I think the ipad will change the way we do things. Now first i would like to say apple is a billion dollar company and they know what they are doing. I don't think they would make the claims they have made if they are not true. Look at the iphone and how that has changed the game. Everyone has a touch screen phone and none are good as the iphone. Now people saying it is a big ipod touch i say it looks like a ipod touch but that does not make it one. Those fake iphones that are sold on ebay look like iphones but they are not iphones. So please stop saying it is nothing but a big ipod touch. even if it was a big ipod touch it still would be a great device. I think the ipad haters are so focused on the past that they can't see the future.
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Ipad (change going to come)
- Thread starter flyguy206
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Saying the iPad is like a big iPod Touch is like saying a 30" Apple Cinema Display is like a big 13" display.
There is evidence that Apple has been working on the iPad longer than the iPhone and iPod Touch. Anyone who has been reading MR for the past few years knows this. iPhone and iPod Touch were born out of the iPad program. If you look at it this way, the iPhone and iPod Touch are simply smaller, less powerful iPads with cramped keyboards that will never be successful. The tech is finally here for the iPad to be mass-produced and I believe with time people will see the benefit of having such a large touch screen device. Apps for this thing will be crazy!
+1
Btw I think you meant to type can't see the future, right?
There is a lot of ignorance going around. People are basing their impressions of what the device can do based on Jobs' pitch or 15 minutes they spent with an HP tablet. Clones which try to shoehorn windows 7, ubuntu or even OS X without touch extensions into a tablet are bound to disappoint. We will be able to judge this pretty quickly the day the thing is launched by simply running an iPhone vnc program and logging into the full desktop OS of our choice and seeing how easy it is to use from the iPad. I think it won't be very easy.
During his pitch, Jobs avoided typing. The way I remember it, he never typed anything. Not even a url. He even showed a keyboard dock option. To me this is very telling. I think Apple knows they have a winner on their hands but they need to tweak a few things to get it exactly right and they aren't dumb enough to show one of its shortcomings to national media on launch day.
If first gen iPhone with only web apps and no copy/paste was all that was available right now, I think BB Storm, Droid and Pre would be having Apple's lunch. But they are not because Apple upgraded iPhone several times. I expect this to continue with iPad. Sure there will be a very vocal dozen or two users that demand a stylus and the ability to run Mathematica and recognize hand drawn sigmas and integrals. Apple will rightly ignore them and cater to the mass market and earn a lot of money with iPad. And for those of us who want some narrow niche application, I suspect there will be an iPad app for that.
Some people simply do not have any "vision" to see how things in the future might work. Thankfully Apple isn't hiring those people. I think MS must have beaten them to those people 
There is a reason Apple is growing and setting sales records every quarter. The fact that people overlook is how long it's record breaking financial quarters can continue based on the simple fact Apple has a very, very small marketshare overall. Less then 5% of the "pc" market, that fact alone is remarkable. I can't think of another computer company that is currently in control of everything they sell from hardware to software, manufacturing, supply chain to the retail stores. (Please correct me if I'm wrong) It's either Windows on their generic black box or maybe linux as an alternative.
Apple takes risks, iPad could be a huge one, maybe sales will be slow, maybe it can't live up to the hype and ends up along the lines of a Apple TV, or MBA with it's cult following.
Based on everything the "I won't buy", "it's crap", "haters" say, it should be so easy right now to release a perfect tablet to make every critic happy. The "10 things wrong with iPad" lists are everywhere. Why hasn't someone taken this momentum and ran with it? Where is Dell or HP with their iPad killer? I mean surely they were innovative enough to know you need a tablet with a camera, flash, multitasking, full OS and a 10 hour battery right? With USB, SD ports, and all the goodies?
I would think blood is in the water, whoever this great company is should take center stage and make a killing off of Apple's poor judgement. Ironically... no one has stepped up. Why?
