The Dolphins Make Me Cry.com - Forums

This is still happening now.  It's essentially a 9.7" screened iPod Touch. 

All of the apps from iPhone will work right away, and the tablet will be able to do a better job with streaming video and offering books, like a reader.

It looks pretty sweet, with fantastic quality of screen resolution and relative processing power.

The first thing that Jobs said was something like "Is there room for a space between the cell phone and the laptop?"  And I'm not sure that there is.  Everything on this tablet looks cool, but for what it will cost (not yet announced, as of my post), I don't think that it offers enough stuff that my phone or laptop doesn't. 

Sure, it would be great to stream movies to the device or view comics or magazines on it, but I think that's pretty niche.  The book application looks cool, but I imagine that the e-paper technology of the Kindle/Nook is better for that.

I am a bit skeptical of the mainstream appeal of this thing for regular use.  Thoughts?

iPad pricing starts at $499.  That's actually MUCH more reasonable than I was thinking.

In a few years, I could see spending 200 bucks on one, maybe.

Pricing goes all the way up to $829, depending on it you're going to get it equipped with 3G and the max amount of storage space.

Just going by the photos, my biggest issue with it is the huge bezel area. With compact devices, I want the screen to go as far to the edge as possible. It's kind of like the Palm T3 Tungsten I bought way back when... it was really sweet at the time, but when you compare it with the almost-zero-bezel devices (PDAs and smartphones) out there today, it looks cumbersome and clunky.

This seems to me to be Apple's answer to the netbook market.  I'm not sure that its small enough to be acceptable for full portability, and Apple's battery life has traditionally not been so great on portable devices that use Wi-Fi.

I am interested to see the reports once this thing gets going.

I want it. I had been debating buying a kindle for a while. Also, my laptop is dying. I do real work at my desk and just want a laptop/netbook for travel etc. This is right up my alley. But....I will wait and see how it works before I throw down my hard earned cash.

this thing looks sweet, it's exactly what i need.

i have a very sweet, powerful macbook pro laptop, but i would rather just save it wear and tear because I do things like recording, media editing,  DJing with it.  When not doing that, it sits on my cawfee table and gets used every day.  however, when not doing "work" with it, i just browse the web, IM, and email....that's it.  for less than $500, this tablet would be perfect to just leave on the cawfee table and save my laptop for the media stuff.

Those two areas don't look problematic for me.  They are claiming 10 hours of battery life + 1 month of standby time.  Even if it's only half that, I think it's still acceptable.  As for screen size, it's the same as the large kindle, which is most definitely small enough, I think.

I question the interface.  A keyboard like that is fine for quick, 1 line responses or searches, but not for word processing.

if it gets that type of life with wi-fi enabled, that's impressive.  I don't think i would want it but I see a segment of people who would.  Like you, I still don't like the touchscreen typing...  I just question the portability and I can't imagine why I would need to carry something THAT big if my iPhone does all the same things...

I want to see how the screen compares to eInk.

I'm debating a Kindle as well, but I have to say that while the iPad (AWFUL name by the way) is cool looking, but the Kindle is half the price, and I agree with Brian, I have serious issues with the battery life on my iPod Touch WITHOUT the wifi on.

That's why I'll probably wait and see. I almost got the Kindle, but just couldn't make the leap at the time and kept wondering if there would be other/better e-readers out there. The iPad (agreed that the name SUCKS) does do a lot more, though from what was shown. So, I wouldn't mind paying more.

If it truly get 10 hours battery time, then I'm probably getting one.

That's a big if, but the Kindle still has better life.

My Touch gets all of 40 minutes of music with wifi off. It sucks

(http://www.truevaluesites.com/funny/20thingsappleipad.jpg)

Here's a video link of the iPad for those who haven't seen it...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFNQE_TzQNI (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFNQE_TzQNI)

If I were ever to by one, Iwould wait until next year when they add a bunch of features that are lacking now.
Some things I dislike about the current model:
No flash
Not enough memory
No camera
$130 extra for 3 G Capabilities

I think this product is the pioneer in the gaming market though which is good.
However, I do think that holding a 1.5 pound controller would be a little strenuous after a while.

I am not completely sold on it.

i'm very underwhelmed with it .. things i have a problem with:

no usb
no os X
no multitasking

Yeah no USB is another turn off.

Does it have a SD card reader?

No SD Reader.

It has no USB, but does support it.  You can get (or it comes with) a USB dongle that plugs into the charger port.

I saw that it has 3G, but is that just for data?  Does this thing make phone calls?

it's just for data and it's an extra charge

This thing seems like a big LCD touchscreen that can go online.  The more I hear that it DOESN'T have, the more unimpressed I am.  For a device like this, how do you leave out external memory interfaces (USB, SD, etc)? 

Its like a digital picture frame with internal memory and web browsing capabilities.

::)

I'm actually fully on board with the device not having USB or SD cards.  It's supposed to be a simpler, streamlined solution that has everything right there.  Apple isn't the kind of company that has users swapping out SD cards.

