The vast majority of people are just going to want to swap between Safari and Mail and maybe one of the iWork apps; those apps act like there's multitasking (when you switch back to Safari from somewhere else, it's still on the same page scrolled to the same place as when you left it), so the real-world difference perceived by these users is virtually nonexistent.
It's only those of us who may want to actually run things in the background that'll care; so, no running Skype or a messenger client in the background while we surf the web.
It's unfortunate for us, but for most users that's not going to be a problem, and personally, I don't need to run messenger in the background when I've got other devices that can do it for me, and when people who need to contact me when I'm afk can do so by phone or text message or e-mail anyway.
There are three opinions I've seen (besides "meh, who cares?" and "an i-what?"):
I have one friend who is generally pretty level-headed about Apple, but who for some reason has decided the iPad is the second coming. We got in a huge argument about it - I was just saying "it's interesting, but not revolutionary", but he wouldn't accept that. He refused to back down from his position that there is absolutely nothing about the iPad that could be construed as anything less than revolutionary.
On the other hand, I have another friend who sees the iPad for what it pretty much is - a giant iPod Touch - and that's what excites him. He thinks about it this way: You buy an iPod Touch or an iPhone, you use it for a few months, and you start thinking, "Wouldn't it be cool if I could do $TASK on this? I guess I would need a larger screen..."... and now such a device exists. All those larger-screen-requiring $TASKs will now be possible on a device the general public will be willing to buy.
On the other other hand, there are all the Apple-haters you're talking about. I have several friends of this opinion. They won't even allow for the possibility that the iPad might be an interesting but not revolutionary device; to them, it must be completely pointless and stupid. They see no reason anyone should ever under any circumstances buy an iPad.
I pointed out to one such friend that if Google had released a device that was identical to the iPad in hardware and price but ran Android as its OS, he wouldn't be complaining - he'd be excited about it. (He admitted that was probably true, so he's perhaps more level-headed than some of the Apple-haters out there.)
A lot of this is just generic Apple-hate that people are applying to the iPad because they feel obligated to hate on anything Apple makes. People of this opinion do seem to be most numerous.
(And, for the record, I'm no Apple fanboy; I find Apple's Mac vs PC commercials to be misleading when they're not outright lying, and their overpriced hardware leaves me with very little reason to buy their computers; I really don't care about the "cool" factor. I bought an iPhone merely because I wanted a usable touchscreen phone, and I haven't been impressed by Android-based phones.)
The cheapest iPad costs more than twice the price of a Kindle.
Sure, if you're talking about the dinky 6" original Kindle. The Kindle DX, which is more comparable in screen size, costs $489, which is only $10 cheaper. Perhaps you could compare the iPad with that Kindle like I was, as I implied with my comment "for virtually the same price"?
As for your comment that the Kindle comes with free wireless, well... yes and no. Browsing the internet on the Kindle's eInk screen is hardly optimal (and that's the nicest way I can put it). The screen's refresh rate is rather slow, for one, and for another, you have to hack the device to get it to browse "the internet" (that is, if you want to do something besides buy Kindle books with it).
It also can't do some of the more interesting things you might want to do with a device like the iPad - e-mail, photo organization, educational tools, and so on.
If all you're looking for is a cheap e-reader, then no, the iPad is not for you, but that doesn't make it a stupid, pointless device, it just means it's not for you. There are a lot of devices I would never buy, but that doesn't mean they're stupid and pointless.
It doesn't have the eInk screen.
That could be considered a benefit of the iPad. People have widely varying opinions of eInk screens; some of the more friendly ones I've read can be summed up as "meh".
Personally I don't have eye strain issues, so eInk isn't really an issue for me.
Its battery life is a tragic fraction of the Kindle's 7-14 day battery life.
That's probably true. But 10 hours is pretty good for a full-color non-eInk screen, and if you're going to complain about having to plug it in real quick before you go to bed, then you're just being lazy. How many people actively read their Kindle for 10 hours in a single day? How many iPad users will do that? My guess is "very few".
