Ipad: What Do People Here Think Of It?

[b._.o._.b]

I beg to differ, The gp2x is a handheld game console, and it does its job quite well, the pandora is both a game console & essentially a laptop that fits in your pocket, and the eeepc is a laptop that is just large enough to be functional without sacrificing key laptop components. The ipad on the other hand does not have any speciality. It has no one thing that it's supposed to be good at. Reading? You're telling me you're gonna read a novel on a 1024x768 10" screen? Good luck. The eye strain would be horrendous if you're reading for any considerable amount of time. Gaming? How many good games are there really for that platform? A handful, maybe two handfuls. And web? Maybe, that is if you enjoy having a gimped browser (no flash) & not interacting with the internet (virtual keyboard). My point is that it does a bunch of things, but everything it does is only mediocre. Which brings us to the kicker - That might be acceptable at, say, $200, but for three times that the damn thing better wipe my ass! All I'm saying is why would ANYONE drop that kind of money for a device that has no real purpose? [<- rhetorical]

I can give you a lot of reasons why people will say the Pandora is not a good replacement for a laptop.

Example:

- it doesn't run XP or W7
- not fast enough
- screen is too small and no oled
- who wants to type more than 1 minute on a small keyboard like that?
- For the same money I can buy a laptop

Why is the pandora not suited for gaming

- No commercial games available
- Why waste space with a keyboard? Who needs one?
- Too much options, this will surely result in too much diversity and lack of good user experience.
- Looks like a fat DS. Ugly.
- for the same money I can buy a psp / ds or even a xbox / PS3 with the ability to play loads of amazing games


---------

back on topic. The iphone has some amazing games, that are very fun to play. Just check youtube. I don't think the Apple screen will cause eye strain for most people. My smartq7 has a smaller screen of lesser quality and I don't mind reading that screen for a few hours.
Price is not too bad and it will have the amazing apps/game repository from the iphone. I hope it will not fail, because I want to see more e-books, more e-magazines and more e-newspapers available for my Android tablet.

 

[Consequence_9]

I can give you a lot of reasons why people will say the Pandora is not a good replacement for a laptop.

Example:

- it doesn't run XP or W7
- not fast enough
- screen is too small and no oled
- who wants to type more than 1 minute on a small keyboard like that?
- For the same money I can buy a laptop

Why is the pandora not suited for gaming

- No commercial games available
- Why waste space with a keyboard? Who needs one?
- Too much options, this will surely result in too much diversity and lack of good user experience.
- Looks like a fat DS. Ugly.
- for the same money I can buy a psp / ds or even a xbox / PS3 with the ability to play loads of amazing games

Sure, but this is why it's a NICHE device, and I see almost all those reasons as pros. This might be valid if it actually was supposed to be competing with the psp/ds/whatever, but it's not. It's a specialized device for people who know what they want. It offers something that no other device offers - full gaming controls with a physical keyboard. I know your point is that one can come up with gripes about anything, but the pandora is not a device with an identity crisis; it has a definitive purpose & it does it well. The ipad on the other hand is not a niche device, it's a full consumer one, and thus has no excuse.

back on topic. The iphone has some amazing games, that are very fun to play. Just check youtube. I don't think the Apple screen will cause eye strain for most people. My smartq7 has a smaller screen of lesser quality and I don't mind reading that screen for a few hours.
Price is not too bad and it will have the amazing apps/game repository from the iphone. I hope it will not fail, because I want to see more e-books, more e-magazines and more e-newspapers available for my Android tablet.

Like I said, there are good games, but they are few & far between. IMO tilt & capacitive touch just don't make for good gaming controls and I don't see it as a serious competitor in this area. The majority of the games are just casual pass-times & a lot of them just feel so... gimmicky.

Are you serious about the price? $500-$700? Plus a monthly fee if you want 3g, plus even more if you want the proprietary addons? For a 1ghz machine that can only run one thing at a time & doesn't bring ANYTHING new to the table? That's reasonable? Not to mention the proprietary book format, for which they'll be charging $15 bux a pop. Apple must be sneaking subliminal messages into their ads or something, because personally I'd have to be pretty high to agree to buy something that essentially doesn't do anything more than an ipod can do and takes away portability. That's criminal. If you've got that kind of money to throw around at intermediary devices, be my guest, but for the rest of us who only drop that kind of money on a device once every two years or so it's simply not practical. It would seem that people like this reflect the majority of the market, so it's just not gonna fly.

I just can't find a situation where this would be any better than anything already available for hundreds of dollars less. It just doesn't make sense to me. Apple is clearly doing something right because they're at the point where they can just slap their logo on something, call it magical & revolutionary & people go ape-shit for it.