I'm mostly concerned about the lack of multi-tasking, though I wonder if that will eventually show up.  If it offers a lot in terms of streaming content, I think that will be good.  Also, the kinds of games that they are showing on it don't work for me.  Racing games are cool, but who the hell wants to play a racing game on a touch pad.  ...they should focus on games that work well with that interface -- Peggle, point and click adventures, cards, etc.  The lack of a camera is kind of surprising, because it seems like having video conferencing on it might be nice.

I think I would enjoy it as a media device, but not enough to go get one right away (or maybe at all).

The lack of multitasking is not as big a deal as you might think. It all depends on how it's done, of course. I have a Palm Tungsten T3 which doesn't do multi-tasking either (it's a PDA, though, not a tablet). However, switching applications is INSTANT and the applications you switch out of remember their state. Overall result is that only a hard core user would even KNOW it didn't do multi-tasking and probably wouldn't care (I didn't/don't). Compared to a newer Windows powered PDA (with more memory and a faster processor), it's a lot snappier. There was one thing the Tungsten could do "in the background" (apparently an ugly hack, but it worked seamlessly): play music.

It does seem like an archaic restriction, although it really does remain to be seen if it matters.

I have an iPhone that doesn't multitask.  It isn't a dealbreaker, but the apps are generally pretty small.  When I'm playing Peggle (one of the more sizeable apps I have), the thing has to re-load each time, like if I want to switch over and advance an MP3 track.  That's irritating, in that case, and it comes up a lot.  Also, certain apps require you to start from the opening page, and don't allow you to go back and forth quickly.

I see your point, and if it's seamless, I don't care if it's TRUE multitasking or not, but I fear that the apps will grow to the speed of the tablet and become cumbersome to swap between.

The issue here is memory. Since only one application can be running at once, processor speeds don't really matter and there's no hard drive, leaving only memory as the issue.

Now, the T3 kept EVERYTHING in RAM. Permanently. Ahh, you say, but RAM needs constant refreshing and that'll drain power, even when the device is "off". Yes, that's true, and the T3 did drain slowly... very slowly. And, yes, if you really nuked the battery (it would try to prevent you from doing so, e.g. by not wanting to turn on when really low on power), you could lose everything you had on it.

The upside was true instant swapping between apps -- and for a device like that, it was certainly worth it.

With the iPad, they've gone with a solid dose of flash memory. Compared to RAM, that's slow and what you're experiencing with your iPhone is the device swapping between RAM and flash. The iPhone 3G has 128MB of RAM (the -S has double that), but Apple have yet to say how much the iPad will feature.

Apple have also not disclosed how fast the flash they're using is, which is what will determine how long it takes to switch between apps. Flash drives are available with sequential write speeds approaching 100MB/s. If we assume an app uses several hundred megabytes, then it's going to take several seconds to completely swap that app out of memory. Several seconds is a long time, but I would assume that they start swapping the new app into RAM as soon as "enough" memory is available and then swap the rest out once the new app is switched to. It's a bit tricky, but absolutely doable, and would have a significant effect on swap times.

If Apple were smart, they could easily make their music player "special" and keep it in RAM constantly. That would avoid having to swap whatever big app someone is using out of RAM and into flash (and the music player from flash into RAM, but since a music player is small, that would be quick).

Oh boy, I just read that the iPad can't do flash or anything that requires a plugin. I hate flash, but at the same time, limitations like that will seriously reduce its usefulness to me -- and presumably a lot of other people.

Not sure if this is related to the multi-tasking issue....

One thing... if the iPad were to support HTML5 (like Safari does on OSX)... that could really push websites to stop developing Flash -- or at least provide an alternative.

I think they're going to have to start providing an alternative. At my office, we're already working on different versions for handhelds anyway. We're also far more conscious of what we use in development.  I'm ok with it not reading Flash...I've never been a big fan and generally find that it's pointless.

I would be really surprised if Flash went away.  95% of web users view their web sites on a computer which can handle Flash just fine.  It would be easier for Apple to integrate Flash plugins with this device (which seems more and more limited the more I look at it).

Yes, it would, but there Apple have said that something like 80-90% of all their support calls regarding Macs "crashing" are due to Flash. I.e. they certainly have an incentive to come up with a better alternative.

Many aspects of flash are actually quite "open" and it wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility for someone like Apple to reimplement flash in HTML5 (essentially as a wrapper). The four main components of flash are: The scripting engine (almost identical to javascript), the vector graphics rendering (the original core component), the media codecs, and the networking protocols. #1 and #2 have already been done to a large extent and #3 is clearly doable. Adobe have recently opened up their flash protocols, to a degree, and documented the standards, making #4 a much more reasonable proposition.

Rather than Flash limiting the iPad, I think that the iPad (and iPhone) will likely limit flash.  Flash is dying, and if you're a developer, why would you want to use a technology that isn't standard on millions and millions of devices?

From what I hear, HTML 5 performs better and uses less resources, anyway, which will replace flash.