Slashdot Mirror
The iPad Questions Apple Won't Answer
snydeq writes "Apple's reticence to reveal details prior to a product's launch is legendary. But when Apple extends this silence beyond a product's unveiling, historically this has meant that the product cannot deliver the functionality that analysts and journalists are asking about. InfoWorld's Galen Gruman lists eight key questions for the iPad, about all of which Apple has kept silent. Can you save and transfer documents to the iPad? Does the iPad support Microsoft Exchange email? Does the iPad support VPN? Configuration management? 'I have no doubt the iPad will be compelling to some users. But I now have major concerns that it will fulfill the potential beyond being an iTunes delivery screen that I and other industry observers saw,' Gruman writes."
The Register got it right. It's a portable TV for the 21st century. If you think of it that way, you will be less disappointed.
Ah. That's it, isn't it!
Remove any kind of meaningful interaction other than point and finger paint and the iPad is for the couch potato jury box. I hate televisions. The keyboard and two-button mouse are empowering! The ability to hack my computer to do whatever I want it to do within its vast range of capabilities is awesome! I don't want my media dumbed down. I don't want any damned games. I am not a mindless recipient who is too lazy and frightened to live and who just craves numbing entertainment delivered intravenously in the "Daily Download".
Pod people freak me out.
-FL
So Windows is necessary but Mac OS X isn't? How do you come to that conclusion?
As for running Mac OS X on iPad... why? It might be fun to a few geeks but it's absolutely pointless for the average consumer, which is what the iPad is targeted at. Not sure if you've ever actually used a hackintosh, but they're a royal pain in the butt to maintain.
As for Apple being a "take it or leave it" kind of company, you're absolutely right. That's how Steve Jobs has always been and how he'll deal in the future as well. Until he leaves the company, that's how Apple will be. They're not going to change their ways, because what they're doing works perfectly well for them. As long as they keep making great products, I'll continue to buy them.
Apple gear isn't a good fit for most of the geeks on Slashdot and the like, but that should come as no surprise. The average consumer isn't a geek.
If they are not answering, doesn't this mean that most of those functions are not available?
Apple never answers questions like this. And when some of these questions are "will the iPad support features that the iPhone OS already supports", the obvious answer would be a facepalm anyway.
This article is stupid. It reads as "waa, Apple won't give me a prototype, so I am going to throw a hissy fit."
Turns out that just because you can physically type an article doesn't mean you have any insight into anything that would make said article interesting or compelling.
- Vincit qui patitur.
You're speaking as if multitasking is something completely alien, complex and intrusive, which it isn't.
No, it isn't. It has been used in computers for decades. But fact is that many people find computers to be too complicated.
You're speaking as if Apple first and foremost had the user in mind when making every design decision, which they hadn't.
You are making sweeping assumptions with no evidence. You just assume that Apple went out of their way to screw the user, because that idea fits your worldview.
You're speaking as if forsaking things you expect is for your own good, which it isn't, but which is, on the other hand, the talk of a religious cultist.
The cultist-talk is getting really old, really fast, and only drooling retards resort to it.
Fact is that people in /. are most likely NOT the target-market for the iPad. their parents might be. Their kids might be. But not them. And fact is that many people find computers to be confusing and complicated. And what Apple wanted to do was to remove that complexity.
Don't like that? Buy a netbook and be happy.
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
Having never owned an iPhone, what does Apple do to restrict web downloads of mp3s from Amazon or any number of other online services? The only thing I can think of is that the ipod app is incapable of adding news mp3s to its index without itunes on a computer, but I'm just asking...
Apple doesn't restrict these in any way. Music is loaded onto an iPhone/iPod through iTunes so all you need to do is download your MP3 and then drag it into iTunes. The MP3 is then available to load on to your music player.
If your music has DRM or it is in some format that your device can't play then you would have to transcode it into a format your player can understand first. For example, people who bought music from a music store that used Microsoft's PlaysForSure DRM would have to find some way to convert their DRM files into standard AAC or MP3 files before they loaded them on to their iPods.
Sapere aude!