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IPad 2 Teardown Shows Tablet's Guts
alphadogg writes "Apple's iPad 2 tablet, which became available Friday, boasts a big battery, tiny speakers, an ample 512MB of RAM and a glass front that's tricky for tinkerers to take off. That's the upshot from an initial teardown of the new Apple tablet by iFixit, which specializes in Apple product repair. IFixit warns that those who dare to peer into the insides of the iPad 2 on their own risk cracking the glass front panel, which is thinner than that from the original iPad (0.62 mm vs. 0.85 mm) and glued on rather than attached via tabs. A heat gun was needed by iFixit to disassemble the device."
Sounds a lot like an iPhone 4 and the Macbook Air. I work for an authorized Mac sales and service center; our Mac specialist had to use a heat gun to take the screen/glass off on a Macbook Air. Research for the iPhone 4 returns similar needs.
Like the article says, a heatgun did the trick.
The thing with courier is that, whilst I agree it was a great form factor, it didn't actually exist. It was all talk - no shippable product. So for all the flaws that may exist in Apple's vision of the tablet form factor (or the Android ones for that matter) at least they actually exist - they're real, they work and they are being sold today.
Courier looked as though it was years away from even being thought of as a real product, let alone being sold to people in the real world
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4216/apple-ipad-2-gpu-performance-explored-powervr-sgx543mp2-benchmarked
and their review helps as well http://www.anandtech.com/show/4215/apple-ipad-2-benchmarked-dualcore-cortex-a9-powervr-sgx-543mp2
The key items to take away from both are, yeah the cameras suck but this is truly a real upgrade from the iPad. Performance alone puts is ahead of the older model as well as many available tablets. They did find out that the dual core processor is actually running at only 900mhz. While the Xoom pushes more pixels because of its 1280x800 versus 1078x768 the iPad2 pulls far ahead of it, beyond what the pixel count would account for. As for gaming, some games are already taking advantage of the new power, Infinity Blade has been updated and looks fantastic. This brings up the issue, will there be apps sold that are marked iPad2 required?
Better yet, its cheaper than its nearest competition. The only question is, how long before really good Android tablets come along?
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
OK but.... wirelessly sending the movie form your iPad to your hi-def TV is decidedly more cool and useful.
Something like this maybe? I saw another one as well that was targeted at universities as textbook readers, etc.
Have you ever seen somebody watching a two hour movie on ipad? It's a sight to behold. TWO HOURS of holding it in your one hand.
Have you ever seen somebody watching a two hour movie on a laptop? It's a sight to behold. TWO HOURS of holding it in your two hands. Or someone reading a book. Hours and hours of never moving or shifting and just keeping that thing suspended at arms length the entire time. ;)
tablets do not function as a useful tool except for the guys who scan your creditcards with a handholding device (and for similar purpose). But who am I to reason with retards, fucktards and fanbois?
You're right. And 15 million people who've bought an iPad are completely wrong. And the millions more who bought/may buy Android tablets. Why can't these people see that tablets is ill suited to your needs and thus they should never get one?
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Have you ever seen somebody watching a two hour movie on ipad? It's a sight to behold. TWO HOURS of holding it in your one hand.
You know you can hold it with two hands...unless you're watching porn. If the people you saw were watching porn then I guess that was a sight to behold.
Some of what I say is fact, some is conjecture, the rest I'm just blowing out my ass...you guess.
Why the main article this summary is about is not linked is beyond me...
http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/iPad-2-Wi-Fi-Teardown/5071/1
As a long time Linux programmer and user whose only Apple purchase was an 80 gig iPod a few years back, I was skeptical about the iPad, but after extensive research into the Android tablets, I finally decided to give the iPad a try. I own a Google Nexus One Android phone and was really hoping for a decent Android tablet, but they simply don't exist yet. Every single one has some sort of flaw or missing feature, although the Moto Xoom looks to be a competent offering, once it's tweaked and polished and the prices come down a bit.
