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Apple Announces New iPods, iTunes 10, Social Network, AppleTV
Steve Jobs gave his iPod keynote this morning. He started with iOS 4.1 and Game Center which will be coming out next week. iOS 4.2 will add printing to the iPad and will be out in November. The new iPod Shuffle has buttons again, and costs $49. The new iPod Nano has a tiny multi-touch screen, and an FM radio, and starts at $149. The new (thinner) Touch has the iPhone 4 screen, an A4 chip, and FaceTime over WiFi, starting at $229 for 8GB. They all ship next week.
iTunes 10 looks the same, but adds a social network called "Ping," which basically looks like Last.fm integrated, and should be out today.
AppleTV is updating: 1/4th the size, no purchases — only rentals. 99 cents for TV rentals (ABC & Fox), Netflix on Demand built in, and for $99.
This sounded like a hammer nailing the first nail into the facebook coffin.
Take my word: Ping is the Next Big Thing(tm)(sm)(c).
The new iPod Touch is going to dominate the market. It's better than many point and shoot cameras, it's better than pretty much every other media player, it beats out flip video recorders, it has extensive gaming platform options, and it's good enough for watching media on.
I don't love Apple, but it looks like they've created the gadget for teenagers or people who rely on a non-iphone as their primary phone.
"Going to war without the French is like going deer hunting without your accordion." ~General Norman Schwarzkopf
You can stream from your computer.
That's gonna be awesome for internet help-desk workers. How about creating a Flickr clone and calling it iFconfig?
We got a few significant OS X 10.6 updates today - firmware, graphics and security. Well maybe not today, MacBook has not been on for a few days...darned wedding.
Going on means going far
Going far means returning
It will be interesting to see how it compares to GoogleTV once that launches. If GoogleTV does even half of what they say it will, things will get mighty interesting mighty quick.
Living With a Nerd
directly from Steve Jobs keynote and only readable with authenticated apps.
Nice try at a first post. Too bad it took you two-prior-posts worth of time to get it approved through the App Store.
John
being Apple it only comes with PM
They've always had this feature, see?
http://appadvice.com/appnn/2010/04/humor-ipad-printing-simple/
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
But why would you want to print to the iPad?
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
You do realize that AM stations, by virtue of being much further down the RF spectrum, have a much, much bigger range, right?
AM radio requires a special ferrite bar antenna, which won't fit inside a small device (and give decent reception). With FM, they can just use the headphone cable as an antenna.
They listed the top things users were requesting for a new AppleTV, but I have a sneaking suspicion that their users were maybe the content providers.
Seriously... the number one requested feature is a frick'n DVR!!!
The real Sig captains the Northwestern. This one captains
I use a Shuffle to play nasty industrial "music" to get me through gym sessions. The gen. 2 Shuffle worked very nicely, but eventually succumbed to some combination of sweat and battery cycle limit. The gen. 3 that I got to replace it has been a bitter disappointment.
I can only hope that the newly announced Shuffle has cured itself of the extreme idiocy of having the controls embedded in the earphone cord. "Ear buds" do not work for me - they fail to block external noise, and they fall out of my presumably alien mutant (not-Apple-spec.) ears. I ended up having to buy a $20 Belch-kin accessory to be able to use a decent Sennheiser sports headset.
Navigation with the single-button control has been an unspeakable horror. Having to click 3 times to move backward, would be a challenge for me if I were doing nothing else, and is made worse while I am grinding away on a stationary bike. I end up getting voice titles, fast forwards, replays, and anything other than the steady backward progression through recently played songs, that I wanted.
I want something small and minimal: no glowing screens. I want something that was designed to be USED.
You just a succinct (I believe accurate) technical answer to a question about an Apple product on Slashdot... Is that allowed? :-)
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
I suppose. For me -- and I'm really invested in Apple hardware, both for myself and my family (5 mac users) -- there's nothing here of interest.
The iPad (which yes, we own two of) still lacks cameras and IR emission, needs a flat, un-wobbly back, still has enough wasted sq inches of bezel area to fit an iPod Touch into, still is bound to AT&T, still is too low-res to properly display even 720p, still lacks CF, SD and USB connections, still syncs by cable, still charges by cable, and still has a paltry 512 mb of memory, which, when they eventually get around to implementing multitasking, means that what you're actually going to get is something on the order of windows 3.1 multitasking with a few services, not actual task switching, etc. And it still costs *way* too much.
