Slashdot Mirror
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."
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?
"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!
The IPad being a good buy? That's an OK April 1st joke but you could have done better, Slashdot.
"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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I guess this makes the news "Apple iPad contains specs Apple claimed it would have!"?
then again i guess its the 1st already.
Ice Cream has no bones.
A semicolon splice? You don't see many of those around.
At the bottom of the
Since the disco era, there has been this constant push for more bass, to the point where the drive to get lower has become a caricature of itself in places like Miami and Los Angeles. True audio lovers know bass is only one aspect of a rich audio experience.
So when I hear that Apple is turning bass way back, I know they are answering the prayers of audiophiles. Finally a company with the balls to do the right thing.
Thank you Apple!
Personally, I find that I am slowly developing an RSI type problem wrt touchpads and touchscreens, preventing extensive use. Anyone else?
Andy Ihnatko's Sun Times review + Unboxing
Xeni Jardin's Boing Boing review
Goatberg's WSJ review
Baig's USA Today review
and Pogue's awkward review for NYT
In the realm of electronic music production, the iPad is showing a lot of promise.
This is sort of a big deal amongst electronic musicians, as before the iPad the only similar alternative was the US$2,000+ Jazzmutant Lemur.
But does it run Linux ?
* ducks *
BAIN http://www.devslashzero.com
This isn't a missing feature. It's a bug fix.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/01/technology/personaltech/01pogue.html?src=mv
Just some Slashdot nazelgazing.
Well, if what you're doing is reading Slashdot and posting one-liners, it should work fine for that.
Ok, so this is what I got from reading that short: well, this doesn't really address any of the concerns people have mentioned, but it's super duper powerful.
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.
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.
Even though the in-house-designed 1GHz A4 chip got little official comments from Apple; touch screen's instantaneous responses prove that it is outstandingly fast.
I'm sure Apple engineered the entire chip, including the ARM core, which is the reason why it's so fast. Actually, I'm not sure. Designing a modern pipelined cpu is extremely difficult, especially one that is fast and low power. ARM (the company) designs and implements their own cpu's, including the Verilog/VHDL source for the actual layout, along with some hand optimization at the synthesis stage. They then sell this to Apple/Philips/Qualcomm, who add the peripherals and then fab the actual silicon itself. Apple isn't going to reinvent the wheel by reimplementing an entire cpu. They're going to buy the core from ARM at a cheaper price than what they could do themselves. Apple is not the only one that wants a fast and low power arm core: everyone does. ARM already employs the best people to do this, they know the most about their own cores, they've had the most experience, and they are the ones most interested in doing it, so they can sell it to pretty much everyone. (How many arm cpu's are around you? More than you think. WAY more than you think.) Anyways, don't give credit to Apple for the fast ARM cpu, they most likely just bought the core from ARM, who did most of the engineering, and Apple added some other on chip stuff and had the chip manufactured.
Now I get to watch this modded into oblivion after I spent 5 minutes writing it.
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
It (presumably) does for Chinese, since the iPhone does ;)
50% faster? i think atom and cortex-A8 benchmark closer then that.
while the storage space is bigger on a netbook, its a HDD. I morn the loss of SSD from most netbooks today, because they need the room for windows. Using SSD in a netbook rather then a HDD made those small computers a fair bit more rugged.
no comment on the screen size.
there is a keyboard dock (basically a combo of the normal dock/stand and the usual apple keyboard without a numpad). Yes, it results in the ipad standing in portrait mode. However, if one is using the ipad to hammer out documents, a portrait ratio may actually make sense, as thats bascially the same shape as the paper it may be printed onto.
if it was not for apples bonehead insistence on only allowing programs to be had via the app store, and other ball and chain measures, i may actually have grabbed one. I can see it sitting on a desk or table, either for typing or basically as a expensive photo frame, but that one can at any moment grab for looking some info up while on the bed or sofa. If it had a webcam, or could have a usb webcam attached, it may act nicely as a video phone as well.
still, all this seems to be available in the archos 8 home tablet, so maybe i will buy that instead. I just worry that they will require me to fiddle with a charger attachment each time i set it down, rather then just pop it into some stand that also provides charging.
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
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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For all I care it can have a Ferrarri F1 car under its skin ... I mean, who cares if it doesn't do anything particulary usefull?
Because it doesn't do anything particularly useful really fast!
Actually, most of the world's population don't do anything particularly useful either. So a device that doesn't do anything particularly useful is an ideal gift for them.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Hmm, I think this comparison of netbooks wants to disagree with your claims.
