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Apple iPad Reviewed
adeelarshad82 writes "Since the iPad's initial introduction back in January, many of us still wonder why we should drop hundreds of dollars for what is termed as a large iPod. Missing features like support for multitasking, a built-in camera for video chats, and Flash support in Safari only add to the dilemma. However, a recently published review of the iPad starts to clear up these doubts. To begin with, the iPad is packing some real quality gear under the hood. Even though the in-house-designed 1GHz A4 chip got little official comment from Apple, the touch screen's instantaneous responses prove that it is outstandingly fast. Furthermore, the iPad runs iPhone OS 3.2, and is currently the only device that runs this version of the operating system. iPad's graphics capabilities come from a PowerVR SGX GPU, similar to the one found in the iPhone 3GS and iPod Touch. It can render about 28 million polygons/second, which is more powerful than the Qualcomm Snapdragon found in devices like the HTC HD2. Also, iPad's extraordinary battery life is not just a myth. According to the lab tests, the battery netted a respectable 9 hours and 25 minutes, very close to Apple's claims of 10 hours."
"Missing features like support for multitasking, a built-in camera for video chats, and Flash support"... "the iPad runs iPhone OS 3.2" ... "PowerVR SGX GPU, similar to the one found in the iPhone 3GS and iPod Touch" ...
So it IS just a large ipod!
yes.
In particular when it decides to accelerate.
-- "If A equals success, then the formula is A=X+Y+Z. X is work. Y is play. Z is keep your mouth shut." - Einstein
"Also, iPad's extraordinary battery life is not just a myth. According to the lab tests, battery netted a respectable 9 hours and 25 minutes, very close to Apple's claims of 10 hours."
*sigh* Guess we have to wait until after April Fools' Day to get a real review.
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Before you sing (in stereo) praises of His Jobness, ponder on the concept that the itty bitty micron sized bits of magnets in these 'speakers' couldn't produce bass if they were made of unobtainium. Physics rather than Steve's musical taste dictates this.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Well, if what you're doing is reading Slashdot and posting one-liners, it should work fine for that.
When you buy into closed systems, you put money into the hands of people who will perpetuate closed systems. As a result, more advertising, sneaky (I say that because its closed) innovation, and influence is produced and then the culture of computer use trends further in that direction...
Many forces right now are interested in producing limited/closed systems, and furthermore very thin 'clients' that would have the majority if the processing and data storage done in the cloud. Nevermind that you are limited by the permissions inherent to the construct of the closed system -- and subject to the inevitable "nickle and dime" pay/fees attached.
Buying into this junk is a way of voting with your money for a future that has more of it. I'm pretty happy with the freedoms I enjoy in computing. Right now, computing is still kind-of a 'wild west' of sorts, with many freedoms still open and available. As have many other aspects of life, the power of the susceptible consumer buying into bad ideas has led to the limitation of access to variety/possibilities/alternatives; that which is not mainstream loses its ground and at some point has no platform to present from.
Think for yourself. Do you want a 'computer' that only allows you to do what they want you to do? Do you want people who offer this to get your money and drive the market further in that direction?
At least for me I think I'll stick with my netbook as well. I tend to use the USB ports and built-in SDHC slot on it quite a bit for things like copying photos off of my camera, burning DVDs, etc. I also tend to make heavy use of multitasking. It's nice when I can just plug a 500GB drive into one port and my camera into the other and copy several GB worth of photos off.
Add to this that the netbook is significantly cheaper than the iPad.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
Pointless banter aside I would like to simply point out that UI responsiveness is not an indicator performance. Let alone a metric to use in judging the devices processor!
No, but it is an indicator of UI responsiveness, which for the prospective customers is the most important performance indicator. Well, that and the ability of playing video and music without stuttering.
Except, you know, the average netbook has a processor that's 50% faster, 150% more storage capacity, a screen about 10% larger, plus the option of using a keyboard if you'd rather not play with handwriting recognition. Oh, and most have cameras, and quite a few have longer battery life.
For half the price...
anyway, i dont get the hubbub about it being powerfull, i mean, device three times more expensive then ipod, more powerfull then ipod, who'da thunk it?
and im reading the review right now, the guy is actually writing about the mail app as if it is new "i cant seem to acces the gmail chat function in the mail app" well no shit sherlock..
People, what a bunch of bastards
If you can really look at the iPad and think Apple should have just shipped a netbook, then not only have you completely missed the point, but the next 10 years of computer industry evolution are going to be very confusing for you, as the mainstream market increasingly ignores the tech specs that geeks obsess over in favor of user experience considerations that are far more relevant to normal users.
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Oh yeah? So where's the command-line shell then?
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
No, but it is an indicator of UI responsiveness, which for the prospective customers is the most important performance indicator.
I wish someone could tell that to the designers of modern operating systems.
I'm serious. If MS-DOS has a faster response time on 4 MHz than your OS on a dual core, you fucked up.
Think for yourself. Do you want a 'computer' that only allows you to do what they want you to do?