I have found the iPad to be a beautifully designed, well engineered best-of-class portable computer. Its battery life is outstanding, the user interface is smooth and natural, and it is incredibly convenient.
I fly a lot, and even a small laptop is a pain to use in a cramped coach class seat, whereas the iPad in combination with a $30 leather portfolio case that lets it stand up in various configurations plus a wireless keyboard is just about ideal. It works with all my Google services--email, docs, calendar, contacts--about as well as on an Android handheld, and it does audio Skype phone calls, and the book reading software is adequate. Apple Pages is a pretty decent word processor. Eventually, my 6-year-old will inherit this unit when the really good Android tablets come out, and already she's addicted to the touch interface and the colorful paint and animation games one can download.
I returned it within 14 days because the iPad 2 had just come out, and now I have to wait like everyone else to upgrade, but I don't regret my purchase for a minute.
The touch tablet concept proved its value first with the Palm and iPod/iPhone products, and so a larger tablet was merely a logical migration, not a revolution. And yet it feels revolutionary, because suddenly I use a computer for a lot of things that I never would have done before. It fits easily and neatly on my exercise machine, for example, so I can read or watch videos while working out. It slips into a backpack or satchel very easily and is about as thick as a pad of paper, so it's almost an afterthought to bring it along to work or trips or events (but keep an eye on it!). I use it to read in bed, or watch videos late at night--also dangerous, because my eyes are getting tired from all the close-up focusing. I find myself reaching for the tablet rather than the laptop when I want to look something up, because it's simply easier and quicker, even without a mouse or full travel keyboard.
By the way, the iPad's keyboard is surprisingly not bad to touch type on in landscape mode. I write stories in my spare time, and I have found I can type almost full speed--when I miss a key, the auto-correction often fixes it, although you need to be careful because it will auto-complete to the wrong word occasionally. The thing doesn't totally keep up with my typing, actually, and I'm hoping the iPad 2's increased CPU power will remedy that.
Everyone screams about Flash missing from the iPad. I would agree that it's better to let the consumer choose, but really I have found it's a non-issue with the iPad. I have watched videos on WSJ, Yahoo, CNN, and a few other websites with no problem. The Youtube app works great, as does the Netflix app (both free). In fact, it's the best way for me to watch Netflix streaming video, since I don't own a Windows PC (hitherto, I watched Netflix in a VirtualBox Windows session but it's not ideal). On my Android phone which of course has Flash, I find it's mainly good for seeing fancy animated ads on websites.
It's nice that after installing some iPod compatibility software from the Ubuntu software dialog, I could plug in my iPad to my Ubuntu laptop and explore the file system. I could also run iTunes from a VirtualBox WinXP session to do fancier sync'ing.
Undoubtedly, by Christmas '11, there will be a plethora of highly competent Android tablets in the $200-$300 range that have all the features left out of the Apple products--Flash, MicroSD card expansion, USB
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
The problem with everything you said is your basic assumption that 15 million people would do exactly as you do. They're not you. Some people might have said "ooh shiney" and bought one. The vast majority of people I see that have them are using them. Some are playing games. Some are watching movies. I saw one person showing some data to his boss and his boss slicing through the data. I've seen one used at a 10K run where the company in charge of tracking the runners was using it to show runner their times and splits. Now they could have printed all of that and posted on the side of a van or something but the owner told me having the iPad meant he could carry two less things: a printer and paper.
As for comparing specifications, iPad competitors have started to be released in the last six months; however many people consider only the Xoom to be the first serious competitor. As far as research goes I think it would have been quite simple. There was the iPad which they could get easily and other products which had negatives and they couldn't really get.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Ample here means sufficient. It seems to get the job done, and gets it done better (by all accounts) than the Samsung, despite it being half as much.
Having more RAM in and of itself isn't useful if you're not going to use it. Apple gets to save money on the memory AND beat the performance of the Samsung? That's just clever.
I don't have an iPad of any sort yet, but putting good cameras in it seems a waste of time to me. I've got an iPhone 4 that I'm far more likely to take pictures on (who wants to hold up a whole freakin' tablet to take a picture?) and a Sony cybershot that I'm MUCH more likely to take travelling with me to take movies and pictures with.