I'm not saying that makes it somehow "better" than the Kindle, I'm just saying it makes the "battery life" complaint a largely moot point.
You're also pretending the iPad doesn't have any advantages over the Kindle: "it has a touchscreen" is itself a rather important one. I'm looking forward to seeing the things people do with portable 10" touchscreens - and here I'm referring to all 10" multitouch devices, not just iPads.
If you still don't see the point of the iPad, then maybe it's really not targeted at you;)
you have to pay $20 a month for Internet service.
Or you could just stick with wifi;) 3G internet on my iPhone is nice as far as it goes, but... it's so slow. I'd much rather go find a wifi access point to browse the internet. I suspect I'll feel the same about the iPad.
I'm really not trying to convince you to buy an iPad. I'm among the first to say "The iPad isn't for everyone". But it does have some interesting possible uses (at least, 10" touchscreen devices do), and for a 10" touchscreen, it's not the worst choice out there. The fact that it can also take over for the Kindle is just a bonus. I was considering a Kindle; now I don't have a reason to, especially since the iPad will also have access to the entire Kindle library via the Kindle app.
Yeah... I have to agree. I hate Comcast's business practices, but their internet service has been pretty rock-solid for me. The only time it ever really goes down is occasionally it'll drop for a few minutes in the wee hours of the morning when I should be asleep anyway, so I look at it as a (not so) gentle reminder that I should go to bed. I've also never had issues with long hold times the few times I've called them.
Maybe I'm just lucky? I don't know. I'd still switch to anyone else if there were comparable options (FiOS, Google, whoever), but right now my choices are Comcast or 1.5Mbps DSL from Qwest, and there's no way I'm settling for 1.5Mbps.
Perhaps not, but there's definitely a market for a 10" touchscreen ebook reader that is, in many ways, superior to the Kindle at virtually the same price... and as a bonus it also does everything an iPod Touch does.
Oh, I didn't say it was a good idea;) I merely said that their ToS (currently, as you point out) doesn't prohibit running "servers" on your home computer, as long as it's not for-profit.
Getting a printed copy of terms of service which they can change at will would do me absolutely no good... and they certainly wouldn't let anyone sign up with a modified ToS with that clause removed.
I'm reminded of what Comcast's CSR said about their bandwidth usage restrictions back before they admitted they have a limit: "We don't have a usage limit, but if you use too much, we'll cut you off." No amount of prodding could get the guy to tell me at what point they'd cut me off, and the only example he gave me was such a trivially small usage that I'd bet anyone who watches Hulu regularly surpasses it.
(His example was a user sending out 4,000 e-mails per day. Unless those are 2MB e-mails, he's not even going to get close to using 250GB/month.)
It's not against the ToS (at least for Comcast) unless you're making money from it, at least that's my understanding of the ToS and that's basically what the Comcast CSR told me before I signed up.
If it was not copyrightable then there would be no way to recoup the cost of creating 3-D models of buildings. Think of how much it would cost to 3D model New York City.
People sell things that are out of copyright (or not copyrighted) all the time.
Just because you can't copyright something doesn't mean you can't make money off of it;)
(That's not saying anything about whether 3-D representations of things are copyrightable. My gut says they are, but I'm not a lawyer...)
But it has not updated the content, you have to wait for it to do it. After reading the page you wait for it download e-mail.
I don't understand what you're getting at... why would switching back to Safari require waiting to download e-mail?
I suspect you really mean that if I start a page load in Safari, then switch away, that the load stops. This is true. However, most people will likely be using wifi, and there's no flash or Java support, so page loads are going to proceed relatively quickly for just about whatever page you're visiting.
In other words, I don't see that as a problem for most use cases. Even when I'm on a desktop I only rarely switch to another application while a page loads.
This certainly is not competing with e-book readers as the screen is hugely worse (and 10 hours is not enough).
I haven't tried either the Kindle or the iPad myself, but I've read widely varied opinions on the subject; some people find the Kindle's screen too slow, while others don't mind. Some find the lack of color sucky, while others don't mind. Some find the web browsing on the Kindle to be less than optimal, while others don't mind.
