The Apple Ipad Had Landed

[atomicthumbs]

Intel already acquired an ARM line, made their own iteration with relatively mediocre performance

Does anything even use StrongARM or Xscale anymore?

 

[Exophase]

Does anything even use StrongARM or Xscale anymore?

No, same way that higher end commodity products don't use ARM9 or ARM11 anymore (okay, Magic Eyes still uses ARM9..), the industry has moved on to better chips. Marvell, however, is producing new cores which are descendants of XScale in some ways, for instance, incorporating the WMMX instruction set extensions.

ARM's cores do have a longer shelf life because they're licensed off; Marvell probably doesn't want to sell the old XScales so much anymore and StrongARM has been dead forever.

 

[mali]

Regarding tablets for couch surfing, ebook reading and multimedia, this is interesting:
http://jkkmobile.blogspot.com/2010/01/archos-7-with-android-leaked.html#more

150 British Pounds. If this was open, it would be a dream device. OMAP3440(800MHz).

 

[quote]

Isn't that just the Archos 7 with only 8gb and Android?


Edit: Just seen the price. Wow .

Edit2: The screen is probably pretty rubbish and unresponsive.

 

[mali]

Isn't that just the Archos 7 with only 8gb and Android?


Edit: Just seen the price. Wow .

Edit2: The screen is probably pretty rubbish and unresponsive.

Yep, it's just the larger brother of the Archos 5 Android IT. I must admit that I don't like Android that much, but seing some of JJK's and Chippy's demos of the device impressed me. Web browsing is _extremely_ responsive and the device is really snappy. The latest Android 1.6 update added stability. The screens of the Archos devices are usually pretty good. Pandora uses the 605's screen IIRC.

A tablet should be cheap and offer a basic set of uses. The newer Archos devices fit the bill pretty well.

 

[Chip]

That one laptop from Lenovo(IIRC) that consists of a CULV base and the screen can be detached and works as a stand alone tablet is one example for creative designed hybrids. Sure, it's still some way to go, but there is potetial, imo.

You're thinking of the the Lenovo U1. Now that's a tablet I'd consider actually buying. It would actually replace my aging laptop completely, as well as provide a standalone tablet for the rare occasions when I wanted to do tablet things. The "skylight" interface is a little hokey, and there are complaints of poor viewing angles on the display, but those issues could get sorted out before production. It's a shame it will almost certainly cost twice as much as an ipad.

 

[Nova]

I'm going to stick with my iPhone and MacBook for now I think. However, if it turns out to be good at Ebooks and gets photoshop ported over and some capacitive stylus comes out for it, I may consider it once the price drops a tad. Say what you will about me being an apple fan boy or whatever, but I'm their target market (Design student, reader, technophile). I'm disappointed by it so far but there's plenty room for improvement. Let's wait for it to come out before we slate it shall we? Hah, slate, did you see what I did there?







Sent from my iPhone

 

[Exophase]

I'm going to stick with my iPhone and MacBook for now I think. However, if it turns out to be good at Ebooks and gets photoshop ported over and some capacitive stylus comes out for it, I may consider it once the price drops a tad. Say what you will about me being an apple fan boy or whatever, but I'm their target market (Design student, reader, technophile). I'm disappointed by it so far but there's plenty room for improvement. Let's wait for it to come out before we slate it shall we? Hah, slate, did you see what I did there?

That all sounds reasonable enough, but my basic question is this: why buy it over another tablet if that tablet is cheaper and offers significantly more hardware functionality? Right now it looks like this will be the case.

The only answer I can really think of here is app store. Apple has won a tremendous amount with it, but it's because it introduced a great magnitude of software to a device type where people weren't generally using user installed software at all. On the tablet front things are going to be very different - they'll largely be running Linux (or Windows) and will already have a heavy arsenal of software, much more of which is completely free.

 

[mali]

You're thinking of the the Lenovo U1. Now that's a tablet I'd consider actually buying. It would actually replace my aging laptop completely, as well as provide a standalone tablet for the rare occasions when I wanted to do tablet things. The "skylight" interface is a little hokey, and there are complaints of poor viewing angles on the display, but those issues could get sorted out before production. It's a shame it will almost certainly cost twice as much as an ipad.