Samsung is wasting time and money spec-padding. And that dual-core graphics and CPU don't seem to be helping them any in head-to-head comparisons.
Apple has just designed a better tablet at a better price that people are willing to buy. Don't blame Apple for doing it the smart way, blame Samsung for not paying attention to what will actually perform best and attract customers.
I started counting a couple of stories back, this is the sixth first post defending Microsoft that devxo has posted in the last three days.
The other five are:
1
2
3
4
5
Liking Microsoft products is one thing, but keeping tabs of every story and writing a multi-line first post for every other one, well that looks like a real job to me. I wonder how much Microsoft pays him. Does he get overtime, considering all this was done in a weekend?
While it is true that desktops and laptops need more than 2GBs of RAM to even run an OS such as Windows. The iPad can get away with 512MB of RAM is due to the fact that the OS and the apps aren't as big as Windows or Windows programs. 512MBs is alot of RAM considering what the iPad is and what it can do.
im by no means a fanboy. I dont own an iDevice and i never will, because i prefer the alternatives
With that said...
If devs can write software that uses resources efficiently 512MB just might be plenty. Just because desktops take advantage of hexcore processors and 16GB of RAM doesnt mean a tablet should too. Additionally, it could be an energy saving measure. Im no expert on the matter, so i'd have to ask do higher capacity RAM chips consume more energy?
Are you aware that on Android, apps are limited to 24 MB each? I've no idea what the limit is on iOS, but I can't see why 512 MB wouldn't be plenty.
Sorry to burst your applesauce bubble, but 512mb ram is hardly ample in 2011.
Thanks for the valuable info. Without your wisdom, how would I know that the 256MB RAM on my iPad 1 was so pitifully inadequate?
On other systems, users would know that they had inadequate RAM due to the usual symptoms (machine slowing to a crawl, errors, crashes) but Evil Apple has conspired to ensure that these rarely happen on the typical iPad, fooling customers into think that, because their device runs perfectly, they have adequate RAM.
The rascals! I feel soiled.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
...and copy the sleek design to create a product that is equally appealing to the eyes and twice or three times as powerful?
Ignoring the "economy of scale" issue (Apple orders displays, Flash etc. in huge quantities to get low prices) how do you make it twice or three times as powerful and still use the same parts?
Faster processors/graphics cost more. They generate more heat (so you can't pack them in as tightly) and they use more power (so you have to make the battery bigger or sacrifice battery life).
Higher-res cameras cost more, and probably use more power/generate more heat to boot. They're usually less sensitive (less light falls on each pixel) which means poorer low-light performance, or more amplification (more noise, more power, more heat => even more noise) or built-in illumination (more power/heat). Higher-quality cameras need higher-quality lenses which occupy more space.
Many of the "improvements" that Apple critics ask for also occupy more space or consume more power: more USB/SD/video connections = more space occupied by connectors and their internal cables and daughterboards + more complex and expensive assembly. Removable battery = user-proof internal battery connectors, extra protection to stop users damaging innards when replacing battery (more space, weight), need to make the battery rigid and safe to handle outside the case (more space, weight, less volume for battery) user-removable back (more space, weight...).
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
So if the iPad is shitty....
What does that say about the top of the line Android tablet?
http://gizmodo.com/#!5781376/ipad-2-benchmarks-way-better-than-the-xoom-kills-the-original-ipad
http://thegadgets.net/feature/ipad-2-with-ios-4-3-beats-motorola-xoom-in-javascript-benchmark-tests/
Good thing we have facts.....
http://www.mediabistro.com/thinkmobile/study-shows-ipad-usage-increases-over-time_b8613
From what I read, they did up the system bus speed from 100MHz to 200MHz. Even if they didn't add more RAM than the iPhone 4, it should be able to access it twice as fast. They also used a different type of RAM that has lower latency. So, not just an iPhone 4. I'd expect a lot of the same improvements in the iPhone 4.5/5 when it comes out in a few months.
today is spelling optional day.