If you want a general purpose, programmable computer, don't buy an iPad. Nobody is forcing you. I see plenty of uses for one which don't involve running much beyond the standard software.
If I want to do more than that, I have a "real" Mac (something upon which the iPad also depends).
Now, the moment Apple try to "close" the Mac, I'll drop them like a ton of bricks for PC/Linux, but currently the Mac scores pretty high on openness.
Meanwhile, if you want to run your own software on the iPad its simple: forget the App store and code whatever the hell you like in loverly open standards-based HTML5/ECMAScript/SVG and host it on your Real Computer. Practical upshot: odds are your "cloud" apps will also be compatible with anything running a half-decent browser.
...and I love the way that the slashdot group mind treats Flash as the spawn of Satan and destroyer of worlds until Apple leaves it out (and, consequently, persuades a number of large video sites to switch to standards-based HTML5 video).
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
Let me ask you something in advance of the inevitable comments, for a chance: do you complain because the firmware in your TV set, microwave oven, and dishwasher is "locked down," too?
If any of them were TCP/IP or network enabled then, yes, I would.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
it's not so much about running multiple apps, as it is about having stuff running in the background. (non-apple stuff that is)
even on the iphone it would be usefull enough to have a chat app in the background while you are surfing (for people who chat, i dont). Or how about being allowed to chose your own music-streaming app, instead of the ipod app? (which doesnt do streaming). And i'm sure the app-writers out there can think of a bajilion other usefull, new, funny, cool or interesting things running in the background.
People, what a bunch of bastards
You're wrong. It's a limitation on Palm devices, it's a problem with Android, it can be a problem with Windows Mobile. It's therefore very very important for a mobile device that the interface doesn't feel laggy, and it's not a trivial problem.
But not more than that. You can't possibly begin to compare processors through UI responsiveness when they're running different operating systems.
As an end user, that's exactly what you'll do. You don't care about the particular processor, what you care about is whether the device you have in your hand is responsive and performs well - that's a combination of lots of factors, and it's perfectly valid to compare different devices based on their UI responsiveness, and attribute some of the speed to the processor (not all, but some).
Let me ask you something in advance of the inevitable comments, for a chance: do you complain because the firmware in your TV set, microwave oven, and dishwasher is "locked down," too?
You're right. Considering that the tablet in question is about as versatile as the appliances you mentioned, I now have no complaints about it being locked down. Just lock it away somewhere and my joy will be complete.
the iPad is not a laptop. It’s not nearly as good for creating stuff. On the other hand, it’s infinitely more convenient for consuming it — books, music, video, photos, Web, e-mail and so on.
I think he hit the nail on the head there.
oh my god... it's full of stars!
Is that they have a very clear idea of what their users do with their products. Not because they leave it up to their users to decide, but because they tell them.
Here is your powerbook.. with it you can videochat and edit your holiday photos.
They are doing the same with the ipad: http://www.apple.com/ipad/features/
They take the application and then very much optimize the hell out of the application until it fits perfectly to the device its running on.
Other manufactures just build a tablet. And this is why this product will be a success.
Please not i'm not an apple fanboi. I don't even own any of their products.
The gp was talking about tablet devices, and of those only the iPad from Apple doesn't support multitasking, afaik.
The iPad does support multitasking various apps (the iPod app, the mail app, Safari), but not third party apps. So if you wanted to test multitasking on it, you could. However that's not really the issue here, performance is the issue, whether multitasking or not.
Android runs on various tablets, and I suspect Web OS (if it lasts that long) will too. There's a reason tablets tend to run mobile OSs - it's because they're a similar class of device to phones. Netbooks are coming from the other direction, and are yet another distinct category.
You're talking about mobile touchscreen devices, which is a completely different class of devices.
I disagree. The iPad is pretty much an iPod touch with a bigger screen, better processor etc. The OS is almost exactly the same, and soon enough they will be exactly the same OS. As far as performance, hardware and UI goes the iPad is far closer to an iPod/iPhone that it is to desktop computers.
But to drag this back to the point, UI responsiveness is vital to this sort of device (mobile phone, mobile music player, or mobile reading device), and it's a useful metric of quality, far more useful than comparing chips in isolation.
My laptop is 40 times more powerful than a supercomputer when I was born. Is it unrealistic to expect it to display text as fast as I type it in?
despite not being in technology for the last decade any longer, I can tell you anecdotally that I can count at least 20-30 iPad purchases from the people that have called me to combined rave about how much they want one and ask if they'd be somehow stupid for buying it.
You would tell them they are.
I told them it's probably the best thing for them. Joe Consumer that you mentioned wans a few things:
1. Facebook
2. Twitter
3. World Wide Web
4. Email
5. YouTube
That's pretty damned much it for most of the people that I help with their PCs at home. Yes, many of them use computers to do this or that work, but this stuff they do at work generally comes down either to web browsing or the use of Word/Excel/Powerpoint.
