Most people that have handled an iPad dismiss that it's just a larger iPod Touch - the old axiom a picture is worth a thousand words certainly applies here.
For education / gaming / medicine / industrial / etc etc the apps we see for this format are going to be incredible.
> For education / gaming / medicine / industrial / etc etc the apps we see for this format are going to be incredible.
I wonder how long Apple will be able to sustain the advantage though. In a year or so when Android tablets are available, I'd predict that any new medicine or industry projects would be more inclined to use an open-source tablet.
If I were building, say, an e-ticket redemption system for events, and I decided to use off-the-shelf hardware, I would much prefer to build it on Android than iPhone or iPad simply because I would have more control of the devices and not be stuck with a single hardware supplier.
what % of those industries have used Macs in the past? There's a reason for that.
The Android tablets have advantages, that are only indirectly caused by open source. Having a lot more control over the software, hardware and not to be beholden to a single supplier is invaluable in industrial use.
I'm not aware of any analogous examples. Apple controls the OS, the hardware, and the application distribution channel (I do know about enterprise distribution, but they still control that IIRC.) They've developed a reputation for not being the most friendly to developers, too. Why would you risk a business on that when there is an open source alternative with lots of hardware vendors and a huge corporate backer (Google)?
Very interesting observation. This thing will be useful for "commercial/industrial" clients with a job to do e.g. people who already go around holding a clipboard. Its NOT a wanna-be IPod/IPhone/Kindle/Laptop.
"Most people that have handled an iPad dismiss that it's just a larger iPod Touch"
Is that a typo ("have handled" -> "haven't handled")? Because reports of actual hands-on use I've read have been glowing.
First example I found from google:
The iPad is something to be held and experienced,
because so many of its advantages are tactile:
how it feels in the hand, of course, but also how
the software responds. (Where our opinions differ,
we break them out.)
When the iPad was first announced it seemed like it could be a great digital sketchbook... until I found out it lacked pressure sensitivity. I know a lot of people have shown off the drawing abilities of the iPhone/iPod Touch but as long as it lacks this Apple is pretty much snubbing artists.
This could be solved with a wireless pressure sensitive stylus with a capacitive tip. I think such a product would make digital artwork a killer app for the iPad.
This is pretty smart. I was thinking about cannibalizing an old Wacom and making a case for the iPad to sit in for drawing - your solution sounds more elegant.
Do the touch APIs let you look at the actual dimension of a finger press, or is it just an x/y coordinate? I mean, does the information come across as a circle or as total surface area lit up by the touch or anything? I don't know the tech behind the Apple touch stuff at all.
I can attest to this. It seems that the new OS updates are really rather demanding, and my meagre 2G iPhone lags and stutters constantly.
I had to disable shake-to-shuffle, because the poor little thing would lag for 5 or 10 seconds, and seemed to condense accelerometer input during that time, making it think it had been shaken when it had actually just been sitting in my pocket.
I'm switching to Android next month hopefully, but that has little to do with hardware quality.
"People thought Apple will revolutionize tablets, but they got an iPad. But to make a revolutionary tablet Apple just needed to increase the size of the iPhone."
I don't remember where I read it but that line is awesome.
I am not sure, and nobody can be, but isn't the web an example? When the most common resolution was 800x600 the graphical interface patterns were really bleh.
That's true and probably the reason why interfaces improved so much. Whitespaces are a design element and what you call junk is somebody business need.
The fact that the blank canvas got bigger on the web allowed to much better interface patterns, or maybe it was just a question of maturity.
But I guess the most interesting discussion is not the visual part but the utilization scenarios of the Ipad. I'm not sold on it as a mobile device, but how many people use a laptop as a mobile device? Mobile phones are the first truly mobile devices.
I'm just starting to notice Iphone owners on the middle of a crowd trying to text somebody, you have to hold it closer to the horizontal plane to have better accuracy making it less natural.
I'm not sold on the Ipad as a mobile device, in the mobile phones sense, but I also don't think its success depends on it.
Putting the junk in the extra space means it's not clogging up the content area (except on truly awful websites). It means they can include all the extra crap no one really wants, while still keeping the site usable.
This is something I also don't understand. Many people were opposed to introducing DRM, TC etc into Windows and PCs by Microsoft, Intel & co. But when Apple comes and takes the trusted computing much further than the original TC alliance dared to go (they didn't even think about not allowing running unsigned executables or being the only entity with root certificate), it makes eveything allright? Makes me wonder what happened to thought process of techies during last years.
On the contrary: I've heard nothing but criticism from "techies" about Apple's trusted computing model, but it doesn't matter: the majority of the people that pay for Apple products don't care because it Just Works(tm) for them.
Exactly. Provide a "rootable" platform that works as well and is as delightful for average customers as iPhone OS is and then you've got my interest. But until somebody shows that, this theoretical world of 'total device freedom' with users still having a worry-free experience sounds to me just like more of the same "Linux on the desktop is going to happen when the next release of Gnome comes out!" that I've been hearing for over a decade now.
Users are asking for easy to use, fun devices. Not root.
It's astonishing how many people working in the software industry look at something their customers are clamoring for, say to themselves "I don't want that!" and, because of that, ignore it.
I used to think that this industry was worse off for being largely run by business/marketing people instead of techies, but the older I get, the less strongly I think that.
The point of business is to make things for your customers.
When you make things for yourself, that's a hobby.
Yes, obviously, when you're your own customer and thus your work is also your hobby, that's a wonderful thing: for you and for your work.
So here's a hint for techies: quit taking so much pride in how superior your taste is and how much smarter you are than your customers. That just means it's harder for you to "get into their head" and build what they want in a way they'll want it.
I don't get this idea of "just works". My blackberry died last week, and I decided to try out an iPhone as a replacement.
Just works? As in I can get my email to sync more often than 4 times an hour without jailbreaking it?
Just works? As in I can install the grooveshark iPhone app without jailbreaking it?
Just works? As in I can listen to pandora and browse the internet without jailbreaking it?
Just works? As in I can stop the screen from rotation while I'm trying to use the thing in bed without jailbreaking it?
Just works? As in I can use my google voice app without having to resort to the workaround the google coded up?
Just works? As in I can use any song or sound stored on the filesystem as a ringtone, alarm, or alert?
The iPhone might "just work" if you're looking for something that is slightly worse than a netbook for updating your twitter status, but as far as seeing the iPad be anything more than paying $600 for the privilege of then paying to run apps from the iTunes store, well, I don't see it.
Maybe this will change when I get my hands around an iPad, but I very highly doubt it.
Although perhaps I'm just a tad bitter about how absolutely dreadfully horrible the iPhone is at just about everything I've tried to do on it. (Okay, that's a lie, my niece really enjoyed playing with the guitar chord app I downloaded)
You're an edge case. Most users don't know or care that these problems are there.
Among other things, if you have an Exchange server or an IMAP server that supports IDLE, you get push e-mail automatically, which for me solves that problem in its entirety.
Things like background apps can be done, but the practicality of allowing background apps without draining the battery far too fast is an issue that (to date) they haven't solved effectively. Perhaps in the next generation of apps.
Finally, the rotation - I agree with you wholeheartedly. Rotation inhibitor is the biggest reason why I jailbreak. I hope this will be solved in a future OS release, but who knows.
For education / gaming / medicine / industrial / etc etc the apps we see for this format are going to be incredible.