As listed in the table, most netbooks have substantially less than 10 hours of battery life, (indeed, only three entries out of 35 with published battery life estimates have an operational life of more than 10 hours), have a screen resolution of 1024x600 (which is *less* than the iPad's 1024x768), and, excluding the less-than-5" netbooks, weigh substantially more than the iPad's 1.5lb. Most are running 1.0 to 1.6GHz Intel Atoms, which aren't directly comparable with a 1 GHz ARM chip, so I can't comment on the "50% faster".
The iPad also doesn't use handwriting recognition for English (it's a standard QWERTY touchscreen keyboard), and you have the option of using a wireless Bluetooth (full) keyboard as well (this option doesn't even require any additional hardware beyond the keyboard).
So, I'd have to say that on several fronts, your argument about netbooks fails. Care to demonstrate what your "average" netbook looks like? Perhaps you'd also like to tell me how much it weighs, and what its actual battery life is like?
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.
So, I'd have to say that on several fronts, your argument about netbooks fails. Care to demonstrate what your "average" netbook looks like? Perhaps you'd also like to tell me how much it weighs, and what its actual battery life is like?
I think he's mistaking Netbooks for what he wishes the Apple iPad were.
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
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
Really, does anybody have the slightest idea? Is it 256 MiB, like the 3GS?
Indeed, while the GPU may be similar, the screen is bigger.
Bigger LCD screens cost more than smaller ones.
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.
I own an iPhone and a MacBook Pro (15 inch) and I'm not sure what to make of the iPad. It is certainly an interesting, even a promising device, but I don't see a place for it, not for me at least. I've never been in a situation where I was using my iPhone and thought, "I wish this screen was bigger" AND I didn't have my laptop with me. I can't read for long periods of time on a screen and nothing is as pleasurable (to me) as a real dead tree book so that's out. E-mail is fine on my desktop, laptop, and phone. Watching videos is again a case of either the phone works good enough or my laptop is handy. I don't mind carrying around a laptop so portability isn't a selling point to me.
On top of all those reasons is the fact that it's just not that compelling in the things that it does do. The home screen is very underwhelming. It's the same as the iPhone which is my biggest complaint. It's just a grid of icons, some of them with various badge indicators for e-mail, SMS, etc. But other than that the screen is just a list of icons that do other things. I look at the Android phones and I'm envious of what they can do--although I dislike them for various reasons too. With the extra horsepower and screen space I was hoping the iPad would do more with the "desktop" screen than just having it be a list of icons, time, battery indicator, signal strength.
It's a very cool device, certainly. They've put something interesting in a nice looking package. It also has some novel uses like playing games on a large touch screen in that handheld format. Battery life is also very nice. It's just not useful enough and I suspect that there are plenty of other people who feel that way. Regardless, I know it's going to be successful because it's the hot new thing from Apple. And maybe in a few revisions I'll find it worthwhile. I wasn't that impressed with the first gen iPod, but now I'm on my 3rd, fourth if the iPhone counts as one. I see a lot of promise, but this gen-1 device is, to me, a testing ground where Apple will use early adopters to really improve the later revisions and that's when I will be most likely to pick one up if I ever do.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
50% faster? At what? Performing benchmarks? Running bloated operating systems?
And what about the quality of the screen? Do any netbooks have IPS LCD screens?
What are you using your MBP?
I've found I am able to get eight hours only when being very careful with usage: half screen brightness or less, no keyboard backlight, no flash in websites, and few background programs. I get a usable web browsing and note taking computer for 7+ hours. I charge my iPhone every night but have gone two days with minimal use, mostly texting and very short phone calls. As a music player my iPhone can easily do the advertised 20 hours.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
Come to Maemo-land!
The N900 is the (phone format) device you want. Run what you like, switch between the gps software, games, webapps, whatever you like. Hell, it even has a built in skype client that puts through skype calls just like mobile calls and integrates messenger services and SMS into a coherent single interface.
Is it perfect? no. Does it have the app selection of iPhone or Android? no.
But it is open and does multitasking properly. and tethering...
what is it you want?
I'm genuinely interested. I had heard that iPhone tethering was difficult, at least early on.
I like the physical keyboard, I like the xterm, I like debian derived linux distros. The person I orignally replied to seemed to think similarly.
And no, I don't give much of a crap why it's not suitable for you or your grandma, it's a superbly geek-friendly phone that (unlike openmoko...) performs very very well.
Apple was founded on April 1?
Wow, there's an April Fools Joke gone horribly wrong...
This seemed like a reasonable sig at the time.
It's a real shame about the missing webcam. They'd make such nice portals if they had them:
Put two iPads back-to-back. You could see right through them.
Put two iPads on opposite sides of a wall. Instant window.
