iPad Ping!
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fyi
I love my Kindle.
That ipad is too danged big and it looks fragile. I don’t see how you could use it for serious computing. It is basically a browsing device. My Sony Vaio P totally changed the way I do mobile computing. It fits inside my coat pocket, yet it is a fully functional laptop computer and a mobile communications device.
I was hoping that the iPad would cooperate with your desktop, the way the MacAir will use your desktop CD Burner and share files wirelessly. And, of course, there is no USB and no SD.
It seems like Apple is trying really hard to control content on their device, by making it difficult to upload or download anything, except through the Apple Store and iTunes.
I guess what I want is a blown up Palm device, not a blown up iPhone.
I am using an ASUS 900Ha netbook to reply to this thread. Much lighter than my laptop at 6.4 pounds. The crimped keyboard is augmented by a small rubber foldable keyboard that makes typing much easier. All in all it’s better than my old pocket PC and does well when I don’t want to carry the extra load of my laptop. This is my second netbook. The first one got stolen six months ago and picked this one up on Ebay for $200. Software is all open source to do practically anything.For portability you can check out portableapps.com for all kinds of stuff you can carry on a USB thumbdrive and run on any machine. But what the heck, in about three years all this stuff including the IPad released today will be obsolete. And, if Borgbama gets us into WW III during the three years he has left all of this discussion will be mute and irrelevant.
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That's pretty much where I am on this. I really like the concept behind the iPad, but it seems to just not really... fit.
Granted, if you're going to be lugging around a hardback to read, then it's actually smaller than that so I don't know if my perception is skewed by the fact that I'd prefer something that could multitask. For instance, I often listen to music while reading. That doesn't seem to be possible.
Apple describes the silicon that's powering this machine as a "1GHz Apple A4 custom-designed, high-performance, low-power system-on-a-chip." That's a lot of words, but essentially it's a super-low power chip designed to handle basic applications for extended lengths of time. You can tell from the one month standby estimate and the claim of 10 hours of video viewing that this chip isn't an energy hog, and frankly, those figures are astounding. Even the most long-lasting netbooks flicker out after 7 or 8 hours of intense usage, if you're lucky. We don't recall a similar device ever hitting the market with battery claims such as this, and there are really only a few things one can do to increase longevity. There are however many devices that could be coming, based on NVIDIA's competitive Tegra 2 platform that NVIDIA claims will offer 16 hours of HD video playback. However, those devices aren't here yet and we have to hand it to Apple getting to market first with this class of capability in low power consumption... Let's just ponder the possibilities for a moment. The iPad runs on iPhone OS. The iPad uses a 1GHz Apple A4. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to conclude that a next-generation iPhone, which would undoubtedly run iPhone OS, could easily run on a scaled-back version of the A4 chip, if space/heat issues are managed properly. Wouldn't Apple rather design its own chips for the next iPhone rather than relying on another supply chain? We can't say for certain, but considering just how much Jobs enjoys keeping things close to the vest, we bet the answer is "yes." Smartphones have already hit the 1GHz point. Qualcomm's Snapdragon chipset is making waves across the industry, and Toshiba's TG01 (which runs Windows Mobile 6.5) is already widely available in some parts of the globe with a 1GHz CPU. Having such power within a phone certainly makes sense, and given that Apple has already pushed its power plant once on its iPhone 3G when it introduced the iPhone 3GS, one would conclude that Apple is planning to bump the next-gen version as well.
