Posted on 04/01/2010 1:58:49 PM PDT by Reaganesque
...In 1984, Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, was the first person in Britain to own a Macintosh computer, and I was the second...Throughout the next decade I would regularly go round to Douglas' London house, floppy discs under my arm, and ring the doorbell.
"Is he in?" I would pant excitedly. Douglas' wife Jane would point with resigned amusement to the stairs, and I would hurl myself up them to swap files and play. We were like children with toy train sets. And that was part of the problem. It was such fun. Computing was not supposed to be fun. Douglas and I once spent two weeks redesigning our desktop icons and then asked Jane to judge the winner. She tactfully awarded us each first prize. We would have sulked for weeks otherwise.
...snip...
After he leaves, I am finally left alone with an iPad. Finally I get some finger time. I peep under the slip holder, and there it is. When I switch it on, a little sigh escapes me as the screen lights up. Ten minutes later I am rolling on the floor, snarling and biting, trying to wrestle it from the hands of an Apple press representative.
...snip...
It is possible that the public will not fall on the iPad, as I did, like lions on an antelope. Perhaps they will find the apps and the iBooks too expensive. Maybe they will wait for more fully featured later models. But for me, my iPad is like a gun lobbyist's rifle: the only way you will take it from me is to prise it from my cold, dead hands.
(Excerpt) Read more at time.com ...
I post this article mainly because I love Stephen Fry. The man is a masterful writer and comedian. As for the iPad, I may have to check it out.
Well maybe if he advertises heavily on FOX
Oh, wait . . .
It was amusing to see an episode of Bones with Dr. Gordon Gordon on it right after watching "House".
I would love to see Fry do a guest shot on “House.”
It doesn’t run Adobe Flash applications...
I picked up an iPhone a little more than a month ago. My wife and I had debated getting a couple for several years. Her old phone was dying, and so we did it.
This thing is amazing. I don’t know how else to put it. The thing comes in handy in just about countless ways. I even found a dietary app, and I’ve lost 13 pounds. If I continue on as I have for the last three and a half weeks, I’ll be at my goal weight around June 20th.
Microsoft Office, cameras, YouTube, instant messages, email, stocks and business news, maps, weather, voice recording and editing, alarms, notes, calculators, screen savers, itunes, ipod, movies, compass, browsers, contacts, navigation, to do list, voice activated apps, water and dietary intake, restaurant guide, walking/running app and logs, wallpapers, a 50plus app application tool, banks, paypal, ebay, Fox and Bloomberg business, loan calculator, currency converter with momentary rate updates, voice to text app, movie trailers times and ticket purchases, latest quake info, unit converter, still and movie cameras stitchers effects and after shot modifiers, piano chords and keyboards, drums, guitar chords, bar code reader and price comparison tool, flashcard tool, Koi pond and other fish tanks, the Bible, the audio Bible, religions and non religious materials, Kindle support, patriotic reading materials with founding and other, scientific apps, travel apps, business bank restaurant and other located near you apps, maps, language translators, Disney wait times for their lines, mixed drink application over 8,000 recipes, super pages, area code finder, zip code finder, cheap gas nearby, medical appliations with first aide and CPR, eye exam, disaster guide, television and C-Span guides and news, stitcher, newspapers, Endgadget, TVGuide, FBI Most Wanted, games including two or more players using their own phones, sports applications - I can listen to any game I like live, football, basketball, and a couple of racing apps, plus a bird recognition app, and three different scanners that bring in airports, law enforcement, fire, ambulance, and just foreign broadcasts.
If the iPad is anything near as functional, I may never eat again. LOL
I can’t say enough how handy this thing is.
Simply amazing...
No, it doesn’t. Apple has gone it’s own way there. I suspect in time more places will develop output compatible with the iPhone, iPod, or iPad.
This is becoming too big a segment to ignore.
Once in a while I run into problems. It hasn’t been as big a downer as I thought it would be.
bump
I don’t have an iphone / ipad, and I understand that people love them, but I don’t really get people geeking out about the apps. When I see people going on about all the apps that the iphone has, I just don’t get it. It’s a computer.
