Albie! you're back. Thanks for your post. I plan to buy an ipad for sure. To me, it looks excellent. This will make some abandon their kindles for sure with their ibook app. Movies look awesome on it and I look forward to playing the regular games plus ipad apps. I can't wait to get it in 90 days if it really does release then.
I'm not even talking about how the browser renders things as much as just reading and navigating a HTML document using your TV. It isn't something I can ever see myself doing.
I am interested to see if iBook makes its way to the iPhone and iPod this June or if Apple just features it on the iPad. Won't phaze me since I use the Kindle app but they are cutting out a huge market if they bypass that built in consumer base. Should be interesting though to see if there will be a lot of early adopters who also have iPhones/iPods. Of course the die hard Apple fans will buy but will anyone else?
Well this is just a matter of personal preference, but I can carry it with me from the living room to the kitchen and back while reading a website. This isn't feasible with Apple TV, and not nearly as elegant with a laptop either. Also, it can be taken along to long flights, car rides etc. Seems portable enough for what I'd personally use it for. While I agree that Apple should upgrade the Apple TV to go up against the Boxee Box, it seems odd to bash the iPad as if it was somehow a product that prevented this from happening. Today was the launch of the iPad, and I didn't hear Apple saying this would be their new product announcement or hardware upgrade for 2010.
I read your other thread about this and think you make some really good points. They should just merge the Mac Mini with Apple TV, and create an affordable, do everything living room experience. As just your average person, amongst the people I know almost nobody has a Mac Mini, and I've never really seen anyone express any interest in them. I know lot's of people with Mac's, too, and they all either have an iMac or a MacBook. I could be way off, but it seems like there's not really a need for the Mac Mini. Seems like a similar situation to Apple TV, so why not combine the two? With Apple's user friendly UI, I could see the explosion of people who have used iTunes or switched to Apple products over the last 10 years or so having an interest in something like this. @Hodapp, I actually think you're making some pretty compelling arguments for this device. I admit, I was looking at the iPad as needing to replace these other devices, rather than just being complimentary to them. In regards to it being used as a professional device, that's basically the first thing I thought of when I saw the iPad. I thought of the myriad of different jobs I've had over the years, and how something like this would have been a totally useful tool in my workplace for ALL SORTS of different reasons. Of course throughout most of corporate America, Windows is the de-facto and that probably won't change anytime soon. But I know from experience that a great number of small businesses use Apple products, and it's those types of places where the iPad could really make an impact. With the right software, of course. I hope it does well for Apple, I don't want the product to fail. I'd just like them to give people like me specifically a reason to want to buy one, which at least right now there isn't one. Maybe that will change, who knows. It's only the first few hours of anyone knowing the facts about this thing. At the very least I'll be really interested to see how Apple moves forward with everything.
Can't wait to watch movies on the iPad! I saved all my digital copies from every blu ray I've bought in anticipation of the iPad
Hey Candy, the iPad is a neat device, and I may eventually cave to get this. But at the same time, I'm hedging my bets to wait and see what Google, HP and Dell have up their sleeves. Those devices may actually be better with a full-fledged OS and storage. And with more devices coming out, the prices will undoubted be falling.
Most HDTVs these days handle such things just fine, Eli. Clarity is not an issue as most HDTVs have VGA, DVI and HDMI inputs and have as high a refresh rate and resolution as proper monitors. If I can comfortably surf the net using my HDTV via hook up to my Macbook Pro, doing so with AppleTV shouldn't be an issue...if Apple ever stopped ignoring the damned product.
They already have great looking tablets from what I have seen with their previews. I am not looking for another laptop, and that's why the ipad appeals to me, playing games on the bigger screen, ipad apps, MOVIES!!! and the ibook reader. It is huge though, bigger than the other tablets. I can always sell mine instantly on craigslist if I changed my mind. If I do get one, I will def make a review on my youtube review channel.