4X beter GPU than the Xoom, and 5.5X faster than the iPhone 4/iPad 1, but why cloud your opinion with silly things like facts.
http://www.macrumors.com/2011/03/12/ipad-2-gpu-benchmarked-with-impressive-gains/
That being said, I just bought and rooted a Nook Color.
Prof. Farnsworth - "Oh a lesson in not changing history from Mr I'm-My-Own-Grandpa!"
Apple manages to run an application like GarageBand even on the original iPad 1 with 256MB.
Perhaps you should check out the 64K demo scene and see what people manage to cram into 64KB of memory, people who can seriously code.
Ample here means sufficient. It seems to get the job done, and gets it done better (by all accounts) than the Samsung, despite it being half as much.
You keep using that word, I do not think you know what it means. Ample means lots, more than enough, so much that you'll have some left over. My eight year old laptop has 512 MB, and considering that tablets are essentially touch-screen laptops, it makes the RAM in the iPad far from "ample". Sufficient? Maybe. But ample has a completely different meaning. Pretending that the words mean the same thing is called "lying".
Samsung is wasting time and money spec-padding. And that dual-core graphics and CPU don't seem to be helping them any in head-to-head comparisons.
How can they compete when the media is either in love with or employed by Apple? The iPad 2 was front page news for days. Every morning show host was playing around with one, infomercial style. Most companies need to pay for advertising. How much does Apple pay?
Does it make it harder to repair...yes. Do modern devices like this need as much repair (I bet the p(95) MTTF is incredibly high)...no.
You know the lights in the corridor between terminals B and C at O'hare--a artistic marvel--are held up by structural adhesive.
You're missing three key things.
1. The 512MB of memory is incorporated on the A5 chip, along with a dual core CPU and GPU. It's a system on a chip that's estimated to cost a mere $28.90. The true magic in iPad is the hardware engineering -- it's all about providing the best user experience on dirt cheap hardware. For the first time in mass market history, the case (including display) costs more to manufacture than the computer it contains.
2. iOS is a compact mobile OS that runs on homogeneous hardware. There are essentially only two different hardware options. Developers know with absolute certainty how their apps perform when they ship and don't need to overspec hardware requirements -- if it runs sluggishly, they need to recode it. Period.
3. Nearly everyone who owns a computer isn't a computer user. They've never compiled code in their lives and haven't got a clue how their machines work. They're not hard-core gamers, either. They just want to connect with others, write a few letters, surf and play cheap games. They don't need a quad core machine with 16GB of RAM and a few terabytes of drive space for that.
Sorry to burst your applesauce bubble, but 512mb ram is hardly ample in 2011.
Truth mod me up, fanboy mod me down. In the end, you know an expensive piece of tech like this should have at least double, if not quadruple that ram... its 2011, don't forget that.
Ahh, the passion of youth. The unadulterated joy of believing that the new way is the best way, that nearly a million years of human history can be shoveled under the Pergo flooring with nary an afterthought. The exuberance that comes from a knowledge base spanning months in time.
Get over it kid, people have been running entire rocket systems on much less than 512 MB RAM. It's a limited appliance designed to do a couple of things well. Running Crysis isn't one of them. Sorry to bust your nihilist bubble, but Apple is laughing all the way to the bank.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
But who am I to reason with retards, fucktards and fanbois?
Nearly their equal?
The primary functionality of the iPad is moving money from the consumers' pockets to the manufacturer's. This a characteristic shared by virtually all luxury items, regardless of who the manufacturer is. Challenging others' use of discretionary income definitely earns you the first two of the three epithets.
The US government have made it clear that we have no inalienable rights; any we do not defend vigorously will be taken.
It's been stated often that the iTunes and App Stores break even for Apple (or close to it) - the bulk of the cash from there goes to the developers. If they're subsidising it's from the large cash reserves they have, or bulk orders, not the App Store.
