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iPad Launches, FCC Teardown Leaked
Apple's much-awaited iPad officially launched today, and iFixit has gotten their hands on photos from the FCC teardown. They've done an analysis of the internals and provided directions on doing it yourself, if you're so inclined. Predictably, it's a hot topic in the media. Cory Doctorow wrote about why he won't be getting an iPad, complaining about the closed, hacker-unfriendly design and what he calls the "Wal-martization of the software channel." Daring Fireball's John Gruber disagrees, pointing out that enthusiasts — even kids exercising their curiosity — are still quite capable of playing around with the iPad through app creation, and with much more of a chance to compete with big companies than in the Apple ][ days. Similarly, others are referring to it as the "bedtime computer" — technology that has a reasonable shot at expanding into completely new areas of use, like bedtime reading for kids. Such a device was predicted in 1972 by Alan Kay, the PARC scientist credited with the epigram "The best way to predict the future is to invent it." His hypothetical DynaBook bears striking similarity to what Apple finally came up with. So, those of you who have picked up or received an iPad already: how do you like it?
People, snap out of it. Its just a tablet computer. They have been around for over 10 years and they have never been all that special. Apple has you in some sort of hypnosis
There were MP3 players before the iPod. They sucked, Apple made one that did not suck, and from that they made billions.
This is not just a tablet computer, this is a big-ass iPod, and they're likely to make big-ass billions from it.
You can't take the sky from me...
People, snap out of it. Its just a tablet computer.
Yeah, but this one is hand-made by Steve Jobs, assembled on the thighs of Taiwanese virgins. If you sniff it real hard you can still smell the reality distortion field permeating the electronics.
It will also double as a paperweight and shiny object to distract other people.
Disclaimer: Taiwanese virgins may or may not be female. Applicability as paperweight is not guaranteed by the usermanual.
Actually, ignoring the blatant trolls (who seem to have been quite successful on you), most of the people not showering praise on the iPad are simply commenting that it's not for them / explaining its problems / offering alternative solutions. The idea that people don't buy Apple because they "can't afford the device, and are jealous of those who can" is far more a reflection of your approach to life than anything.
It's just a tool, and it has no place in my toolkit. Just as the iMac I've recently sold wasn't good enough for me. It wasn't awful, but it didn't offer any advantage over the more powerful, cheap, configurable and supported Windows 7 box + Linux VM I've replaced it with. Thus passes the glory of the screwdriver.
You forgot the assclowns posting lists of predictions.
I think Slashdotters are for the most part woefully ignorant of how the rest of humanity actually uses computers, and would do well to understand these types of use cases. They will sell millions.
Firstly, Slashdot is not a single uniform entity. There are many different opinions which in case of iPad there are slashdotters all over the love-hate spectrum. You're not the exception here.
Secondly, in your rush to blame Slashdot, you came up with an example which not only doesn't support "sell millions" argument but also goes against it. iPad's market is much more mainstream than niche semi-disabled 95 year olds. Everyone with an interest in reading eBooks, watching movies on the go, reading news, doing lite creative work, using some productivity tools, students reading textbooks, etc. is the target market.
All of this however doesn't change the fact that Apple has declared war on tinkering and as more and more consumers adopt the "appliance computing" model that Apple spearheads, the future of computing looks less and less bright. Hopefully all alternatives will not perish.
Lacking in the early iPad reviews has been any screen shots or actual information on how a two-column small text PDF appears, typical in my scientific arena's journal articles. My use for an iPad would be to provide a convenient means to carry around and read at home (not parked in front of my computer!) my current list of journal articles. As an older person with ever increasily bad eyesight, I can really use the larger screen. So have any slashdot user + iPad adopters had a chance to use it in this context? Another contender is the Skiff reader, but it is stil vaporware and their latest press release seems to suggest they are moving to provide an OS and marketing scheme and moving away from the hardware reader. Pity, as it is just the right size for my needs. I know that one can "Kindle-ize" PDF's, but a) I am lazy and b) I bet they don't come out quite right, so that is not a solution I would want to use. Also, I see that Papers has been released for iPad just today, so maybe it is worth a trip to the Apple Store to have a look myself.
It seems as though you are not so upset at the size of the iPad, but the size of your pockets.
Sig this!
Most of the people here are missing the point. The iPad is all about paying for content. And the content isn't cheap. The Wall Street Journal costs more on the iPad than on paper. $5 a month seems to be a typical price for online magazines. The iPad creates a direct connection between content providers and your wallet.
And there's no ad-blocking. You will will watch the ads. The "app" concept means that the program, not the user, has control. If the program wants you to look at the ad for 10 seconds, you will look at the ad for 10 seconds.
A more meaningful consideration is why people like it. Do they like Apple's products because of inherent, demonstrable superiority, like more functionality, better battery life, higher quality, or openness/ability to mod? Things that you can objectively examine such that any neutral, disinterested person can see for himself that it's superior to the competition? Many of us are taking a look at Apple's products and deciding that this cannot be the case.
...based on your view of what's important or provides utility. The place where you're falling on your face is in not acknowledging that other people have entirely different utility functions than you do.
Most people have never opened the case of their equipment, have no clue about the difference between memory and storage, and couldn't identify the CPU if you put a gun to their head and told them their life depended on it. They've never replaced a component, applied a patch, or compiled a program. Why would openness/ability to mod have any presence in their decision making process? They want something that works reliably and is easy to use.
As for the other categories of "objective" assessment you listed, most people are aware of tradeoffs in several categories of usability. You don't have to be best in any single category to be best overall. People want a music device which is affordable, rugged, reliable, easy to use, holds "enough" music, and has "enough" battery life. Folks who obsess about any one of those criteria won't want an iPod, but a huge number of people who are balancing several or all of them have concluded that the iPod is a reasonable choice.
I like programming, I like customizing stuff, I like doing admin stuff on my BSD boxes, but I know that most of the people I work with and hang around with want nothing to do with such things. I also don't want to hassle with such things when I'm at work and I'm supposed to be preparing classes or writing papers. A mac is a great tool for me, because day-to-day crap is trivial to do on it, and I can always drop to the command line for full-blown unixy goodness or fire up a VM for full-blown Windowsy evil.
Bottom line - people can have different values than you about what's easy/hard, comfortable/uncomfortable, or useful/useless, and it doesn't make them irrational, idiots, fanbois, or weak-minded victims of marketing.
1st impressions of iPad:
*looks an awful lot like the top of a 13" MacBook Pro
*weighs a bit more than it looks like it would
*probably should have popped for the case b/c it seems like one would want to carry it around like a book
*typing on-screen is easier to get used to than I thought it would be (can't say about long term though)
*"optimized" gmail works pretty well
*software-wise I already miss the feeling that open source is available ("I was wrong to break up with you, baby; please, can't we get back together? . . . well then, how about one for the road?")
*screen-orientation gyro ("accelerometer"?) is a bit testy out of the box
*not a computer, that's for sure
*also not quite Bill Atkinson's "magic slate", but almost there
I would say I probably paid about $200 too much and bought maybe 2 gen.s too early.
Nature of the beast, eh.