Why would anyone want this POS? Any $170 notebook can do every thing this can do and so much more... No GPS No Camera (with LED Flash) No Multitasking No OLED Screen An extremely disappointing 256 MB of RAM! No Additional Touch Gestures No Videocalling/conferencing/iChat No Handwriting Recognition or Support for a Stylus No Wireless Syncing or File Transfers No File Management or Freedom to download files (even documents) from online No Ability to run custom Apps not preapproved by Apple and sold via the App Store A Very Low Resolution Display with 25% fewer PPPs than the iPhone or iPod Touch No integrated TV antenna or Radio antenna (They even developed a HD DTV Tuner for use in cellphones to allow users to pick up OTA HDTV signals on the go! Why they didn't include this technology in this device I won't understand) No Video Out According to Apple's page on the product, the maximum resolution it is capable of playing MPEG4s at is 640x480 resolution at 30 fps. Not even HD! It features a 1 Ghz processor that significantly slower than just about every single notebook on the market today. No OTA Sync With Apple TV or Servers To Stream Video No Low Reflective Screen Mode for high contrast Ebook Reading that doesn't hurt your eyes Only 64 mbs of HDD space No Gamepad attachment for Gaming With Physical Buttons/Tactile Feedback No bluetooth, or ability to connect to a bluetooth mouse/keyboard No RFID/IR to use it as a remote, or to tag it to yourself No Replacable/Removable Batteries No Java or Flash support (no hulu.com) No ability to connect to an extrernal hdd, or even to pop in an SDCard
Quite true. But that goes right into the limited uses at limited times thing that I stated earlier. "AppleTV is a hobby" - Steve Jobs "[iPad] is the most important product we've ever developed" - Steve Jobs I kid, of course. But it does show that AppleTV is an afterthought at best. Jobs obviously doesn't see what I and others see in it as far as potential goes, and he sees things in iPad that others don't. Maybe he's totally right but I don't think he is in this case. If he turns out to be absolutely correct I'll be the first to eat crow around here. Again, I don't think the iPad is a bad product, just highly niche, and it doesn't possess the potential that other Apple products do, and I would include AppleTV in there because it is so often ignored for some odd reason.
BTW, an Albie and Candy sighting in one topic? With Frand as well? Brings me back to when the site was full of high quality discussion. There's still some, of course, but there's been some drop off.
i think this whole thing is awesome but... am i the only one who thinks iPad sounds like a "womens" product with an mp3 in it....
So wait, the iPad is a highly niche product, and webTV 2.0 isn't? You sir are the first person on the internet to make this joke!
well ive been at school all day so excuse me for enjoying the creativity i have :'( but i still like the awesome newton better
An article appeared on Yahoo, and one paragraph seems to sum up the questions surrounding the iPad. http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/null/159903/my-thoughts-on-the-apple-ipad/ "But putting that aside, the iPad's utility seems awfully thin. There's just no reason to use it to run iPhone apps unless your vision is rotten, and even Jobs was making mistakes when he was trying to type on the thing, making it a poor laptop substitute. As a friend of mine -- who's excited to replace his laptop with an iPad -- put it, it probably makes more sense "for those of us who can't really type" anyway. Fair enough... though it still remains to be seen how sophisticated it is at handling attachments and stored files, the bread and butter of anyone using a laptop for productivity but a task at which the iPhone is pretty lousy." If anyone can overcome this, it's the marketing team at Apple. They did too good a job hyping the iPad, and now the inevitable fallout has begun. Like I said, the product is sleek but the usefulness of this thing remains to be seen...at least until March.
The iPod and the iPhone were actual significant leaps forward when they first came out. Everyone else followed them. And this is why I bought both devices early on, and the reason why I, like everyone else, had high hopes that this device would do something innovative, or offer something new of value. This thing however is like taking 3 steps back. There is so much this can't do that even the iPhone that's a fifth it's size can do, and there is nothing it can do that the iPhone can't. Apple started the presentation by saying that for a Tablet to succeed, it has to some things better than both the iPhone 3GS and a Macbook Pro do. Then he unveiled a product that utterly fails this test. There is nothing it does better than either device. No GPS No Camera (with LED Flash) No Multitasking No OLED Screen An extremely disappointing 256 MB of RAM! No Additional Touch Gestures No Videocalling/conferencing/iChat No Handwriting Recognition or Support for a Stylus No Wireless Syncing or File Transfers No File Management or Freedom to download files (even documents) from online No Ability to run custom Apps not preapproved by Apple and sold via the App Store A Very Low Resolution Display with 25% fewer PPPs than the iPhone or iPod Touch No integrated TV antenna or Radio antenna (They even developed a HD DTV Tuner for use in cellphones to allow users to pick up OTA HDTV signals on the go! Why they didn't include this technology in this device I won't understand) No Video Out According to Apple's page on the product, the maximum resolution it is capable of playing MPEG4s at is 640x480 resolution at 30 fps. Not even HD! It features a 1 Ghz processor that significantly slower than just about every single notebook on the market today. No OTA Sync With Apple TV or Servers To Stream Video No Low Reflective Screen Mode for high contrast Ebook Reading that doesn't hurt your eyes Only 64 mbs of HDD space No Gamepad attachment for Gaming With Physical Buttons/Tactile Feedback No ability to connect to a bluetooth mouse/keyboard No RFID/IR to use it as a remote, or to tag it to yourself No Replacable/Removable Batteries No Java or Flash support (no hulu.com) No ability to connect to an extrernal hdd, or even to pop in an SDCard Slot