Mount an iPad in the kitchen; mail another to grandma and grandpa. An intergenerational wormhole for family to stay in touch.
Mash up a classroom full of iPads with chat roulette. Try to figure out who's match with whom. Turn to face a neighbor to make the longest continuous viewing path.
Two iPads, one bed. Fun views for you and your partner.
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
I think if you're an experimental musician, or willing to use it as a gimmick, the iPad could be useful.
However, compared to a real musician's workflow, the iPad is just a toy. Yes, sooner or later someone will come up with a halfway decent sequencer app for the iPad. But it will always pale in comparison to the openness of real sequencers. There are just some things that will not work well on the iPad, without extreme effort. Just to name a few:
1. File-management to access and organize real samples in the proper uncompressed formats at the proper bitrates.
2. Ability to use standard plugins, like VST and VSTi.
3. Ability to multitask and interact with other software using standard protocols.
4. Easy integration with hardware using standardized ports
Yes, you'll get distracting fun music "toys," and little cheap DJ mixing apps, but the "pro" of having a music device with a little Apple logo on the back can only cover up so much "con" of having to re-invent every wheel that a music producer uses by restructuring your workflow and buying/downloading a new app to do everything you are used to doing on a modern full PC or Mac.
Finally, multitouch full-PC tablets have been around since before the iPad, and will now flood the market now that the iPod has legitimized multitouch tablet computing. That's the one benefit, in my mind, to the iPad, and notably it doesn't entail buying an iPad. It's much smarter for a musician to simply wait and buy one of the Win/Linux multitouch tablets that are now springing up, and have full access to your existing work environment. Certainly, because Apple strongly controls their hardware, you probably can't get OSX on a tablet. But the great thing is, even if you used a Mac exclusively before, you can switch to one of these Win/Linux systems with little issue, because both have full-fledged sequencers that aren't limited like the iPad in the ways I described above.
In short, the iPad is a great little toy, and I'm sure if you buy enough apps and spend enough time recreating your entire workflow, determined musicians can certainly use it to make music. But it's in spite of the iPad, not because of it.
And no, I don't give much of a crap why it's not suitable for you or your grandma, it's a superbly geek-friendly phone that (unlike openmoko...) performs very very well.
Relax, I was just playing around.
Since you asked though, at the end of the day I really enjoy my iPhone. The touchscreen keyboard works well for me, the interface is intuitive, I have a free app that gives me SSH access and other apps that let me monitor my servers and various other things.
All that said, I don't know what I want in a phone until I want it and with my iPhone I can generally get it right then. It's pretty much the only platform where I let myself be a typical consumer. On an actual computer I would rather script or code my own solution--especially on my Mac--rather than use a shortcut app. But on my iPhone I just want to tap buttons...
So hopefully that helps clarify what *I* want in a phone. It isn't going to help with others much, but coming from a fellow geek, maybe it will offer some insight into the mindset.
Incidentally... I'd KILL for tethering sometime soon. This paying-for-hotspots-while-I-have-full-3G-signal shit is killing me...
I just don't get... eh, ugh... never mind. This post wasn't worth the research I put into it.
If you can hold off until June-July when iPhone OS 4.0 is released, then you'll be in.
If I didn't have absolutely NOTHING to do, I wouldn't be here.
And if you add the digits in 34 you get 7, which is the number of steps to heaven in the Qabala.
You are welcome on my lawn.
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.
Exactly, I have Win 7 on a dual core farily basic rig with a 3 year old GPU and 2GB of RAM. It takes about 30 seconds from completion of POST (which is about a minute since I have a RAID adapter in there, and dull a full memory clean on cold boot), to a login screen, and about 15 more seconds after that until it establishes a wifi connection and stops thrashing the disks long enough to open e-mail and a browser. all said, not bad.
My wife's friend brought by a shiny new $600 netbook, one that actually had a basic non-intel GPU capable of limited video performance (most netbooks fall flat with flash, and can not do H.264 at native screen resolution let alone 720P). It had a 2GHz Atom/arm/whatever it was, and 2GB of RAM. It took more than 3.5 minutes to boot windows 7 to a login screen, and more than 70 seconds after login to open outlook and a web browser. by 5 minutes in, I'll have forgotten why I was booting it up. Technically, it smoked the iPad's specs, but it was compeltely unusable from a concencince/companion device standpoint. $250 more and I'd have gotten a machine capable of playing WoW, running virtual machines, a 13" screen, and the power and performance to edit video and run a full OS, on a 7 hour battery (aka, a White Macbook).
