that make the iPhone popular, have far more problems with various issues, such as unwanted battery run down for processes that
I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that, y'all, collectively, are not the target audience for this thing. That said, we should be celebrating, rather than bitching. Here's why.
Raise your hands, please: those who've installed LogMeIn on their mothers' computers.
LogMeIn is a crutch, and you know it. You know damn well why you installed it, too. It's so you can support her when shit breaks every couple months, or when she can't figure something out.
The nice thing about the iPhone OS is that it's tight. My mom had never used a cell phone in her life, and figured out how to make a call with my iPhone in seconds. The OS is like an appliance, reliability-wise. The target audience is users, not the nerd herd, and the interface reflects that. It's basically a $500 ticket to never having to support Mother again (or really any user that "just needs the basics").
If you really think it's just a big iPhone, look at the iPad interface video (from about 1:00 - 3:00). It was the first time I actually was like, holy shit, it looks like one of those futuristic computers out of a Hollywood movie; except it actually makes logical sense, yet retains teh bling. Unlike every other OS, multitouch is "baked in" to the iPhone OS, and you can really see the level of refinement in that video. All that shit that Microsoft wishes it could do with multitouch, this thing actually does.
No, it doesn't have multitasking or an OLED display or a webcam or a fucking JTAG header; those people can vote with their ducats and get an HP Slate. Have fun troubleshooting your wireless network in Windows 7 or GNOME using your fingertips. Ugh.
Wrists killing you? Not in 2 weeks. Learn Dvorak.