The iPhone... still bound to AT&T, still missing features other phones have had for quite some time. Can't use it here because of the AT&T monopoly, so it isn't worth anything to me.
Mac Mini... from a $499 (barely) entry mac with a great footprint to a seriously overpriced block that eats way more desk space...
Still no reasonable desk mac or straight up tower mac (not talking macpro... talking *reasonable*.)
Still got those OSX widgets stuck back on an invisible screen, where they're utterly useless to us... (luckily, there's Yahoo Widgets, which actually work like you'd want them to)
The iPod Touch... mm, nice new display and camera, they almost got me there, but considering the ios4 fake multitasking... I'll wait for one with a couple gigs of memory and some better battery technology so the thing can *actually* multitask.
Aperture still doesn't support stacked plugins... and we're on major release 3... oy. Likewise, Logicpro... still buggy as heck, still hasn't been updated.
And as for trying to sell me 99 cent TV shows... now that's simply straight-up funny.
Honestly, I think they're losing it. I have money, I like the gear, and it doesn't even seem like they are *trying* to get me to hand it to them.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I was hoping they would be adding bluetooth into the nano. That would have been a reason for me to buy a new one. I don't like those bluetooth add-on accessories, it would be a lot nicer if it was integrated in.
Anyone with VLC could have watched the keynote. Apple was using standard RFC-standard HTTP video streaming. Microsoft hasn't implemented it on Windows yet — what do you want them to do?
No comment.
The standard non-answer. Kind of sad.
Q. User - How do I get (Linux/Apple device/whatever fanboi loves the most) to do $foo?
A. Fanboi who won't admit that his precious can't do $foo. - Why would you want to do that?
Why would you want to cut and paste on an iphone? Why would you want to print from an ipad? Why would you want your email client to integrate with your calendar? Why would you want to move the "song name" column in itunes..........
None of them can see the clouds; The polished wings don't care.
Well if you've been an Apple fan for any amount of time you should know that they will not ever, at least as long as Jobs is around, produce a consumer tower. There has been hue and cry for one for as long as I can remember, and they ones that the clone makers made during that brief time did well. Apple does not care, they will not produce it for some reason.
As for cable charging, what other kind of charging do you suggest? Power does not travel through the air well, that whole inverse square law bites you in the ass. Tesla wanted wireless power, never could make it work for that reason. Inductive charging is possible but increases bulk and decreases efficiency, plus the device has to sit right on the charger to work. How is that better than a wire (inductive charging is normally only used for things like electric toothbrushes where water in the connector would be an issue). Cable is how power is done.
So does the iPad have print drivers to print to the Kindle?
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
If I wasn`t living in one of countries which Apple/MPAA/RIAA whatever makes impossible to buy/rent stuff from iTMS, I would order Apple TV right now.
If it has no hidden evil terms, 100 dollars, quicktime/itms, I am sold.
A test of the new Apple data center.
I read that this event was used to test out the ability of the new data center that Apple built. I assume that the new Apple TV content will be served from this site, and they wanted a good test to see how well it worked out.
http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/20/apple-data-center/
The standard non-rebuttal. Very sad.
Seriously, someone better answer the question eventually: Why would you want to print from the iPad? You bitches whine about your jetpacks and flying cars, but some of us just want that goddamn paperless office already.
Christ, it's 2010 and I'm still dealing with fucking fax tech. Tired of this shit.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
You're trying too hard.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
I sometimes think Apple is a social experiment that is trying to see how far it can push people to buy things they didn't ask for but now want because they've seen them.
As for the charging thing... maybe they were referring to a cable connected to a computer instead of a wall outlet?
Remember to maintain your supply of
You do realize that with Apples talent for incorporating antennas in their products, they would would have a very short range unless you held it just right, right?
Even though a large percent of apps in the iTunes app store are location aware and require GPS to work properly, it is very disappointing that the new iPod Touch (and the current WiFi only iPad) does not have a GPS receiver yet. It is very useful to have turn-by-turn GPS navigation, current location weather forecasts, gas prices, and other services all running on an iPod Touch and WiFi iPad as well as they run on the iPhone and iPad 3G.