My sense is volume pricing based on prior sales and the backing of a large cash reserve.
Ignoring the "economy of scale" issue (Apple orders displays, Flash etc. in huge quantities to get low prices) how do you make it twice or three times as powerful and still use the same parts?
I guess here is where people seem to ignore that logistics and planning matter. You can't go from 0 to 15 million in one year without having to put in effort to build out a supply network, work through manufacturing issues, etc. Also it appears that Apple was ahead of its competitors at least a year so they could lock down supply of critical components like 10" screens. I've read rumors that Apple also helped their supplier build capacity where needed in exchange for guaranteed supply.
Faster processors/graphics cost more. They generate more heat (so you can't pack them in as tightly) and they use more power (so you have to make the battery bigger or sacrifice battery life).
Here is where Apple designing their own chip has an advantage. They can optimize their chip for power/performance more so than their competitors. While the Tegra is a decent chip, Motorola can't really optimize like they may want. Samsung could design their own chip however as a unit, their chip company is somewhat independent of their consumer electronics division and may not be able to truly leverage expertise like they would wish.
Higher-res cameras cost more, and probably use more power/generate more heat to boot. They're usually less sensitive (less light falls on each pixel) which means poorer low-light performance, or more amplification (more noise, more power, more heat => even more noise) or built-in illumination (more power/heat). Higher-quality cameras need higher-quality lenses which occupy more space.
The Xoom does have better cameras but the Apple cameras are adequate for average consumers. This may be more of a decision that Apple feels that average consumers won't really use the higher resolution. Also this might be also a case to where Apple despite their best efforts didn't think that they could guarantee the supply. So they may have focused their attention on more critical components like the screen, the flash memory, etc.
Many of the "improvements" that Apple critics ask for also occupy more space or consume more power: more USB/SD/video connections = more space occupied by connectors and their internal cables and daughterboards + more complex and expensive assembly. Removable battery = user-proof internal battery connectors, extra protection to stop users damaging innards when replacing battery (more space, weight), need to make the battery rigid and safe to handle outside the case (more space, weight, less volume for battery) user-removable back (more space, weight...).
Really anyone still arguing for a removable battery is blindly ignoring all the disadvantages. There are advantages and disadvantages to having a removable battery. Considering that many smart phones and tablets have opted for a non-removable ones instead shows that many manufacturers consider the disadvantages of a removable battery to outweigh the advantages. Indeed if you ever looked at one of these teardowns, the one thing that is obvious is how much internal volume the battery takes. Making it removable would be problematic without having to use a smaller battery. The tradeoff is that you can have a removable battery but the battery life would be shorter or a non-removable battery with longer battery life. Many manufacturers appear to be picking the later.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Apple is almost certainly making money on every iPad sold even without apps.
They've got economies of scale working for them, though. They can order parts in such enormous quantities that it's impossible for other manufacturers to keep up.
But on the Android side, there's virtually no development cost for the OS (to the manufacturer); Apple subsidizes all of iOS's development themselves.
Samsung can subsidize their hardware cost because a considerable number of the components that they themselves manufacture are going into their product. Apple doesn't have THAT advantage.
Lastly, whether you love Apple or you hate them, they currently have more experience at making this stuff properly than anyone else. Everyone's been playing catchup since the first iPhone. They've got a lot of talent on board.
I don't think it's undoable. While the whole dual screen was interesting, the machine was a combination of ideas. The first is the dual screen movement. Using one side for navigation, and the other as a work area.
What the Courier needed was its ideas incorporated into Windows Metro. Metro should be able to do all the stuff courier could, like scan documents quick, have applications that you can scribble on with your finger, then take a picture on it, record video or voice and have it as one work area note, similar to the Memo Note (iOS app). And the CORE cool thing that Windows can do that no other company can is to treat any Windows PC as a secondary screen.
Now that would be a value proposition. Except Microsoft can't even come out with copy and paste on time.