 

[b._.o._.b]

I just can't find a situation where this would be any better than anything already available for hundreds of dollars less. It just doesn't make sense to me. Apple is clearly doing something right because they're at the point where they can just slap their logo on something, call it magical & revolutionary & people go ape-shit for it.

I don't think 500$ for a tablet is too much. Be my guest finding a tablet with the same quality/quantity of software available and the same battery life for less. Also the screen of the iPad is quite good..
It is not a revolutionary device (was the iPod revolutionary?), but certainly not a bad one.

It will definitely help tablets to become more popular. I am not an Apple fan (using Linux), but I am waiting years for tablets and e-book readers to become more mainstream in vain. So when Apple is needed to convince Joe average to buy one and make it more popular, so be it.. I don't see other companies having the same influence in the market.

 

[palmertech]

Evolutionary, not Revolutionary.

That is what I think of it.

 

[darien]

From the perspective of a professional experience and interaction designer. I look at things and my natural inclination is to create stories. Normally I'm so detailed I think about the angle a person might lift their finger to touch the screen if there's stuck in the rain inside of a phone booth.

I have an Asus eeepc and it's essentially useless because in all the places and situations I could conceive of using it, my Macbook Pro will always be a better fit. So right now, it's collecting dust. I bought it out of desire and gadget boner, and that's as good a reason as any. Many will get the iPad for the same reason.

I don't plan on getting an iPad for personal use but I will be developing for it, so it's not unlikely one might come my way for testing purposes since you really can't trust the simulator.

I can see this being useful. I really can. I mean think of this in an instructional video kind of way. Where could you use it? Walking around the work site, one hand on the bezel, the other inputting data. Into a meeting or passing through slides during a presentation, hopefully being able to remote control from the iPad without having to look behind you. Generally just saving paper by reading off a digital pad. Looking through blue prints without unfolding a large printout. Panning and zooming through it.

Get back to your desk or home workspace and you're on idle mode. No don't use it here. You still need iTunes and you still need a home PC. You shouldn't be thinking about using the iPad at your desk or at home unless all you do is word processing and you want to use iWork with the keybord dock. While it's sitting on your desk like a nice picture frame, its running photos in a slideshow, or during a late night of working overtime, you got a video of your kids going by. You're watching a youtube playlist of current events while mainting the entire real estate of your more powerful desktop computer or laptop. You're synching. You have your music with you at work while your iPhone is saving batteries. At most you'll carry 3 devices with you.

You're stuck with your fiance going to a light party with people you generally don't like. You get by checking your e-mail, browsing, or completing a crossword on the New York Times that you just read on the same device. As it's not a netbook, nobody looks at you weird for plopping something down on the table and you look hard at work doing something on the side, only mildly distracted from the conversation but able to keep up with conversation.

All built in multitasking is sufficient. You listen to your iTunes bought or imported music. You set it to shuffle. You have more than enough space for it. Radio is inadequate by comparison because all the songs coming on have been pre-approved by you. This works alongside many though not all apps. You're savin battery life by checking your e-mails manually. You don't chat or twitter as a multitask because you're simply not at home and sometimes the priority is the task at hand. People can wait. If it was an emergency, you have a phone.

So ur with ur honey and yur making out wen the phone rigns. U anser it n the vioce is “wut r u doing wit my daughter?” U tell ur girl n she say “my iPad can't make calls”. THEN WHO WAS PHONE?

You're not a power user. You don't run Gentoo and you don't try to run Crysis on public transit. Who would have the time? You prefer apps that open and close with ease. A game of Sudoku, or maybe you plan on teasing the people sitting behind you with iFart.

You take out your robe and wizard hat. You cast level 7 fireball on your enemy sitting across from you, playing a local multiplayer version of a D&D game over wifi. You have a virtual set of cards that don't have to be shuffled or resorted.

During a car trip you're decidedly lost. You pull out a map on your iPad and it's big enough to see both the map and read the directions. It also speaks out loud using Snoop Dogg's voice. "Take a left at Georgia. Hey let's drop by McDizzles." And you realize the reason this is free is because of the embedded advertising.

You're an iPhone game developer and the screen is finally big enough to use without worrying about where to put virtual buttons or worrying about gestures not having enough screen space.

 

[danielliu88888]

you know, i just wish apple wasn't the company to make it.

 

[jbrodack]

Nice story darien but it doesn't fit me and my life. For me it would be too big to just always carry around. I don't like itunes and prefer to keep it off any computer I use. I like to use as many free applications as I can. I like to multitask and not just with approved programs. If I'm using an ebook reader I like to be able to read public domain stories as well as paid content. I have a dedicated gps and want my gps to be dedicated to its one task of getting me where I need to go. The ipad is a bit too big to use as a gps and you'd need a mount to be able to actually use it while driving.

You mention multitasking both virtual and real life then mention that the task at hand is sometimes the most important where the ipad is unable to multitask. Seems to contradict.

