iPad worthy of the hype?

[jdoenumber2]

Its Craptastic. I have a friend who has one. The keyboard is horrible. You are much better off getting a WINDOWS laptop for the same price if not less. Not to mention you can avoid being a alpha tester.

warning I am a apple zealot...

I think it will find a market. My GF only wants a laptop for email, FB and some browsing. Really thats all we use the current laptop for but find it hard to share it. So I am waiting out some real reviews on the iPad but can see getting one. Its no laptop, but it a big itouch/iphone and be nice to do much of what i do on my iphone on a larger screen.

 

[jdoenumber2]

LOL. Agreed. And with your netbook you have a decent keyboard.

The main problem with it is it doesn't fit in your pocket to use on the go. They need to make one about quarter of that in size.... oh wait, they did that first. So I don't get it, what is this thing for. So if its more of a computer than a pocket gadget, I will take my cheap netbook over it any day. At least that has a flit top so the screen doesn't get scratched.

 

[Willistein]

anybody remember the Apple Newton?

 

[jdoenumber2]

Was that the predecessor to the PDA right? Which also had a short run.

 

[talon4x4]

anybody remember the Apple Newton?

Yep!! And it was big too!!

 

[Kent E]

How would you type on this thing? Is it a touch screen keyboard?

 

[Twinpanther]

How would you type on this thing? Is it a touch screen keyboard?

Either via onscreen touchkeys

or you could get a dock.

 

[superkat]

ok, so i've been doing some research...why do I want to pay 500 bucks for 16g of space and it has these cons:
* No Camera
* No USB Port
* No OLED
* No Keybooard (except online touch screen..or optional dock...and then why not get a mini laptop?)
* No GPS in Wi Fi only model
* Doesn’t Support Flash Player
* Doesn’t Support Multitasking

 

[Kent E]

Thanks for the info Paul.

Eh, I think a laptop serves my needs better than that thing.

 

[Jacwil]

ok, so i've been doing some research...why do I want to pay 500 bucks for 16g of space and it has these cons:
* No Camera
* No USB Port
* No OLED
* No Keybooard (except online touch screen..or optional dock...and then why not get a mini laptop?)
* No GPS in Wi Fi only model
* Doesn't Support Flash Player
* Doesn't Support Multitasking

Ding ding ding...we have a winner! lol

 

[der_wille_zur_macht]

Steve Jobs is not usually wrong....HAPPY Easter

IMHO Steve (and/or Apple as a whole) is probably wrong more often than he's right - it's just that when he's right, he's REALLY REALLY right so we tend to remember it (i.e. the iPod, iPhone). Just consider the Lisa, Pippin, Newton, etc. Many of these were arguably inspiration for some new development in personal computing, but they all sure flopped themselves.

The iPad strikes me as a really intelligent media player - i.e. the kind of thing you'd take on an airplane to watch movies, and then be able to browse the web or do other tasks when you got to your destination. You COULD use a netbook or laptop for this purpose, but that's carrying around a lot of overhead you probably don't need. IMHO it's hard to categorize what it IS but easy to come up with what it isn't. It's clearly not an e-reader (i.e. Kindle) because the battery life is vastly shorter and the screen isn't a paper-like technology. It's clearly not a "big iPod touch" because it's got a lot more processing power and will likely have a very different selection of popular apps. It's clearly not meant to be a laptop/netbook replacement because there's no physical keyboard. It can't be lumped with other current tablet computers because it doesn't use a traditional PC OS.

Many of Apple's biggest flops have been too-early attempts at whatever what was next. I guess the iPad will fall into that category, too. Within the next 5 or 10 years, I would not be surprised to see our current notion of a PC (i.e. a physical device with a keyboard and screen and a big box containing the guts) going away, but I bet whatever we end up with makes the iPad look awkward.

 

[superkat]

very good response...except..how do you watch movies on this on a plane? did i miss something?

 

[smogl00]

I don't want to totally trash it until I give it a trial run myself, but I was ready to pre-order one as soon as they were taking orders, until I read about it's limitations. I have an iPhone already............... The discouraging part was that not only are many of the weaknesses of the iPhone carried staight over onto the iPad, (unable to support flash media, non-removable/replaceable battery) but they even left out things like putting a camera on it! It's like they heard all of the criticisms and just ignored them to push a new product out. I think it would have went a long way with current apple fanatics to fix these seemingly simple bugs on their new product.

Signed,

*Guy who had to wait two years for apple to add picture messaging (OLD tech) on the iPhone*

Either way, I'll be at the apple store later to see whether I'll be buying one or not. I'll repost later.

 

[der_wille_zur_macht]

very good response...except..how do you watch movies on this on a plane? did i miss something?

Buy/upload it with iTunes on the iPad just like you would with an iPhone or iPod touch.

It's like they heard all of the criticisms and just ignored them to push a new product out. I think it would have went a long way with current apple fanatics to fix these seemingly simple bugs on their new product.

From Apple's perspective, they're just ignoring things they don't think are issues. Problem is, just like they've done many times in the past (i.e. shipping PCs without floppy drives, etc.) they're a bit ahead of us normal folks.

So, for now, the iPad will probably be for people who fit in the "I'm too cool to carry a laptop but I want more/bigger than what I get from my phone" camp.

*Guy who had to wait two years for apple to add picture messaging (OLD tech) on the iPhone*

Another classic case - from Apple's perspective, if they've given you a nice and fully functional email client you can use to send photos, why bother with something crude and old fashioned like picture messaging (which is probably going to be defunct soon)?