FFS, the standard Slashdot reply to a new Apple product has made it to the thread. This device just works. Failure is not defined as not using your particular connection method. This device connects to a standardized ecosystem, streams h.264 video and reaches out online to a couple of reputable for-pay services. It's incredibly compact and affordable. I can put Apple TV units in a few rooms of the house for the price of a PC strung up to a single TV without the hassle of VLC and none of the weight of a chip on my shoulder.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
You are right from a technology perspective, but not correct from a real world perspective.
From a pure RF perspective AM frequencies can be picked up further away at the same power levels, provided no obstacles.
In the real world, AM radio starts off at a disadvantage, a 50,000 watt limit compared to FM's 100,000 watt limit. However it also turns out that the lower frequencies are more susceptible to interference, and don't penetrate buildings as well. AM is also greatly affected by the time of day, as atmospheric conditions make a huge difference.
This is why around a major city the 100,000 watt FM station can be pretty reliably picked up in a ~100 mile radius by a car antenna, but many AM stations are completely full of static and buzz, unlistenable right downtown.
you do realise he said "But why would you want to print to the iPad?"
$ unzip, strip, touch, finger, grep, mount, fsck, more, yes,fsck,fsck,fsck,umount, sleep
The Apple TV hasn't ever done 1080p. Anyone who cares already knows that. And very few people have the bandwidth to stream 1080p anyway, so who cares?
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
I'm sure that in a day of 500gb hard drives, base systems shipping with 4 gigs of memory, and 6 mbps download speeds being the base standard, making iTunes smaller is a *huge* priority. Not that I wouldn't appreciate it, too :(
* You can not mount a network hard drive (without hacking it)
* You can not mount a usb hard drive (without hacking it)
* Format support is very limited. For example: you can not play xvid, divx and a bunch of other formats
I think you're currently better off connecting a computer to your tv and run VLC on it... unless of course you like apple dictating what technology and media you have access to.
How much is your time worth? It's $99 !!! No cables, no computer in the loop. You can use your computer while the kids watch the video. And if you need to do all the BS you want you can just do that on your computer and stream in in H264 to the device. Don't give me some rubbish about the transcode from xvid ruining the picture quality. If you care about that then you are 0.00001% of the market.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
They don't actually force you to print stuff even if the support is being added.
Personally, if I were to buy an iPad, I would certainly print train tickets and perhaps flight confirmation and check-in slips. I could have the information on the iPad (or something I'm actually using), but I kind of enjoy not having to worry if I'll run out of battery with surfing, playing videos and so on..
It is what it is.
From the Tech Specs:
H.264 video up to 720p, 30 frames per second, Main Profile level 3.1 with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps per channel, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
This is the change that EVERYONE was waiting for. This puts Tv on demand at the pricepoint that even cheap-ass ol' me will even pay. That's $12.00 a year per TV show (as most tv shows are half assed and only release 12 episodes a year / season) So if I get rid of Comcast or Dish at even the low price rate of $39.00 a month. I can watch 39 specific TV show episodes per month for the same price. This is far more than I can watch anyways because 99% of what is on cableTV sucks. And these are commercial free.
This means I'll pay about 1/3rd of what I pay for cableTV a month to get the programming I want. The ONLY problem is that TV shows like Colbert Report and Daily show are 4 times a week, and I cant see the audience of those tv shows paying $32.00 a month just to watch those two shows.
Now, what I want to know is does the interface give me a custom "shows I like" menu that will show that I have not watched or what is new, or will it be like the crappy current interface where I have to go searching for everything......
Steve said over and over "it is easy to use" well; easy to use is a menu of only my stuff I like....
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Tivo also has a huge disadvantage of the requirement of a $55.00 to $99.00 monthly service fee to get content. Oh and it's $13.00 a month guide service fee.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
The reason is the way it's packaged on the iPhone is the GPS/GSM chip is integrated.
* You cannot haul a California king size mattress (without a hitch and trailer)
* You cannot haul 12' x 4' sheets of drywall (without a hitch and trailer)
* Passenger space is very limited. For example: you cannot easily transport 6 children in it
I think you're better off just getting a Ford F-150 with a king cab and bench seats... unless of course you like Honda dictating what can and cannot transport in your vehicle.