They can cram all the ports and hardware they want into their "iPad killer" they can't control the software. The quad core, 12 gigs ram, 512 SSD tablet is just a fancy book end without the right software. Unfortunately no matter how cool anyone else's hardware maybe, their are stuck with bad software.
iPhone OS may not be the future of all computing, but a fully modified OS that actually is built around the end users and how we interact with the device it's on.. is what people will buy.
There is a reason Apple is growing and setting sales records every quarter. The fact that people overlook is how long it's record breaking financial quarters can continue based on the simple fact Apple has a very, very small marketshare overall. Less then 5% of the "pc" market, that fact alone is remarkable. I can't think of another computer company that is currently in control of everything they sell from hardware to software, manufacturing, supply chain to the retail stores. (Please correct me if I'm wrong) It's either Windows on their generic black box or maybe linux as an alternative.
Apple takes risks, iPad could be a huge one, maybe sales will be slow, maybe it can't live up to the hype and ends up along the lines of a Apple TV, or MBA with it's cult following.
Based on everything the "I won't buy", "it's crap", "haters" say, it should be so easy right now to release a perfect tablet to make every critic happy. The "10 things wrong with iPad" lists are everywhere. Why hasn't someone taken this momentum and ran with it? Where is Dell or HP with their iPad killer? I mean surely they were innovative enough to know you need a tablet with a camera, flash, multitasking, full OS and a 10 hour battery right? With USB, SD ports, and all the goodies?
I would think blood is in the water, whoever this great company is should take center stage and make a killing off of Apple's poor judgement. Ironically... no one has stepped up. Why?
They can cram all the ports and hardware they want into their "iPad killer" they can't control the software. The quad core, 12 gigs ram, 512 SSD tablet is just a fancy book end without the right software. Unfortunately no matter how cool anyone else's hardware maybe, their are stuck with bad software.
iPhone OS may not be the future of all computing, but a fully modified OS that actually is built around the end users and how we interact with the device it's on.. is what people will buy.
Apple has the a great software in the iphone and now in the Ipad. It is a matter of keeping cost down, minimize battery use, maximizing batter power to add other components we want. In 1 to 2 years, technology in battery and other components will get better. Perhaps, the cost of OLED comes down, that may let Apple to put in the USB port, camera, etc.
Tell you what--buy me an iPad (the most expensive one), buy me the data plan for 2 years, and I'll give it a whirl...
I disagree. Apple is one of the safest companies around. We may think they are taking risks because we don't understand what they are doing. But they've done their research. I don't for a minute consider the MBA to be a failure, I'm not sure why people do? Even if sales are slow, having that MBA sitting next to the MBs and MBPs at each and every Apple display is a huge lure and part of the overall Apple experience. It's like the sports car sitting in front of the car dealer that gets you in, even though you end up driving out with the sedan. At least you bought something. They are happy.
As for ATV, I will agree that it has been a market failure. But I don't think it has been a risk financially. As Apple gets financially stronger all the time, products like iPad seem less and less risky. For a strong company like Apple, a risky play would be like launching a full blown (subsidised) games console (cough Xbox cough).
I think Apple has plenty of tricks up its sleeve with the iPad. All the features we wanted can be slowly added, while the price falls. In the mean time, the number of hot (not killer) apps will accumulate and it will be a slow burn. In some ways a riskier move from Apple would be to *not* launch the iPad until it was more mature, or to launch an OSX based slate. To me, the iPad is Apple playing it safe (again).
I've said from the announcement that Apple is in for the long haul with iPad. Maybe its a stretch, but remember how Steve Jobs proclaimed it to be one of the most important things he's done, and yet the general consensus is that the device is underwhelming. Same with the video, we watch it and think, what are they smoking? I just think they are talking about the product that they plan iPad to eventually be, not what it is today. It's hard to imagine the iPad as it was presented could be so important to Steve. Sure, iWork would have taken a long time to port and modify. And I'm sure the hardware was a neat technical challenge, but hardly groundbreaking. With the weight of resources (acquisitions), talent, and cash, this is their bread and butter. So the kool-aid is future dated. I'm not saying I'm right, it's just an idea.