"Hugely worse" is a function of what you're talking about. Power usage? Sure, the iPad's screen is comparatively worse. Color? The iPad's screen wins hands-down. Viewing angle? Probably a tie. UI? The iPad easily wins. Web browsing? Again, the iPad wins easily (at least versus the Kindle).
As for whether the iPad's screen is actually better for reading a book for long periods of time, I don't know; I'd have to try it, but I suspect you don't know either;) What I do know is that I don't mind reading web pages on my iPhone at all, even for an hour or more, so I have no reason to suspect I'll dislike reading on the iPad.
As for battery life, how is 10 hours not enough? Just plug it in when you go to bed, and it'll be ready when you get up in the morning. After all, it's not "10 hours idling", it's "10 hours of use". Chances are you're not going to actually be using the iPad more than 10 hours a day. How many people who own a Kindle actually use their Kindle for 10 hours in a single day?
Wouldn't "toying" be much easier on a normal tablet with IDE?
Why would I want to run an IDE right on the tablet? A 10" touchscreen is a terrible interface for an IDE; first of all, it's way too small. Second of all, if I'm going to be compiling something, I want to be doing it on my quad core Core i7 desktop with 12GB of RAM, not on my tiny ARM-based tablet.
So that's a silly argument for choosing a "normal" (read: non-Apple) tablet.
After all, it is cheaper and has "interactive display".
Sure, if "cheaper" were my only concern. But if I'm going to buy a device so I can toy with multitouch interfaces, I'm not going to choose based on price alone. (And perhaps I shouldn't have said the only reason I'd buy one is to toy with the interface, though it's true from a personal standpoint. From a professional standpoint, I have contacts who want to pay me to write some iPad apps for them.)
See, my wife will want to use the device, whatever I buy, and to be quite frank, neither Windows nor Linux is really... intuitive... on a touchscreen. Apple has put a lot of work into the UI on the iPad (as well as the iPod Touch and iPhone) and it really shows. That's useful even from the perspective of someone developing for the device.
Besides, we're talking a price difference of maybe $200, and you're going to have a hard time convincing me a $300 Windows- or Linux-based touchscreen tablet compares favorably to the iPad. It's silly to quibble over $200 using ridiculously flimsy arguments like "but the other one can run an IDE!"
Did you miss the part where they showed off iWork for the iPad? That's technically "office" software, regardless of how well it works...
no IDE
There's no user-accessible filesystem, no user-accessible command-line, no multitasking, and it's a 10" touchscreen. "No IDE" is last on the list of "reasons this is not a developer-oriented device".
not even Web with flash or even Java
The lack of Flash (and Silverlight, for Netflix) is my wife's biggest complaint about the iPad.
Battery life - no.
10 hours isn't good enough for you? For a device aimed at the market it's aimed at, 10 hours is pretty good.
Connectivity - haha!
That would depend on what you mean by "connectivity". Internet connectivity? Sure - the 3G models will get you online just about everywhere. Device connectivity? That's a whole other ball game - but even so, there are already some devices you can hook it to, and if serial devices are possible, then anything is possible. Technically.
Usablity - not even a test editor!
Apple's touch interfaces are quite usable. I'm not sure what you mean by "test editor". Remember: not aimed at developers.
can Apple pull out with one? I don't think so.
Sure - as long as you remember that this isn't aimed at developers. I load a page in Safari, switch to the home screen, and open Pages to start a document. To the end-user, it's as if Safari is still running - after all, when they switch back to Safari, the same page is open, scrolled to the same place.
Sure, things like messenger and Skype won't be able to run in the background without jailbreaking, but then again, the device isn't really suited for that sort of thing.
You're right in that it doesn't do what you want, but to say it doesn't do what anybody wants is silly. So, to answer your first question:
What the heck it is for?
It's for the sorts of things you'd like to be able to do on the iPod Touch or iPhone if only it had a larger screen.
It's for reading ebooks on a device better than competing ebook readers.
It's for inventing new ways to interact with existing software. (And I don't mean it's for Apple to do that inventing.)