I'm pretty sure that the iPad 2 can do all that. And in a Touch UI paradigm, you really CAN'T have a "secondary screen" (that isn't touch), unless it is used just for showing content. With that in mind, there are some iPad apps that can do this to a secondary display (iMeetingPad, MapProjector, VGA Expedition), and if you Jailbreak your iPad, Cydia has something called "Display Out" that does that, too. I understand that isn't exactly the same thing as using your computer as an iPad secondary display; but it is kinda close.
But all the big interest seems in making the iPad function as a secondary display for your computer, not the other way around.
And I guess i have to ask "Why?" The whole idea of a Tablet is PORTABILITY; if you are sitting at your (much better spec-ed) computer, why would you want to use your iPad as the PRIMARY input and control method? Other than a Touch UI (which is not as advanced in many ways as a conventional mouse-driven GUI), I really don't see the advantages to any but the most fringe applications.
Well, for one thing it's hard to build a system that is very thin, combines a great screen, reasonable performance and long battery life, and to make that all really *cheap*. There are lots and lots of Android tablets at half the price of the iPad, and not surprisingly they all sacrifice one thing or another (typically screen size or quality, performance, or in the case of the B&N Nook support costs are trimmed by limiting functionality).
Apple is using the same (or equivalent) suppliers as anyone else, and they're pretty much guaranteed strong sales, so right there they have a price advantage since they can amortize fixed costs over a large number of units. So I don't think we'll see any manufacturers offering dramatically *better* value than Apple at the iPad price point. That said, the Motorola Xoom is reasonably comparable to the iPad 2, and costs about the same as the iPad 2 model with the same amount of memory after you've shelled out for the accessories (like HDMI output for the iPad) to make them functionally equivalent. Samsung's Galaxy Pad seems to be in the same ballpark hardware-wise, but Samsung has caught some criticism for charging a little more than Apple, especially as Apple has done an especially nice job on the iPad design. Unless a tablet blows the iPad out of the water (not very likely), costing a bit more than the iPad is probably a mistake. You might convince people that something like the Galaxy Tab is just as good as the iPad2, but convincing them its *better*, even $25 better, is much tougher, as by now people know the iPad is very good indeed.
At present the Android software is less mature than iOS, which has been on the market for four years to Android's three. Until recently Android on tablets has had UIs hacked together with varying success by manufacturers, whereas iOS has been customized for tablet operation for almost a year; the first Honeycomb tablet came out last month.
So the state of the market is that the iPad has competitors with comparable (although not identical) hardware at comparable cost, but at present enjoys an advantage in user base running tablet specific software and a net edge in the current maturity of that software. Android is available on devices in the iPad price range all the way down to the $100 level, 1/5 the iPad entry price, with the bulk of the device selling for 50% to 80% of the iPad entry price. That all the devices in the lower price segment are much less refined than the IPad should hardly be a surprise. Many of these devices are feeble, "me too" responses to the iPad, but there are some good values to be had in the sub $300 and under price range for Android tablets.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Apple has conspired to ensure that these rarely happen on the typical iPad, fooling customers into think that, because their device runs perfectly
If you can only run one thing at a time, you need less memory.
Its the stupid things that drive me nuts with the iOS devices. I was doing some banking... and I couldn't have a calculator open at the same time as the bank app... and leaving the bank app meant I had to re-login. It was idiotic.
Today I'm shopping for a new car, so I was looking at web listings, while chatting with my brother. Again I wanted a calculator up so I could look at listings do currency conversions, tax calculations, and so on.
I find as soon as I want to actually do anything even remotely serious on an ios device, they drive me nuts.
I love how all the fanbois are crawling out to insist that "ample" and "adequate" are synonyms.
From http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/ample /æmpl/ Show Spelled[am-puhl] Show IPA
ample
–adjective, -pler, -plest.
1.
fully sufficient or more than adequate for the purpose or needs; plentiful; enough: an ample supply of water; ample time to finish.
2.
of sufficient or abundant measure; liberal; copious: an ample reward.
3.
of adequate or more than adequate extent, size, or amount; large; spacious; roomy: ample storage space.