As someone who uses a number of Apple devices where they make sense (my laptop and my music player) and other stuff where they don't (my gaming machine and my phone) I don't know why people freak out about Apple products doing what they always do. My mom doesn't give a shit about xvid or divx. She doesn't rip her DVDs. She doesn't store them digitally or download torrents. She certainly isn't going to configure anything or care about storing rentals.
My parents can plug this box in and be GOOD TO GO. Like most Apple products, this is an appliance and marketing and targeted as such. I really wish I could have fails like the Apple of late. My car would be a lot nicer!
Yes, the device is a fail at doing things it was never designed for. Most devices are. My pencil, for instance, is an epic fail when my toilet gets clogged.
You forgot the >$60/mo for cable TV service to get data to that DVR.
This is (well, is the beginning of) what-you-want when-you-want pay-for-only-what-you-want Internet-driven "a la carte" TV in a cheap ($99) convenient (power, HDMI, done) small (hockey puck) package which people have been clamoring for. It renders the DVR obsolete.
Wonder when networks will talk Apple into pushing free, but commercial-laden, episodes.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
99% of users: "What is a codec?"
Perhaps because the things other companies make are utter shit in comparison, even taking into account the things Apple might leave out that you would like?
you know, reading is a good thing. In your case, you didn't.
I was not stating that they didn't need to be able to print, I asked separately why do people need to print anything these days, really.
That's not for or against feature inclusion. read the fucking post before you comment on it please.
You don't seem to understand the concept of: It works best (for the particular person in question) among all of the alternatives. That may mean the person still complains about it.. A LOT. Since they're using it, they know about what they like and don't like about the product.. and most people complain more than they praise.
You could be negative and say "least bad". There are TONS of things I would improve about Tivos for example, but they still do what I want(*) as well as any of the alternatives I've seen. (Even saying that, I'm *vaguely* interested in the Ceton 4 tuner card, and I don't do Windows anything.)
(*) Record TV shows conveniently, mostly. I've also done a bit of video podcast playing from the Tivo and lately transferred more stuff to computer -- sometimes to make podcasts to listen to on my phone.
And believe it or not, I'm sure Ghandi and Martin Luther King, Jr. would like to punch you.
The CB App. What's your 20?
Don't new TV's basically have "AppleTV" built in? Newer Sony TVs (and I imagine other brands) can stream from computer (DNLA), stream from Internet (including netflix, with Hulu joining next month), can play pictures/movies from USB storage... what else does AppleTV do?
It's a dirty job, but someone's got to do it. :)
You've made a bad assumption here. I don't mind buying gen-1, imperfect hardware; it encourages the manufacturer. If they came out with (for instance) an iPad that had 2 gb of ram, real multitasking... I'd buy a pair of them immediately, too, and hand off the old ones to someone who could use them. Then when they come out with one with an IR port... you guessed it, I'll buy another pair. And so on. But see, right now, they haven't come with *any* improvements, so I'm not even thinking about buying. Get it now?
One more thing: That the iPad needs improvements, sure, I'm all about that. I posted here because this is one of Apple's brag days for the device, and because the upshot of it was a big yawn to me, and I think that's significant because I *am* a pro-Apple person and a potential buyer.
But if you ask me if the iPad is a technology / device that enables me and improves my life, I could bend your ear/eye for many, many paragraphs while saying yes, yes, yes. I am HUGELY pro-iPad. There's nothing like it out there (yet), and even if you duplicated or exceeded the hardware, the app space... wow. All I can say is good luck. And I *knew* I was getting something great, because we had iPod Touches prior to the iPad and *those* were just stunning little gems of tech. Which ALSO needed improvement (and are getting a little love this time around... camera, for instance.)
I don't know why people think you have to become a blind supporter just because you buy something, or why you're supposed to claim a device is perfect as-is, or why you're not supposed to buy it if it isn't absolutely exactly what you want. Something weird about all that I just can't connect with.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Did anybody want a touchscreen Nano? Better yet, what good does a touch screen that's about an inch and a half square do anybody? I have a feeling that my stupidly large hands would be completely unable to operate the new Nano, and I know I can't be alone there.
This seems like a design regression. I know that touchscreens are sexier than the old wheel was, but was there really anything wrong with the old Nano design that warranted throwing it out entirely?
Goo goo g'joob.
what else does AppleTV do?