I'm not an Apple fanboy - I actually dislike them fairly strongly - and I'm a developer. But that doesn't mean I see the iPad as useless, it just means I realize that the iPad isn't for developing.
The only reason I'll be buying one is so that i can toy with new ways to use a 10" interactive display.
Dunno what your problem is. I never keep the installer files - I extract them to my desktop, then delete them when the installer finishes - and I've never had a problem updating or uninstalling.
I'm confused why you're comparing OO Writer to MS Visio. Shouldn't you compare Writer to Word? (I think it'd actually make your point better, because Word's UI is a lot less cluttered than Visio's UI...)
This has happened across several machines, mostly Dells (which usually use generic Broadcom-based NICs). My 3-year-old Dell Inspiron 6400, for example, has a Broadcom-based wired NIC, but XP SP3 doesn't come with drivers for it, so I have to download the drivers ahead of time and install them from a flash drive whenever I find myself needing to reinstall XP.
Come to think of it, Windows 7 did recognize the NICs on my new MSI X58 Platinum.
You seem to have missed my earlier comments where I've specifically acknowledged that the majority of Windows crashes are not caused by hardware.
No, if it's just a hard freeze, you don't look at hardware first. I don't think I've ever had a hardware problem that caused hard freezes but still allowed Windows to complete the booting process. (I've had hardware glitches stop Windows from loading in the first place, but that's another issue entirely.) Not saying it isn't possible, just that given your problem description, you should be looking at software. I haven't ever indicated otherwise.
In my experience, every time Linux (any unix, actually) doesn't work, it is a hardware error. Windows is just more forgiving with the hardware.
You weren't unclear at all with your assertion: you clearly stated that you believe Windows is less prone to problems caused by hardware. You then contradicted that statement with later comments:P
In any case, I disagree with your assertion: if Windows crashes, you can most certainly check the hardware first if the error message indicates you should do so. If the error was "Video driver crashed", then no, you don't need to check the hardware; if the error was "unrecoverable error in RAM" or "OMG MY HARD DRIVE IS EXPLODING", then yes, it's obvious you should check the hardware first.
(Obviously I'm leaving out the part where you have to google the error code from the bluescreen to figure out what it means, but that's largely irrelevant to my point.)
Windows crashes because of bad hardware too, but the software issues are more frequent and one (me) doesn't think of hardware until most possible software issues are ruled out.
That's because in Windows, crashes are usually caused by software, whereas in Linux, crashes are only rarely a software issue.
The only conclusion you can draw from this is exactly that - if Windows crashes, you should first look for a software cause, whereas if Linux crashes, you should first look for a hardware cause.
You can't use that to conclude that Windows is more tolerant of hardware faults than Linux (not even when NT 4.0 behaves itself better than Debian with your weird SCSI setup), because you're ignoring one extremely important data point:
The frequency of crashes on each OS.
See, Windows machines in general crash far more frequently than Linux machines. The reason for this is something you've already pointed out: Windows is far more prone to software glitches than Linux is.
In other words, your problem is that you're saying "Linux experiences A, Windows experiences A and B, therefore Linux is more prone to A than Windows." I hope you can see the flaw in that logic.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not upset that they're being up front about it, I'm upset that they're doing it at all.
See, instead of selling me "Starcraft II", they're selling me "Starcraft II, Terran Campaign" and pretending it's a full sequel to the original.
The reality is, to get the full sequel to the original, I'm going to have to buy three games.
Between that and the lack of real LAN play, they can count me as a lost customer.
Maybe they didn't like the WC3 engine, and wanted something better?
The vast majority of people are just going to want to swap between Safari and Mail and maybe one of the iWork apps; those apps act like there's multitasking (when you switch back to Safari from somewhere else, it's still on the same page scrolled to the same place as when you left it), so the real-world difference perceived by these users is virtually nonexistent.
It's only those of us who may want to actually run things in the background that'll care; so, no running Skype or a messenger client in the background while we surf the web.
It's unfortunate for us, but for most users that's not going to be a problem, and personally, I don't need to run messenger in the background when I've got other devices that can do it for me, and when people who need to contact me when I'm afk can do so by phone or text message or e-mail anyway.
