Sorry, but you’re defending the indefensible. I’m no “Apple hater”, by any means, but I have been in the industry long enough to know some basics. This is a media platform, and yet they cripple their initial release (face it; that’s been their pattern) by omitting standard interfaces to facilitate the transfer of such media to the iPad from other platforms?
Let me put it another way. If I was the product manager for this thing, there’d be some engineers being braced against the wall and getting blasted.
Mark my words....subsequent releases of the iPad will have these added (and more) and will obviously be hundreds of dollars cheaper. They will prove my point. Look at some competing products (ICD, et al) and you’ll see exactly what I mean.
There really isn’t a pure competitor for it. As of now, a cheap netbook isn’t all that similar, in what it does nor what it can do, unless you have an unlimited data plan and plug your cell into that cheap netbook. But then, you have the content stream. Who makes it easy, at an acceptable price? Apple.
Face it, most people don’t want to dink around with the innards of their toys, their televisions, their cell phones or other media devices. They just want it to work, and to look good doing it. The sort of wild west environment, of buying bits and pieces and constructing your own idealized computer are being relegated to hobbyist status. No doubt people built their own radios and televisions, close to a century ago. Who does now?
Is there a reason you can’t transfer files over the same iPod connector people have been using for a decade to transfer content from their computer to Apple made peripheral devices?
It has the same standard interface for media transfer as the iPod, which has about 75% of the media player market. A USB reader and SD slot are available via adapters.
Let me put it another way. If I was the product manager for this thing, there’d be some engineers being braced against the wall and getting blasted.
If that's how you reward folks for 300,000 first-day sales, good luck finding new engineers.
Mark my words....subsequent releases of the iPad will have these added (and more) and will obviously be hundreds of dollars cheaper.
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I understand that the first cars that came out didn’t have radios. And no bucket seats.
The first IBM pcs were expensive paperweights.
Why does it surprise anyone that companies make a decision to release a product earlier with fewer bells and whistles, features, benefits, whatever, instead of waiting for Perfection in V1.0?
Of course the product will improve and become less costly. I believe we all remember 1000 dollar VHS machines. That had no slo mo or visible fast forward features.
It would never have made it to market.
Apple is in business to make money, do you know anyone that is more successful than they are, right now? $40,000,000,000.00 in Cash.
Sorry, how big a bonus were you going to give those engineers?
BTW: the JooJoo, an equivalent Linux-based device, was just released. It costs $499 as well.