Ahh but it is. Lets not dance around the fact that its just a huge iPod touch. Maybe with a little more functionality built in and a little more functionality because of the larger screen, but let us not kid ourselves.
Yeah. It's like a mini touchscreen iMac without the stand, right?
Isn't calling an iPad a bigger Touch like calling a giant a huge dwarf? Once iPad is out, the Touch may switch to being likened as the smaller iPad instead.
The problem with your line of short-sighted thinking is that it essentially disregards and minimizes the most important difference: the added size and additional functionality possible due to that added size.
it's not "a little more functionality"; it's a complete and total game changing transformation to the much more limited and constrained functionality/possibility set of an iPod Touch or iPhone.
If the new version of iWorks SJ demonstrated isn't enough to get you to understand this, then the deluge of truly functional applications (as opposed to simple "apps") that we will undoubtedly see in the coming months and years surely will.
What has it changed? eBooks and Amazon's pricing? How is that changing the WHOLE game?
Come on Sam this is completely disingenuous. Every single notebook and netbook mfr of note, and some we hadn't heard anything/much about before, has come out and said "something" about the 'new' tablet space...either a product announcement, a plan announcement, or a no-plan announcement. Your comment makes it seem like everyone is sitting still and yawning.
Perhaps people need to take semantics more seriously when they make statements. I'm not trying to sound retentive - but not much has CHANGED as of yet. Hype - yes - change no so much. The change is TO COME. It hasn't happened yet and won't for at least a couple of months.
I'm not saying there isn't buzz. But that's all rhetoric, pomp and circumstance.
I could hold a press conference introducing a new car that runs on sugar instead of gas, electric, etc and give a demo of it driving a bit and call it revolutionary, magical and that it will change the way people think about their automobiles and the environment. And I'm sure environmentalists, car manufacturers and consumers would be a buzz for weeks. But nothing has changed in the marketplace because the product isn't IN the marketplace yet.
And is this the best analogy - no... but my point is that the CHANGE as implied in that post has not occurred. Just buzz and a tete-a-tete with Amazon's book pricing.
I disagree. What we are seeing is not simply buzz, rhetoric, and a tete-a-tet with Amazon over book pricing. (As an aside, to me what's happened with e-book pricing is the least interesting/meaningful change that's occurred since the iPad was announced).
The entire (consumer) tech industry is now scrambling to figure out what their response to the iPad is going to be. Everyone learned their lesson - the hard way - with the iPhone. They waited way too long to introduce meaningful competition for the iPhone and now, 3 years on, the iPhone continues to eat the industry's lunch. Android, the Pre, BB Storm, et al devices are still, well, simply not as polished an overall experience as the iPhone, and their cumulative market share continues to be dwarfed by the iPhone's.
The industry is not sitting as idly by this time around.
Perhaps you define change solely "in the marketplace" where obviously not much has happened (though I for one cancelled a MBP purchase plan to instead wait for an iPad). But if you don't think swat teams have been assembled inside all the major/minor players to figure out WTF they're going to do then I think you're being unrealistic. They're reacting, and reacting frantically. To me, that's change. And meaningful change at that.
I agree. I have been on many forums and never have I seen this much hype on anything (including the iphone). Everyone I know or talk to ask me about the iPad because they know I'm into the tech.
The intrest is there and I consider that alone a change.
I love this argument. You can say it about literally every single thing which exists:
"A Porsche is just ___."
"Your opinion is just ___."
"An LCD TV is just ___."
"The iPhone is just ___."
"A faster computer is just ___."
"These laws are just ___."
"This hamburger is just ___."
"The Concorde is just ___."
Good for you for not being overwhelmed by the iPad, I guess?