There are three opinions I've seen (besides "meh, who cares?" and "an i-what?"):
I have one friend who is generally pretty level-headed about Apple, but who for some reason has decided the iPad is the second coming. We got in a huge argument about it - I was just saying "it's interesting, but not revolutionary", but he wouldn't accept that. He refused to back down from his position that there is absolutely nothing about the iPad that could be construed as anything less than revolutionary.
On the other hand, I have another friend who sees the iPad for what it pretty much is - a giant iPod Touch - and that's what excites him. He thinks about it this way: You buy an iPod Touch or an iPhone, you use it for a few months, and you start thinking, "Wouldn't it be cool if I could do $TASK on this? I guess I would need a larger screen..." ... and now such a device exists. All those larger-screen-requiring $TASKs will now be possible on a device the general public will be willing to buy.
On the other other hand, there are all the Apple-haters you're talking about. I have several friends of this opinion. They won't even allow for the possibility that the iPad might be an interesting but not revolutionary device; to them, it must be completely pointless and stupid. They see no reason anyone should ever under any circumstances buy an iPad.
I pointed out to one such friend that if Google had released a device that was identical to the iPad in hardware and price but ran Android as its OS, he wouldn't be complaining - he'd be excited about it. (He admitted that was probably true, so he's perhaps more level-headed than some of the Apple-haters out there.)
A lot of this is just generic Apple-hate that people are applying to the iPad because they feel obligated to hate on anything Apple makes. People of this opinion do seem to be most numerous.
(And, for the record, I'm no Apple fanboy; I find Apple's Mac vs PC commercials to be misleading when they're not outright lying, and their overpriced hardware leaves me with very little reason to buy their computers; I really don't care about the "cool" factor. I bought an iPhone merely because I wanted a usable touchscreen phone, and I haven't been impressed by Android-based phones.)
The cheapest iPad costs more than twice the price of a Kindle.
Sure, if you're talking about the dinky 6" original Kindle. The Kindle DX, which is more comparable in screen size, costs $489, which is only $10 cheaper. Perhaps you could compare the iPad with that Kindle like I was, as I implied with my comment "for virtually the same price"?
As for your comment that the Kindle comes with free wireless, well... yes and no. Browsing the internet on the Kindle's eInk screen is hardly optimal (and that's the nicest way I can put it). The screen's refresh rate is rather slow, for one, and for another, you have to hack the device to get it to browse "the internet" (that is, if you want to do something besides buy Kindle books with it).
It also can't do some of the more interesting things you might want to do with a device like the iPad - e-mail, photo organization, educational tools, and so on.
If all you're looking for is a cheap e-reader, then no, the iPad is not for you, but that doesn't make it a stupid, pointless device, it just means it's not for you. There are a lot of devices I would never buy, but that doesn't mean they're stupid and pointless.
It doesn't have the eInk screen.
That could be considered a benefit of the iPad. People have widely varying opinions of eInk screens; some of the more friendly ones I've read can be summed up as "meh".
Personally I don't have eye strain issues, so eInk isn't really an issue for me.
Its battery life is a tragic fraction of the Kindle's 7-14 day battery life.
That's probably true. But 10 hours is pretty good for a full-color non-eInk screen, and if you're going to complain about having to plug it in real quick before you go to bed, then you're just being lazy. How many people actively read their Kindle for 10 hours in a single day? How many iPad users will do that? My guess is "very few".
I'm not saying that makes it somehow "better" than the Kindle, I'm just saying it makes the "battery life" complaint a largely moot point.
You're also pretending the iPad doesn't have any advantages over the Kindle: "it has a touchscreen" is itself a rather important one. I'm looking forward to seeing the things people do with portable 10" touchscreens - and here I'm referring to all 10" multitouch devices, not just iPads.
If you still don't see the point of the iPad, then maybe it's really not targeted at you ;)
you have to pay $20 a month for Internet service.