At home all they way is a way to do #'s 1-5 above. That's it. Yes, they CAN do this on their phone already in many cases, and a lot of them do, but they want a big screen.
Yes, they really DO want a "bigger iPod Touch." That's exactly what they're hoping it is when they ask me about it. Because the iPod Touch/iPhone does everything they want right now at home, only the screen is too small for extended use while sitting on the couch or eating microwave dinners.
Slashdot users are so ridiculously out of touch with nontechnical people it's amazing. They imagine "nontechnical people" to be any friends they have that don't case mod and don't game. In fact, there's a whole universe of people out there that is going online every night with a 7-year-old computer that hasn't been upgraded and has never been backed up and that contains a whole bunch of completely random saved images and spyware, and all they do is Facebook+World Wide Web/eShop/YouTube, and that's all they really care to do with their computers.
The iPad gets them all of this, and it gets them this in a fast, reliable, portable, and much safer way.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Hey moron,
1. email notifications.
2. IM notifications.
3. alarms
4. VOIP/Skype incoming calls.
5. ssh sessions cannot "RESTART" they have to be background active.
But if you like going back to 1985 Mac OS 6.0, you're welcome.
Being a hard-ass shit to say, zero multitasking is an easy copout to , ' oh its all too hard, lets avoid it '.
Yes, lets jailbreak the fuck out of nazi style controls MOFO.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
That depends: "Locked down" in the sense of "burned into some embedded microcontroller with no realistic update mechanism other than some obscure JTAG procedure or physical replacement of the controller board", isn't a big deal. As long as it works, and there are no nasty pricing tricks, it's just another part.
"Locked down" in the sense of "Perfectly good general-purpose computer, specifically and intentionally crippled, dedicating cryptographic resources to keeping me from doing what I want with the stuff I bought", yes, I would in fact complain.
Of the devices you mention, only certain fairly recent TVs meaningfully fall into that category. A number of them have ethernet, some sort of embedded OS, widgets, some degree of streaming media capability. Yeah, I'd object to their being lockdown restrictions in my way.
I don't know why I'm buying it. I don't know what I will use it for. I just know that somehow it will make me cooler and more hip.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Or, MS-DOS isn't indexing my files, grabbing my RSS feeds, making snapshot backups, checking for updates, seeding the iso I downloaded using bittorrent, compositing a desktop, staying logged into chat applications and folding a protein for science in the background.
And none of these are more important than my time. Sure, they're useful to have in the background, but the priority should always be where the user's attention is.
your desire for a slightly better performance
I don't care about performance, I care about UI latency. Whatever I'm doing at the computer only I use is by definition the most important job the computer has at the moment. Shame nobody in the OS design business realizes this.
even the most bloated (cough, Vista, cough) perform acceptably
Waiting half a second for my keystroke to appear in the text box is not my definition of "acceptable". Neither is booting in more than 3 seconds.
Think about it: we all have supercomputers now. While I was writing this post, my computer executed more than 500 BILLION instructions. There should be no need for me to wait for it.
On the nose. When I showed my (somewhat tech-phobic) parents my iphone, it was the first time I've ever seen my mother excited by a gadget. Excited enough that she went out that weekend and bought an iphone. Excited enough that she now has about 25 different apps loaded from the iphone store because "I can make my phone do this cool thing, look!"
If you're ready to dismiss a device that engenders that sort of enthusiasm from non-geek users because "I can't load Seti@Home on it and run it in the background," you're missing the boat. Maybe it's not the device for your technical requirements. But it *is* a device for a large portion of the population that aren't power-users with high-end technical requirements.
It is an obvious PC pretending to be an appliance.
I can see where you're coming from, but can't agree still. My day job is as a software developer. I write code that runs on devices you'd probably NEVER think of as "general purpose computers", but in fact are. Specifically, print devices. The print controller of a modern MFP tends to have ASICs for image processing that aren't dissimilar to mid-range graphics chipsets, intel processors, SDRAM, IDE HDDs, and so on. Many run Linux (about 20% of the ones I work with (75% are VxWorks, and the remaining 5% are "misc")) and some even run Windows (last one of those I worked with was XP Embedded). If you work in a corporate office, chances are you've used these things on a daily basis without ever even considering it as a "general purpose PC" - it is for all intents and purposes an appliance.
I'll grant that the iPad is middle ground there between the two, but the target audience of it is definitely NOT the likes of you or I. It's targetted at people that WANT a "multi purpose appliance", without it being a real PC.
To be honest, I am actually quite disappointed in it, since I am still waiting for a really nice tablet to come along that I'd be happy using, and had hopes that this might be it until the announcement of the OS and details about it. But I don't get annoyed about these deliberate limitations - they are what they are, and for better or worse it's what Apple decided to do. They don't get you or I as a customer out of it, but I assume they've got a bunch of marketing guys sitting around who knew that people like us wouldn't be interested, and weighted that as a lower value than the number of people they thought the iPad WILL appeal to.
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