Sucks to be as dumb as you.
The Xoom compares to only one iPad2 model, a 3G unit with a decent amount of storage - and even then it's around $70 more.
The thing is that you can get twice the storage for even less with an iPad if you are willing to forgo 3G. Or if you don't have a lot of money you can get an iPad for many hundreds less.
I don't think it's correct to say that because one particular model is close at all price-wise, that the two units are close in price. You have to consider the entry price to get into the platform, which is the starting point that consumers use to make choices. For someone initially considering these two devices they come off as $500 for an iPad2 and $800 for a Xoom... or even to be fair I guess you could use the subsidized Xoom price at $600. But that seems a bit dubious to me as not many people will see that price and it's not MSRP.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Apple grossed $4B from iTMS in 2009. Its impossible they didn't profit from this revenue.
Considering that 70% of revenue goes to straight the copyright holders, that means that only $1.2B went to Apple. That amount pays for all the servers, bandwidth, the credit card processing, administration, etc. While it sounds like a lot of money, Apple sold billions of music, hundreds of millions of videos, etc. Apple probably made a small profit after all that, it wouldn't have been much.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Well, no applications have been able to run in the background since last June.....
And by "run" I do mean....
My Nike+ GPS app can run and give me feedback while Mapquest 4 Mobile gives turning directions (this was actually an accident) while Pandora plays music, which can all be interrupted if I get a call either from the phone "app" or Yahoo Messenger (video or audio).....
http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/iPad-2-Wi-Fi-Teardown/5071/1
Stellar job as usual, editors, allowing someone to post a shitty blog link instead of the real article.
Obviously you haven't. But unless you're only interested in using a computer at a desk it's a factor. The point is they're easier to use in general, and that's why people are buying them.
I happen to love demoscene stuff, but I also happen to have a realistic assessment of what it is and how it works. So, let's take a look at one of Farbrausch's demos, since they really are the kings of the 64k compo. So we'll take fr-27, it's one that after the contest they managed to optimize down to just 47k on disk. All that and ti is full 3D, amazing. Ok but here's a question: How large is it in RAM? Answer is 77MB. That's right, as it loads (the little white bar on black background) it is generating a bunch of procedural data to RAM. Tiny on disk, big on the RAM.
Also all it manages with that is some very simplistic geometric shapes and animations. It's cool, don't get me wrong, but it is just very simple stuff. No complex artwork, no detailed animation.
So let's take a newer one, fr-41. This one is a little larger but still only 177k on disk. Also it has a full city scape that is quite nice looking. Still suffers a bit from the procedural generation "copy-paste) brush, but is far more than just simple geometric stuff. Also has some more advanced animation and morphing. Plus it has a UI to configure things. So how's it do on the RAM usage? 835MB. Damn. It has to decompress a ton of stuff in to RAM to fit in that size.
See those small demos are the art of a certain kind of optimization. You go for low disk usage at all costs. That's fine but it ends up taking up massive amounts of memory, plus heavy CPU and/or GPU usage to generate the content. Fine and extremely cool, I -love- it but don't pretend that all programs could be like that. Also it couldn't run on the iPad, not near enough resources.
Then there's just the fact that you lose flexibility. You have to deal with more simple things when it is all procedurally generated, you lose artistic control. You can see it in Farbrausch demos. Have a look at fr-25, their second most famous one (fr-19 their fist 64k is their most famous). It is a demo with a fully produced song with vocals and instruments, not just algorithmically synthesized music, and with advanced animation. Uses the same engine as their 64k demos, but weighs in at 8.6MB.
So you might want to learn a bit more about the tradeoffs one has to make for some of these things. To briefly touch on your garage band thing, I have multiple General MIDI instrument sample libraries. My smallest is a 4MB SoundFont. My largest is 40GB. the 4MB and 40GB library span the same collection of 128 instruments. However if you think the final sound is the same, you are kidding yourself, I don't keep the big one around for show.
Yep, I'm saddened by all this overprice, worst of it is that other manufactures are even more overpriced.