Work with your year-old plasma TV for only $100?
Actually, printing to the iPad is already dead simple (at least if you're on a Mac). Just drop an alias of the iTunes application in your ~/Library/PDF Services folder and name it "Print PDF to iPad". Then in the print dialog box, the PDF dropdown will have an entry to print to the iPad. It automatically creates the PDF and imports it to iTunes, ready to upload to your iPad the next time you sync.
Ask me how the Heisenberg Principle may or may not have saved my life.
Don't new TV's basically have "AppleTV" built in? Newer Sony TVs (and I imagine other brands) can stream from computer (DNLA), stream from Internet (including netflix, with Hulu joining next month), can play pictures/movies from USB storage... what else does AppleTV do?
Link with your iTunes account for a seamless movie buying^Wrenting experience. Link with Mac and iTunes for photo album and music album playback. Have a pretty UI. Provide a monoculture with a large enough installed base for snazzy apps to be developed.
Now I don't like the piece of bloat that is iTunes/iTMS and thus won't purchase any product that requires it -- but there are tens of millions of people who do (and tens of millions more who won't even know what iTunes is, but would love an easy-to-use old-people friendly movie rental machine).
[[Actually if it had had the 5MP iPhone 4 camera, (which is probably what he assumed since I assumed it too until I looked at the tech specs) he would not have been joking, that could replace a P&S for most people.]]
You don't understand the difference between "better than" and "willing to settle for."
People who are replacing their digital cameras for the iPhone 4 camera are not doing so because it is better than their point and shoot. It's not. They're giving up a number of features they don't understand, don't know how to work, or don't find important for a single button, slower operation, and lower image quality.
In Soviet Russia...michael would be rotting in Siberia!
The iPad (which yes, we own two of) still lacks cameras and IR emission, needs a flat, un-wobbly back, still has enough wasted sq inches of bezel area to fit an iPod Touch into, still is bound to AT&T, still is too low-res to properly display even 720p, still lacks CF, SD and USB connections, still syncs by cable, still charges by cable, and still has a paltry 512 mb of memory, which, when they eventually get around to implementing multitasking, means that what you're actually going to get is something on the order of windows 3.1 multitasking with a few services, not actual task switching, etc. And it still costs *way* too much.
Look at your post, now look at mine, now look back at yours and wonder what's wrong with it, and then look at mine to find out: :)
- cameras - why does the iPad need "cameras" (plural)? Do you want to be "that" guy holding something the size of a book up to take a picture?
- IR emission - I'm guessing you want to replace your remote control with the iPad for some reason. I guess you've never owned a Palm Pilot or a Windows CE device with their IR emitters that were next to useless. If you really wanted to replace your remote, you need both a transmitter and receiver to capture IR codes that aren't supported
- Bezel wastage - go complain about that on every other device you own that has a screen - your TV, your laptop, your cellphones, your alarm clock. If you cut that bezel off, try using your iPad without blocking the screen.
- AT&T - I'm sorry you live in the US of A - us other Americans don't have this problem. There's also the option of not getting the 3G model.
- 720p - the iPad is 768p. 720p 768p in terms of vertical lines.
- CF - really? You really want to support that? I'm sorry you bought an SLR from 4 years ago - a form factor that is nearly fully dead. Nonetheless, a slot that size in a device that small is asking for gunk to end up in it.
- USB - there's a simplicity in not having this: it prevents people from asking how come device X doesn't work. It's a bus where almost anything can be attached. It draws power. You'll notice that Apple sells the cable connector add-ons with a USB port as a "camera connection kit". It's to weed out the guy who attaches his USB powered nerf gun.
- 512 mb of memory - Each iPad you have has only 256MB of system memory. You did say you had 2 iPad's so maybe you meant together
- multitasking - Your comparison to Windows 3.1 begs me to believe you don't understand how multitasking works on iOS 4.x. Feel free to Google.com it to understand more. Comparing to the iPad specs, back when Windows 95 launched, the fastest processor was a Pentium running at 233MHz and having 64MB of RAM would have been amazing. If applications for desktops were written with more care, you wouldn't have to keep buying a faster CPU and more memory every 2 years to run the same family of applications.
Anyhow, I'm on a horse ...
---- The geek shall inherit the Earth.
