iPad: Your thoughts?
 

I know it's not out yet, but family was having a discussion about it last week.

From what I've read, the starting price for the iPad is [edit]$500, which doesn't include 3G cell capability. For that, it costs $150 more ($650 total,)[/edit] for the device and $15/month for service. You don't use the 3G for a phone, but rather for access to the net.
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First, let me comment about how people are talking about the iPad vs. Kindle. My wife and I have a Kindle, and let me tell you that it's much more like reading a book than staring at a computer. That means that you can read for hours and not get eyestrain. With that in mind, I think the iPad would be a bad ebook reader because staring at your iPhone/iPod Touch for hours would give you a headache, I would think. Not to mention the Kindle's battery life lasts for days and weeks, not hours.


Second, it's no more than a giant iPod Touch with 3G access. That's all. It's like a tablet PC with the iPhone OS. Why would any current iPhone/iPod user buy one?


...My Dad says that he thinks it's going to be a big flop. What do you all think?

iPad starts at $500.

The iPad might wobble out of the gate, but I think pick-up-and-use computers which can also modularly couple with other things and serve other functions, like hte iPad, have a shot at being a big thing. That's my opinion at least.

It's a big iPod. Nothing more. Certainly not the revolutionary device apple are claiming.

Like I've said before. I knew from the first rumours that it was going to be a giant iPod, lucky guess there.

Overall for me I'd say that the iPad Exactly Meets Expectation

Probably I'm actually the only one who thinks that, but an IPad is an Netbook made easier. I mean, the IPhone is great and all, but is way too small for certain people, just like my parents, and the IPad + a normal cellphone with BIG numbers will work better for them. My mom loves to read the newspaper in the computer at work, but she doesn't like get out of the bed in the weekends and I found the Netbooks way too small for her. Appart, she only want to read the newspapers and check her email, a Netbook with it's way too small keyboard which probably she doesn't gonna use too much and way too small, for her, screen is not going to be any better for what she wants a netbook, while an IPad, yes, that will work for her.

I think an IPad is good for people who can't use or doesn't want use an IPhone or IPod (If the IPad address the complain they had with the IPhone, that it), and I think that actually is what Apple want.

It's pretty much just a Big Expensive iPhone that doesn't make calls.

It does if you have the Skype app.

So then it's a Big more Expensive iPhone that makes calls if you download an App.

Something in that Sentence isn't right.

...the Random capitalization? That seems To be something That isn't Quite Right.

Sure, someone could maybe use that in their house on a table, but could you imagine someone walking down the street, talking into an iPad as they hold it up to their face? The thing is 9.5"x 7.5"...

I can imagine it, and in my imagination it looks retarded.

Funny, just yesterday I was talking about that.
A coworker of my husband's was interested in getting an ebook reader, but she said the iPad might work better for her because she wants to highlight stuff (she want eto use it with etextbooks mostly).
I made a comment that she'd be better off getting an ebook reader that has that option (and they exist, even some with the option to take notes and stuff).

So it's funny you should start a thread about the iPad and compare it to ebook readers as well.

Anyway, I have no interest in the stuff but I'm not sure it will fail. Apple has a good history of selling expensive stuff with less functionality than the cheaper options.

It's like a primitive version of a product that will one day actually be worth owning.

*obligatory female hygiene product joke*

That being said, I'm not a big fan of having something that is meant to resemble a tablet computer, but isn't able to do multitasking. Apart from that the missing flash thing kind of scares me off. I don't care if its the worst that ever happened to the internet. It is part of the internet.
Last but not least if the iPad works like the iPod Touch or the iPhone you have to synch your Apps through iTunes, which also means that Apple will have, once again, complete control over what they want on their gadget and what not.

Time and dropping prices will tell if its awesome or not I guess.

My thoughts on not having flash:
1) Flash on an apple device has always sucked, adobe needs to get a decent unix team together before they expect to be developing for portable apple computers.
2) Most people only ever use flash for youtube, and
3) all the good flash games are Apps anyway.

I will be a happy human being once laypeople understand that flash is capable of so much more than showing video on websites or small minigames.

I will be a happy human being once 80% of the stuff commonly built in flash is moved over to html 5!

Since I have no idea what I talk about, I quote something of the internet which I heard from a few people.
Sure, it could be them being butthurt that S.J. trashtalks "their" thing, but on the other side it could hold a grain of truth as well.

About flash: Once I did a Webpage for my University, with the help of a desingner which was pretty good at his things in flash. He made a couple of pretty neat effect with it, while I tried to keep the rest of the updatable parts with php and some JS Scripts I downloaded somewhere else.

What's happened? For some reason some people, apparently from their computers at work, cannot enter to the page because they can't install flash in their computers (Mostly because the politics at work don't allow them) and I had to change all the neat effects with some Javascripts I found and some imitiation with CSS.

And that's why I mostly avoid use Flash in some webpages right now: It's reducing the ammount of people who can watch the site, and, considering that page was been using as well to promote the initiative to possible Sponsors, that become critical. It's true you can do a ton of neat stuff with flash, but, in some cases like this one, is just bothersome. (And they don't have to install the javascript console, it's comes with the browser!)

I'm more than aware that there are a ton of things which Flash does as a platform that HTML 5 does not / can not do. There is plenty, however, that can be done with an HTML/js framework which is done in Flash out of habit. I don't like that Flash is closed and based on 3rd party commercial plugin support. I don't particularly like that Apple is deciding to not support it, but I like that less than the fact that before Apple gets to make that choice, Adobe has to decide to support the platform in the first place. With HTML that isn't an issue. Things like this, including all animation and artwork, are being built in what is straight up standards HTML or with elements which are on their way to being ratified as standards. I much prefer that future, where a web of that level of visual intricacy, can be viewed by anyone who writes a standards-compliant viewer, and not by a private company.

You can't do very complicated games in HTML right now, but people are doing things very reminiscent of early Flash games using HTML 5. I don't expect HTML to fully replace Flash, but I do expect Flash's prominence on the web to lessen significantly, and for it to take up a sort of hybridized place between the web and desktop apps (which seems to be where Adobe is trying to take it as well, with things like Adobe Air).

HTML5 is great and all, but Flash is a practical reality of a large portion of the web now, and when buying a product I like to think of how it will benefit me now, not only on some hypothetical(probable or otherwise) future that may or may not come within the lifetime of the device. Yes, you have to consider the future within the life of the device when buying a new product. But banking on "It will become a good product later or "It will be more capable later when the world adapts to it(however indirectly)" seems foolish.

Some of the ideas of the iPad are neat, but the implentation leaves a lot to be desired, I think. I want multitasking, I want a(relatively) open platform, and I want the internet to "just work", without relying on the web to change for my sake.