I could be mistaken about this, but it seems in part that the iphone is really appealing to people who just didn’t understand that computers - let’s say windows 98 - could always run apps. Back 10 or 15 years ago, these apps were called software, and I suppose they still are.
I believe, and I don’t know this to be the case, the iphone system makes it extremely easy to find apps and buy apps. Under the Windows system, you would have to know what you wanted, and you would have to search to find it, and there was always the real possibility that the software wouldn’t do exactly what you wanted.
I also get that the gyro feature of the iphone does give neat stuff. And the touchscreen is also cool.
But apps are just software, and a Win98 computer could do apps.
Or am I wrong? People do love the apps, but I don’t get it.
Look, some of that is definitely true. In a nutshell you’ve kind of given the naysayer’s version of the phone review. And I don’t characterize it that way with malice. I think it’s somewhat human to be a little repulsed by the hoopla.
Sure, the apps are just software. And yes you could have installed and run those programs on your desktop or laptop. Here you have a phone that is about a quarter of an inch thick, is about three by four point five inches, and does everything a computer ten years ago could have done. I’ve got a sixteen gigabyte system. I can store and watch movies on it. And I can update those and music anywhere on the fly. I can get news video footage on the fly too.
I can take full spreadsheets and email them to my phone, use them there, and then email them back. I can ask my phone to call my wife’s mobile, or my folks at home.
I can slip the dang thing into my shirt or even pants pocket.
This little phone is an amazing tool, and it’s is a doorway to the world no matter where I am.
You could take me anywhere in the nation and dump me on a street corner, and I could find the nearest restaurant, gas station, hotel, police station, taxi phone number, grocery store, in less than a minute. I could talk to the folks in limited phrases in a foreign language if I had to. And I could book my transportation to the local airport and back home from that street corner.
You can try doing that with your laptop, but it would be very difficult to do without lugging it around. What I now have is just an afterthought to carry around.
I don’t blame you a bit for your take on it. Get one, and my bet is you’ll find yourself wondering how you ever got along without it.
And for good reasons. Yeah, it will cause it to miss some sites in the near term. But 75% of people who design with flash use it for the SWF video, which is being supplanted for HTML5. The remaining 25% will be invisible to iPad users.
This is the price for an incredibly poorly implemented sandbox on the part of Adobe. It’s one thing to hang up a PC or MAC, but an embedded device like the iphone or ipad has to be implemented with fewer leaks and ways of hanging the thing.
Very cute message!!
I don't see the iPad as such a breakthru...
Thank you...
I spent a number of years in pharmaceutical inventory analysis. I would have been thrilled to have a tool like that. Some folks won’t like that size device, and others will swear by it.
I believe you’ll be shocked at the numbers they sell. It’s big enough to be industrial, and small enough to not be hard to lug around. I think it will be a winner.
I only wish I had something similar in college instead of lugging that 30 lb. book bag everywhere.
Absolutely. The books I can get in the Kindle format are great. I always liked the Microsoft Book developer and reader too. You could highlight and make notes. Very useful.
My brother-in-law gave me his old iPhone as he was upgrading to a 3Gs... I thought well cool – but I don’t have AT&T so what good is it to me?? Well, low and behold I can access the internet with it at many hotspots around town (McDonalds)... as well as my own wireless router at home – now that IS cool. I can use nearly all the APPs, I just can’t use it as a phone without paying AT&T.
Here’s the real cool part: I’m a licensed amateur radio operator so I downloaded the APP called: Echolink. With it you can access amateur repeaters all over the globe. First time I used it I talked with Alaska and Australia within 10 minutes!! For Free, of course.
It is seriously astounding what you can do with this thing.
You have to be a licensed amateur to do that right?
Very cool.
Exactly...now if the iPad was a REAL touch computer supporting regular MAC apps, FLASH, OSX and all the outputs (USB, FW), then I could be really excited.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.