Posted on 08/23/2010 10:02:07 AM PDT by SmokingJoe
Well said! I was skeptical about what an iPad could offer me when I bought mine. It exceeded my expectations. I use it daily, prefer it over my laptop, and rarely use my desktop PC. The iPad travels around the house with me, from the breakfast table, family room, the outdoor deck, workshop, and even out outings away from the home.
I ported over dozens of DVD training videos, pdf reference documents, books, thousands of songs and photos, and have dozens of apps. This, in a first-generation Apple tablet. I salivate at what is coming in future tablets from Apple and other companies.
And the future doesn’t look bright for MSFT IMHO.
Hell, I’d sell them both.
If you can remember the very first iPod product released in 2001 (not even 10 years ago) and compare it to the iPod Touch of today, you will see what I am trying to say. The tablet (iPad) you are looking at today will bear no resemblance and will appear to be primitive when compared to the tablets you will be working with less than 10 years from now.
After the theft of my old 40 GB (hard-drive) MP3 player, over $200 on sale a few years ago, I scored bigtime with a $40 4G Sansa Clip player with a card slot. Add a single 16G card and I have all the music on a much smaller player -- and if I want more I just get a second card.
I can’t see a future where the mass of non-tech savvy internet and media users learn to use - and maintain - a Windows OS box and virus protection, etc.
Whatever the future of that market it will be much safer, easier to use and more reliable for the mass market. If products don’t do this then they miss the point.
If the android tablets do this and maintain a price advantage over the cheap entry level Windows laptops, I think they’re bound to eat into market share quickly.
If the Android tablets come with anywhere near the same vulnerabilities and hassles of Windows, it will take them much longer to beat iPad’s share.
Maybe kids would have it as their only 'puter. But Dad or Mom need a laptop or desktop to sync up the iPad. Just as with an iPod, you need another computer to sync and transfer content to the iPad. Since getting mine, I rarely use the desktop. The laptop gets use mainly to sync up the iPad. And it's two-way. Most of my email from multiple accounts is received and read on my iPad. Also many documents from the internet (yes there are apps for downloading). I'm a heavy computer user, having programmed them since the 1960s, and I have an iPad. As for keyboards, there are several physical keyboard types offered, including Bluetooth wireless keyboards.
Was it a Hyundai?
I forget. But I saw an ad for a new car. And instead of an owners manual, it comes with an IPad.
Not just for the hi tech info on the car, but also for scheduling service and maintenance.
I’m iPad ignorant. Is it possible, once you get your library synced up, to use only the iPad? Can you then download new iTunes and sync your iPod to the iPad iTunes?
Also, some crazy sounding technology is about to come our way. Don't laugh, but keyboards will soon be able to fold up and fit in your shirt pocket. They have also found a way to build a wireless keyboard into a pair of trousers. So get this, you are sitting in your chair with half the keyboard on your left trouser leg and the other half on your right trouser leg. As to where the mouse will be positioned, well let's leave that to the imagination!
Q. Are you playing with yourself?
A. No, I'm just adjusting my mouse!
Less than half. Even the people who do mostly that still tend to do other stuff. If nothing else there’s the ever popular “getting work done at home”, a lot of people bring documents and projects home from work to get it done there. Then of course there’s the gamers, while the PC gaming market has dropped dramatically due to the recent improvements in the consoles it’s still a big market.
What it really boils down to is will the tablet replace or supplement. So far all the people I see buying them aren’t getting rid of anything, it’s purely supplement. It could replace the portable gaming devices, though as you point out some changes will have to be made. It could replace the e-readers. It could replace desktops for people who do very little (e-mail and internet) with their desktops. But outside of those groups I see it purely as supplemental, another gadget in their arsenal, nice to take on trips or the DMV, handy if you want to look something up on wiki without getting off the cough, but other than that not so much.
I’m not assuming anything like that. In order for the technology to get where you say this is going is a MASSIVE change. The cheapest of these things is 200 bucks, and that tablet is VERY cheap, most of them are closer to 500 and upwards of a thousand. To get these items to Walgreens watch level of disposability is like 20 or 30 major technical leaps, you’re talking about a 90 to 95% reduction in the cost.
The iPod to iPod Touch doesn’t even approach what you’re projecting for tablets. They’re still $300, they haven’t really replaced anything except Walkmans, heck they really don’t even have more storage space.