Why I want printing from the iPad is so I can talk some relatives into getting one as their main computers. The iPad is pretty close to everything these folks need, which is light word processing, email, web surfing, and mindless games.
Yes, I know you need to pay $99/year to program one, and the app selection is limited, but most people don't really care about that. Coincidentally, the people who don't care about that are the ones most likely to host botnets if they're allowed real computers on the Internet, and I'd rather like to get those people on iDevices for all of our sakes.
So, if they can use iPads as their main computers, I don't get stupid tech support questions. I have some confidence that they can figure out their email without my assistance. Heck, even my most technophobic relatives can probably have fun with one. They can browse the web without becoming part of a botnet.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Go into your settings and disable all the spotlight settings. It should speed up a bit.
well, you have me there. The ipad has serious flaws, so I guess I should have bought...um...that other tablet PC. You know, from the vast market place of tablet computing devices of which the iPad is a flawed and pitiful example. oh that's right...there's NO other competing products (unless you count a freaking laptop with the screen twisted around like a possessed Linda Blair).
When the market is awash in ipad killer competitors that do everything the ipad doesn't, THEN I'll get involved in fanboy bashing with you, but until then, the ipad may not be perfect, but you can at least actually BUY one.
Indeed, here's a photo of someone using their Android phone to watch the keynote.
I think iOS 4.1 undresses those problems, a quick search shows that the beta has improved the performance, if I'm not mistaken it was mentioned in the keynote today too.
... is a decade-plus-old Palm--why, exactly?
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
It does have a built in mic and speaker. Every Touch since 2008 has had a speaker and the mic was added for FaceTime support.
People should also stop believing marketing. I guess your nick is quite appropriate
I buy devices on what I need. That's why I don't have an iPad. Unlike you, I can see that people who buy one are doing so because it meets their needs not mine. Geeks like you fail to understand that you do not represent everyone. You represent yourself. Apple's success must be so disconcerting to your world view. That's why Apple's success must be solely attributed to marketing. Otherwise you might have to admit that you don't understand people.
Your entire problem is that you can't understand that some people don't want a laptop. If they wanted one, they would have bought one. All you see is the technical capabilities and think that is the entire sum of a user needs. You're not thinking about what users want in terms of user experience. Technically if I want to drive 500 miles a 1978 beat-up truck will get me there. I will enjoy the trip more in a new luxury sedan. Buy you would quip about how I can't haul a stack of wood with my luxury sedan and not understand why I didn't buy truck.
I'm sorry but here we use Metric measurements. Lets assume 2KG, if you have a problem lifting 2KG spend that A$700 on a gym membership and plenty of 13" laptops come in at under 2 KG. Most netbooks come in at under 1 KG.
I'm sorry here we accurately convert measurements. It takes like a second to look up Google that 1.5 lbs = 0.68 kg and Google is free. The problem with netbooks is that they are essentially a smaller laptop. There are cheap ones. There are light ones around 0.68kg. But few of them are both.
Plus they will have a keyboard, not require a separate machine for activation, loading music, not tie you into Apple's distribution channels, have networkable storage (using CIFS and NFS) as well as being completely interoperable with all your other kit. Oh and can be used in any type of secure business enviroment. Because the Ipad does none of the above.
Again, do you not understand the concept of "purpose"? Apple didn't design the iPad to be a replacement for any netbook or laptop. And people do not buy it because they wanted a laptop. Before if people wanted a portable device to read email, play music and surf the web, the only choices they had were laptops or netbooks. Now they can get something optimized for those purposes not a general device.
As for being a tablet, the Ipad is a complete failure because it cannot interoperate with other devices (mass storage) or other networks (join domains, network protocols like CIFS), everything requires a separate machine with Itunes so it cant be shared around (back to mass storage). Either the entire tablet fad will blow over or the Ipad will be killed by more functional Android or even WebOS tablets (as unlikely as it is for WebOS to get off the ground) which may even offer such functionality as joining a domain, connecting directly to a projector or becoming an input device for laptops and desktops.
Tablets have been around a long time but have been less than successful in the market place. Care to guess why? While they might do more than the iPad, they sure cost more. They were basically a desktop shoved into a small form factor with little thought that a user might need a different UI concept. I am interested how Android and WebOS will enter the market and they are more solutions to the same problem that tablets have failed to address.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.