Or you could just stick with wifi ;) 3G internet on my iPhone is nice as far as it goes, but... it's so slow. I'd much rather go find a wifi access point to browse the internet. I suspect I'll feel the same about the iPad.
I'm really not trying to convince you to buy an iPad. I'm among the first to say "The iPad isn't for everyone". But it does have some interesting possible uses (at least, 10" touchscreen devices do), and for a 10" touchscreen, it's not the worst choice out there. The fact that it can also take over for the Kindle is just a bonus. I was considering a Kindle; now I don't have a reason to, especially since the iPad will also have access to the entire Kindle library via the Kindle app.
Yeah... I have to agree. I hate Comcast's business practices, but their internet service has been pretty rock-solid for me. The only time it ever really goes down is occasionally it'll drop for a few minutes in the wee hours of the morning when I should be asleep anyway, so I look at it as a (not so) gentle reminder that I should go to bed. I've also never had issues with long hold times the few times I've called them.
Maybe I'm just lucky? I don't know. I'd still switch to anyone else if there were comparable options (FiOS, Google, whoever), but right now my choices are Comcast or 1.5Mbps DSL from Qwest, and there's no way I'm settling for 1.5Mbps.
It is if, before initiating the call, you state "I'm not eating until I get through the hold queue"...
(In all seriousness, I despise Comcast as much as the next guy, but I've never been on hold with them for more than a minute or two.)
Perhaps not, but there's definitely a market for a 10" touchscreen ebook reader that is, in many ways, superior to the Kindle at virtually the same price... and as a bonus it also does everything an iPod Touch does.
The iPad is little more than an iPod Touch that won't fit in your pocket
That doesn't necessarily mean it's bad ;)
Some people view it this way: "Now I can do all the things I would love to do on my iPod Touch/iPhone, if only it were bigger."
Oh, I didn't say it was a good idea ;) I merely said that their ToS (currently, as you point out) doesn't prohibit running "servers" on your home computer, as long as it's not for-profit.
Getting a printed copy of terms of service which they can change at will would do me absolutely no good... and they certainly wouldn't let anyone sign up with a modified ToS with that clause removed.
I'm reminded of what Comcast's CSR said about their bandwidth usage restrictions back before they admitted they have a limit: "We don't have a usage limit, but if you use too much, we'll cut you off." No amount of prodding could get the guy to tell me at what point they'd cut me off, and the only example he gave me was such a trivially small usage that I'd bet anyone who watches Hulu regularly surpasses it.
(His example was a user sending out 4,000 e-mails per day. Unless those are 2MB e-mails, he's not even going to get close to using 250GB/month.)
You don't need to buy hosting yourself to get a Wordpress-powered blog... you can get them yourself for free on wordpress.com.
See, most people see it this way: why pay for something, if you can get it for free? Bonus points if "free" is also "legal".
It's not against the ToS (at least for Comcast) unless you're making money from it, at least that's my understanding of the ToS and that's basically what the Comcast CSR told me before I signed up.
If it was not copyrightable then there would be no way to recoup the cost of creating 3-D models of buildings. Think of how much it would cost to 3D model New York City.
People sell things that are out of copyright (or not copyrighted) all the time.
Just because you can't copyright something doesn't mean you can't make money off of it ;)
(That's not saying anything about whether 3-D representations of things are copyrightable. My gut says they are, but I'm not a lawyer...)
After all, what else would they be doing on a saturday night
How about playing Star Trek Online on one monitor while watching Farscape (via Netflix) on the other monitor?
But it has not updated the content, you have to wait for it to do it. After reading the page you wait for it download e-mail.
I don't understand what you're getting at... why would switching back to Safari require waiting to download e-mail?
I suspect you really mean that if I start a page load in Safari, then switch away, that the load stops. This is true. However, most people will likely be using wifi, and there's no flash or Java support, so page loads are going to proceed relatively quickly for just about whatever page you're visiting.
In other words, I don't see that as a problem for most use cases. Even when I'm on a desktop I only rarely switch to another application while a page loads.
This certainly is not competing with e-book readers as the screen is hugely worse (and 10 hours is not enough).