In order to remain a tablet there are certain limitations that can’t be gotten rid of, because if you got rid of them it would stop being a tablet. They can’t have big screens, and they can’t have keyboards, storage might be able to be over come but it’s going to be expensive (there are already ways to stick a terabyte of data in something iPad sized but it would at least double the price). And those are the primary things that will keep the tablet from replacing computers en mas.
I fully agree. My little iRobot (a 7" diagonal screen Android tablet - it fits in pockets of my cargo shorts and pants - and at 300 grams doesn't weigh them down much at all) is a fun device for light reading, for listening to music (nice music player in it), and a few games when traveling.
But as far as regular use? I actually prefer the real - albeit tiny - hardware keyboard of my HTC Touch Pro2 cell phone for composing/responding to e-mails. The screen on the iRobot is a little nicer for browsing the web (mainly because it's bigger), but to me anything that needs more than a couple dozen keystrokes (like logging in to a website), on-screen/soft keyboards simply suck.
The iRobot is really a 6-7 hour long lasting music player/reader/game player when I'm traveling, and something to do some basic sketching on (there's lots of good sketch apps for Android) if I have an idea I want to record or share. Other than that, though, it's my laptop and cell phone for "real" communications and work.
And for those who say "yeah but the iPad can use a keyboard!", well, so can my iRobot, but I don't make it a habit to carry one around with me.
And a 10" laptop from Dell, HP, or Asus lasts 5-6 hours on a charge (based on my experience with a Dell Mini 10), has a real keyboard, tons more storage (like 160 GB), and can simply DO so much more. For not a lot bigger size (neither will fit into your cargo pants pocket), not a lot more weight (about 10 extra ounces - both are heavy compared to the 7" Android tablets or a larger cell phone), and of course - half (or less) the price.
For the price of an iPad, you can get a $100-$150 Android tablet, a $100 smart phone, and a 17" laptop. BIG difference! That's about what I've spent on my electronics "suite" that I travel with: the $100 for my iRobot, $100 for my HTC Touch Pro2, and $400 for my HP G71 laptop. Add in another $100 for my Nikon Coolpix 3000 camera, and there's precious little I cannot do/record/address electronically, for right at $700.
Two cameras/video recorders (HTC and Nikon), common storage (MicroSD between all of them - I use an SDHC adapter for the Nikon and the G71 and have four 8 GB and two 16 GB MicroSD cards), serious work platform (G71 - 17" screen with a full 101 key keyboard with numeric keypad built in), reading (HTC and iRobot), games (G71 and iRobot), movies (G71 and iRobot) and portable music players (HTC and iRobot).
For Apple products, sure - they're very expensive. The coming wave of Android tablets, though, are a LOT cheaper. The Augen is around $149 at K-Mart, but in China you can find dozens of 7" and 8" Android tablets for right at the $100 mark...
You can find many on eBay for around $130 or so, and it won't be much longer before they're all over the US for right around $100.
Yes, it's made of plastic, and the USB port is not PERFECTLY square with the hole in the cover, but it was $100, it's been dropped a dozen times and still works, has had a Coke, a glass of orange juice, and water spilled on it, and - it was $100...:)
Brings back the original meaning of the word "joystick"...:)
I was poking around C|Net and the ones I saw for $200 or less looked basically like over sized PSPs with touch screens like this Archos http://reviews.cnet.com/tablets/archos-7-home-tablet/4505-3126_7-34093843.html?tag=also , I’m not even sure they truly deserve to be called tablets they’re so little. Guess they’d fit in your cargo pants though.
Mine is like this one, but I got it down to $100 because I know how to haggle in the electronics malls in China, and I beat the guy up over price because it was the demo unit with a scratch on the back (like I care about that) and didn't have the original packaging (again, I don't care). For $100, it was a screaming deal. I didn't get the case, though - that was an extra $7.
It has the WI-FI and the Gee Bees though! :)
Yeah, it's a smallish screen, but it's pretty functional with a 7" diagonal screen. About the same size screen as a bigger Kindle or Nook, and the resolution is actually fine for me when reading books.
It’s amazing how many tablets are out there, and have been out there long before the iPad showed up. Never having been a gadget guy I never paid attention.
Like most “magical” and “revolutionary” things from Apple, they’re late-comers to the market, never invent anything new, but simply polish it off and claim they created the whole thing.
Apple rarely innovates; they clean up and polish and count on their marketing arm to convince the masses that it’s Apple’s brilliance that created the new market.
Okay, I choose not to want one and I choose not to need one. My everyday life has no requirement for one and the older I get the less use one will be to me. Enjoy yours though : )
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