For me once I got over some initial troubles the Smartq V5 is all I need and can do pretty much what I want plus I keep discovering more I can do with it. It doesn't have nearly the speed or flashyness of an apple product but lets me do what I want with it and connect whatever I want to it as well. Most usb devices like keyboards, usb drives, mice, as well as bluetooth devices including a wii remote, plus it has hdmi out. And most importantly it fits in my pocket which makes it as portable as can be. Its not nearly perfect but I can't think of another device I'd rather have.

For me the most important thing about a device is its potential. What I realistically should be able to do with a device. Everything about the ipad just feels limited and nothing above what an ipod touch could do. If you love the appple app store and wish your iphone/ipod had a bigger screen the ipad is great. However, if you want anything more and want something approaching a real computer the ipad is terrible.

I've been hearing that apple has been designing a tablet for years. Its like they just gave up and said, "Fuck it let just make a big ipod and call it a day".

 

[DrAltaica]

So what do people on these threads think of it?

The oversize novelty iPod touch? It's a great gag gift.

Go look up all the gripes about the DSi LL and replace NDS with Iphone and replace DSi LL with Ipad.

 

[grasshoppir]

looks cute but i have nothing to wear with it

 

[Consequence_9]

The oversize novelty iPod touch? It's a great gag gift.

yes a quite expensive gag gift... it certainly makes me gag.

Go look up all the gripes about the DSi LL and replace NDS with Iphone and replace DSi LL with Ipad.

only problem with that is the ll/xl didn't loose any features during the embiggening process, whereas the ipad... not so much.

 

[Sphinxter]

Nothing turns me off more than DRM and vendor lock in no matter how nice the device.

 

[zaery]

LOL, chinese copy is better than the actual iPad.
And it came first.
And it's not made by apple.
And it runs windows(the lesser of two evils).
and the hardware makes me LOL:
http://www.thinkdigit.com/Laptops-PCs/The-P88--a-better-iPad-than_3967.html

Also, lack of multitasking on a ~10 inch screen means we should put the iPad in the LOLfiles.

 

[aesir911]

absolute fail. i was expecting a macbook pro interface (touchscreen with no keyboard). archos 9 on the other hand... what do you think of that?

 

[second exodous]

LOL, chinese copy is better than the actual iPad.
And it came first.
And it's not made by apple.
And it runs windows(the lesser of two evils).
and the hardware makes me LOL:
http://www.thinkdigit.com/Laptops-PCs/The-P88--a-better-iPad-than_3967.html

Also, lack of multitasking on a ~10 inch screen means we should put the iPad in the LOLfiles.

Ahh, it has a power sucking Atom. It uses a lot more power than Apple's ARM chip. I also don't know what people are talking about when they say no multi-tasking, can't the Pandora hardware multi-task along with pretty much every current ARM chip? If so Apple should have used another ARM chipset instead of making its own.

Also, the ability to run Windows doesn't impress me that much, and since every other current OS can run on both x86 and ARM an Atom doesn't impress me that much.

I'm sure once my Pandora is in my hands I'll never feel left out of the iPad or 'P88' groups.

If Apple fails with the iPad I think it's time to admit that the tablet PC is a niche product that is doomed to fail when marketed at the masses.

 

[lulzfish]

Of course the iPad can multi-task. Everything since like the 486 has been able to multi-task on some level.
But you can only run one 'application' at a time, not counting the super special Apple ones like iTunes.
So it's not that the iPad can't multi-task, it's that it doesn't want to. Because Apple hates you.

 

[second exodous]

Yeah, it will be an 'updated' iPad that will have multi tasking. Typical Apple.

 

[borgqueenx]

i am a fan of all products apple made, until this one.
The ipad looks like a big pictureframe, or a stretched iphone.

People will chose the macbook air, instead of this. anyways i would.

Seriously, this device is just a large picture frame.

 

[matzesu]

I think, the Ipad is absolutly dooooooooooooff !!!!!(german word for aweeeefuuuuuul) :unsure:

because it is only a bigger Iphone....

 

[gahndalf]

i am a fan of all products apple made, until this one.
The ipad looks like a big pictureframe, or a stretched iphone.

People will chose the macbook air, instead of this. anyways i would.

Seriously, this device is just a large picture frame.

WHY would anyone want a $1400 crapbook air with a low mhz dual core processor? when i could get a faster quad core laptop at bestbuy for $800?

 

[lulzfish]

i am a fan of all products apple made, until this one.
The ipad looks like a big pictureframe, or a stretched iphone.

People will chose the macbook air, instead of this. anyways i would.

Seriously, this device is just a large picture frame.

WHY would anyone want a $1400 crapbook air with a low mhz dual core processor? when i could get a faster quad core laptop at bestbuy for $800?

Because it's thin and everybody knows thin computers are better.