I haven't tried either the Kindle or the iPad myself, but I've read widely varied opinions on the subject; some people find the Kindle's screen too slow, while others don't mind. Some find the lack of color sucky, while others don't mind. Some find the web browsing on the Kindle to be less than optimal, while others don't mind.
"Hugely worse" is a function of what you're talking about. Power usage? Sure, the iPad's screen is comparatively worse. Color? The iPad's screen wins hands-down. Viewing angle? Probably a tie. UI? The iPad easily wins. Web browsing? Again, the iPad wins easily (at least versus the Kindle).
As for whether the iPad's screen is actually better for reading a book for long periods of time, I don't know; I'd have to try it, but I suspect you don't know either ;) What I do know is that I don't mind reading web pages on my iPhone at all, even for an hour or more, so I have no reason to suspect I'll dislike reading on the iPad.
As for battery life, how is 10 hours not enough? Just plug it in when you go to bed, and it'll be ready when you get up in the morning. After all, it's not "10 hours idling", it's "10 hours of use". Chances are you're not going to actually be using the iPad more than 10 hours a day. How many people who own a Kindle actually use their Kindle for 10 hours in a single day?
Wouldn't "toying" be much easier on a normal tablet with IDE?
Why would I want to run an IDE right on the tablet? A 10" touchscreen is a terrible interface for an IDE; first of all, it's way too small. Second of all, if I'm going to be compiling something, I want to be doing it on my quad core Core i7 desktop with 12GB of RAM, not on my tiny ARM-based tablet.
So that's a silly argument for choosing a "normal" (read: non-Apple) tablet.
After all, it is cheaper and has "interactive display".
Sure, if "cheaper" were my only concern. But if I'm going to buy a device so I can toy with multitouch interfaces, I'm not going to choose based on price alone. (And perhaps I shouldn't have said the only reason I'd buy one is to toy with the interface, though it's true from a personal standpoint. From a professional standpoint, I have contacts who want to pay me to write some iPad apps for them.)
See, my wife will want to use the device, whatever I buy, and to be quite frank, neither Windows nor Linux is really... intuitive... on a touchscreen. Apple has put a lot of work into the UI on the iPad (as well as the iPod Touch and iPhone) and it really shows. That's useful even from the perspective of someone developing for the device.
Besides, we're talking a price difference of maybe $200, and you're going to have a hard time convincing me a $300 Windows- or Linux-based touchscreen tablet compares favorably to the iPad. It's silly to quibble over $200 using ridiculously flimsy arguments like "but the other one can run an IDE!"
Let's take, for example, the TouchBook by Always Innovating, w
You cannot run any "office" software
Did you miss the part where they showed off iWork for the iPad? That's technically "office" software, regardless of how well it works...
no IDE
There's no user-accessible filesystem, no user-accessible command-line, no multitasking, and it's a 10" touchscreen. "No IDE" is last on the list of "reasons this is not a developer-oriented device".
not even Web with flash or even Java
The lack of Flash (and Silverlight, for Netflix) is my wife's biggest complaint about the iPad.
Battery life - no.
10 hours isn't good enough for you? For a device aimed at the market it's aimed at, 10 hours is pretty good.
Connectivity - haha!
That would depend on what you mean by "connectivity". Internet connectivity? Sure - the 3G models will get you online just about everywhere. Device connectivity? That's a whole other ball game - but even so, there are already some devices you can hook it to, and if serial devices are possible, then anything is possible. Technically.
Usablity - not even a test editor!
Apple's touch interfaces are quite usable. I'm not sure what you mean by "test editor". Remember: not aimed at developers.
can Apple pull out with one? I don't think so.
Sure - as long as you remember that this isn't aimed at developers. I load a page in Safari, switch to the home screen, and open Pages to start a document. To the end-user, it's as if Safari is still running - after all, when they switch back to Safari, the same page is open, scrolled to the same place.
Sure, things like messenger and Skype won't be able to run in the background without jailbreaking, but then again, the device isn't really suited for that sort of thing.