A USB port might have been nice, but honestly the thing is designed to consume from the cloud... A USB adapter is provided to connect cameras and SD cards, but aside from that, very little ever needs to be physically connected to the device that can't be done via bluetooth.
There is no contest in life for which the unprepared have the advantage.
Actually we're all wrong, this is not a semicolon splice, because
Even though the in-house-designed 1GHz A4 chip got little official comments from Apple.
is not a sentence.
He could have written:
The in-house-designed 1GHz A4 chip got little official comments from Apple; touch screen's instantaneous responses prove that it is outstandingly fast.
Source: according to: http://lilt.ilstu.edu/golson/punctuation/semicolon.htmlhttp://lilt.ilstu.edu/golson/punctuation/semicolon.html
I'm not surprised Apple doesn't support Flash on the iPhone and iPad. I can personally testify that Flash is a serious battery-life waster on laptops too. One morning I was using a web site that had an animated banner ad at the top of each and every page, and I got only 2.5 hours out of my unibody 13" MacBook Pro's "9 hour battery." Without Flash running I can get at least six hours. Then I found the BashFlash app, and realized how often Flash takes 30+% of the CPU. Now I regularly use it to kill the Flash plug-in. Too bad Adobe doesn't give you tools to manage irresponsible Flash adds. A second or two of animation would be fine, after that Flash should "dial it down," but no... continuous attention-grabbing is what the advertisers seem to want, at the expense of my hard-earned battery life!
Which of those devices are tablets? Oh! Apple fanbois and the RDF!
The Android one most certainly is. Does that mean a "fanboi" is somebody who actually RTFA?
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
Hey, I agree with your point. The no multitasking is pretty idiotic. However, if you're still living in a world where SSH sessions don't resume, you need to check out GNU Screen or Byobu. Screen allows you to have multiple terminal sessions and switch between them. Also if you use SSH to connect to machine with screen enabled you can resume your session from anywhere. Byobu is Screen on steroids and adds pretty options to it.
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.
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.
Where to start?
1. Please drop the "geeks versus normal users" argument. The point you are missing is that it's only among geeks that there is the obsession. Among normal people, they (Macs, Iphones, and the Ipad) are niche products. Yes, there are normal users who only care about being hip, but plenty of normal users do care about features too - if you really think otherwise, then you are the one suffering from a typical geek fallacy. (Even if they do care about being hip, there's still no reason to choose this device over netbooks, phones or other tablets.)
2. His argument is not against tablets, but the Ipad. Yes, he picked netbooks as an argument, but there are other tablets too. I'm sure that tablets will become more common in the next 10 years, but only when they are cheaper than the more functional netbooks - it won't be because of Apple.
3. Ah yes, like someone else in this thread, you adopt the classic Apple tactic of talking in meaningless terms of "user experience considerations". Let's have some evidence of what you mean? Otherwise, my response is:
"Oh, you're going to find the next 10 years very confusing if you think that the Ipad is going to become more popular than anything else. People are much more interested in user experience, which is better provided by other products, at a lower price".
See? Like you, I asserted, without making any arguments for my point of view. We might as well say "Ipad sucks! No, Ipad rules!" Do I get my +5 mods now?
I would say, let's see how well it's sold in a year's time. But if the Iphone is anything to go buy, the sad fact is that even if it's a niche product in the market, you'll still be here talking as if they're the market leader.
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.
So you think that building to the #3 share (~14% of the smartphone market) in just 2 years, with a single product line (contrast with the multitude of RIM & Nokia devices) makes someone a "niche" player? That's an odd definition of niche.
Of course "normal users" care about features. They care about iphone features like: "easy to use," "has the functionality I want," "simple to load apps on," and yes, even "looks pretty." Geeks here get awful frothy about: "Openness," "multitasking," "cut & paste," and "tethering." This is not to say that geeks don't care about some of the same things as "normal users," but it is not a device that is intended to be your one-stop all-purpose whiz-bang science fiction wet dream.
Geeks are used to being catered to when it comes to gadgets. My personal belief is that they get so off-the-rails upset about Apple products because the new products are generally sexy-looking new pieces of kit that they lust after, and Apple just doesn't care whether or not they like it, because (and here's the rub) the geeks are not the target market for this sexy-looking new gadget.
What an excellent way to encourage prospective users of VMWare. "Sorry you're too dumb/uneducated, spend bunches of time on training please" basicaly is a direct affirmation of his claim that it doesn't "just work".
Why is VMWare hard (in your eyes)? It seems like it conceptually ought to be simple to set up and run...
The first 3 of those are handled by a the notification system.
Before calling people names, it might help to get your facts straight.
Oh wait, this is Slashdot.