You're right in that it doesn't do what you want, but to say it doesn't do what anybody wants is silly. So, to answer your first question:
What the heck it is for?
It's for the sorts of things you'd like to be able to do on the iPod Touch or iPhone if only it had a larger screen.
It's for reading ebooks on a device better than competing ebook readers.
It's for inventing new ways to interact with existing software. (And I don't mean it's for Apple to do that inventing.)
I'm not an Apple fanboy - I actually dislike them fairly strongly - and I'm a developer. But that doesn't mean I see the iPad as useless, it just means I realize that the iPad isn't for developing.
The only reason I'll be buying one is so that i can toy with new ways to use a 10" interactive display.
Dunno what your problem is. I never keep the installer files - I extract them to my desktop, then delete them when the installer finishes - and I've never had a problem updating or uninstalling.
I'm confused why you're comparing OO Writer to MS Visio. Shouldn't you compare Writer to Word? (I think it'd actually make your point better, because Word's UI is a lot less cluttered than Visio's UI...)
When I tried a moment ago (in Windows) it just said "Checking for updates failed." I wonder if the root cause is the same?
I would much rather wait for a full and complete game without content cut out
Right, because leaving out two of the three campaigns isn't cutting content...
Personally, I don't consider "Let's release 1/3 of the game" to be a "full and complete game".
Wow. That sucks. I feel sorry for you :(
I'm reminded of a fried video card that prevented the motherboard from POSTing... which of course took us five hours to figure out.
Solutions seem so obvious once you know them...
This has happened across several machines, mostly Dells (which usually use generic Broadcom-based NICs). My 3-year-old Dell Inspiron 6400, for example, has a Broadcom-based wired NIC, but XP SP3 doesn't come with drivers for it, so I have to download the drivers ahead of time and install them from a flash drive whenever I find myself needing to reinstall XP.
Come to think of it, Windows 7 did recognize the NICs on my new MSI X58 Platinum.
*sigh*
You seem to have missed my earlier comments where I've specifically acknowledged that the majority of Windows crashes are not caused by hardware.
No, if it's just a hard freeze, you don't look at hardware first. I don't think I've ever had a hardware problem that caused hard freezes but still allowed Windows to complete the booting process. (I've had hardware glitches stop Windows from loading in the first place, but that's another issue entirely.) Not saying it isn't possible, just that given your problem description, you should be looking at software. I haven't ever indicated otherwise.
That's not what you said at all:
In my experience, every time Linux (any unix, actually) doesn't work, it is a hardware error. Windows is just more forgiving with the hardware.
You weren't unclear at all with your assertion: you clearly stated that you believe Windows is less prone to problems caused by hardware. You then contradicted that statement with later comments :P
In any case, I disagree with your assertion: if Windows crashes, you can most certainly check the hardware first if the error message indicates you should do so. If the error was "Video driver crashed", then no, you don't need to check the hardware; if the error was "unrecoverable error in RAM" or "OMG MY HARD DRIVE IS EXPLODING", then yes, it's obvious you should check the hardware first.
(Obviously I'm leaving out the part where you have to google the error code from the bluescreen to figure out what it means, but that's largely irrelevant to my point.)
Windows crashes because of bad hardware too, but the software issues are more frequent and one (me) doesn't think of hardware until most possible software issues are ruled out.
That's because in Windows, crashes are usually caused by software, whereas in Linux, crashes are only rarely a software issue.
The only conclusion you can draw from this is exactly that - if Windows crashes, you should first look for a software cause, whereas if Linux crashes, you should first look for a hardware cause.
You can't use that to conclude that Windows is more tolerant of hardware faults than Linux (not even when NT 4.0 behaves itself better than Debian with your weird SCSI setup), because you're ignoring one extremely important data point:
The frequency of crashes on each OS.
See, Windows machines in general crash far more frequently than Linux machines. The reason for this is something you've already pointed out: Windows is far more prone to software glitches than Linux is.
In other words, your problem is that you're saying "Linux experiences A, Windows experiences A and B, therefore Linux is more prone to A than Windows." I hope you can see the flaw in that logic.