Yep, that's it.
As a side note, CULV processors are really impressive, especially combined with an SSD. My 1810T is idling at around 5W with backlight at 40% and Wifi on. Most of the time it's completely silent and works basically fanless. _Much_ better than Atom and the like and you get full Core 2 performance when you need it.

 

[fischju2000]

Isn't that just the Archos 7 with only 8gb and Android?


Edit: Just seen the price. Wow .

Edit2: The screen is probably pretty rubbish and unresponsive.

Yep, it's just the larger brother of the Archos 5 Android IT. I must admit that I don't like Android that much, but seing some of JJK's and Chippy's demos of the device impressed me. Web browsing is _extremely_ responsive and the device is really snappy. The latest Android 1.6 update added stability. The screens of the Archos devices are usually pretty good. Pandora uses the 605's screen IIRC.

A tablet should be cheap and offer a basic set of uses. The newer Archos devices fit the bill pretty well.

The non-android 7 is about the same price for 160gb http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001D089XQ/ref=noref?ie=UTF8&s=electronics - Archos has released a "Special developer edition firmware" for the 5 and 7 that runs Angstrom. And Archos screens are, in fact, very good.

 

[mali]

The non-android 7 is about the same price for 160gb http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001D089XQ/ref=noref?ie=UTF8&s=electronics - Archos has released a "Special developer edition firmware" for the 5 and 7 that runs Angstrom. And Archos screens are, in fact, very good.

Yep, I posted a thread about it a while ago. So far there hasn't been much progress from what I can tell. I check Archosfans from time to time. I think the general problem is, that Archos devices are extremely locked down and thus don't attract developers. It's a pity.

 

[TheRain]

Here's something interesting I ran across yesterday- it would take a good dev community to make it something worth while, but the hardware itself and price is compelling- just needs a good linux port IMO
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JY6nS-1X30o

Can be bought for approx $240 with GPS option and shipping included if you look around
Has TI Omap3 (not sure which variation)
2GB NAND
256MB RAM
SD (It's been hard to verify, but I think this is actually microSD, not full sized SD)
7" resistive touch screen (there's information floating around that a capacitive version will be released soon).

The company says they will have an Android port for the device soon.

 

[quartercast]

I'm going to stick with my iPhone and MacBook for now I think. However, if it turns out to be good at Ebooks and gets photoshop ported over and some capacitive stylus comes out for it, I may consider it once the price drops a tad. Say what you will about me being an apple fan boy or whatever, but I'm their target market (Design student, reader, technophile). I'm disappointed by it so far but there's plenty room for improvement. Let's wait for it to come out before we slate it shall we? Hah, slate, did you see what I did there?

That all sounds reasonable enough, but my basic question is this: why buy it over another tablet if that tablet is cheaper and offers significantly more hardware functionality? Right now it looks like this will be the case.

Is $499 expensive for a tablet pc?

 

[darien]

That all sounds reasonable enough, but my basic question is this: why buy it over another tablet if that tablet is cheaper and offers significantly more hardware functionality? Right now it looks like this will be the case.

The only answer I can really think of here is app store. Apple has won a tremendous amount with it, but it's because it introduced a great magnitude of software to a device type where people weren't generally using user installed software at all. On the tablet front things are going to be very different - they'll largely be running Linux (or Windows) and will already have a heavy arsenal of software, much more of which is completely free.

Because it really isn't the same as a tablet. All the same justifications against buying an iPad versus a tablet worked the same way as in a tablet versus a laptop. A tablet is basically a laptop that's missing a keyboard with supplemented features that are really the worst way to perform the task. People had forever to adopt the tablet but they didn't for good reason. That's not to say people didn't want a Mac tablet. That would've been boss, but the arguments would've been the same. Why pay more to do something the way you're not used to doing it if it isn't better?

The iPad is just different. What I'm seeing is so many people are so frustrated that they can't quantify or acknowledge the advantages of using something small and thin with your fingers, with an interface that literally morphs into an ideal manner of performing the task. And yeah, you're right, the App Store is a big part of it. The content delivery system in general is worry-free. The user experience is different and I don't know if people realize that. It's simple. Even on my Asus eeepc it's clunky and not ideal. If it was running windows, it would be a constant reminder that there's a better way to do it. They're not trying to be any of things. The built in software performs better as is on iPad.

Just because the device performs something better or faster doesn't mean the user can use it any easier. It's almost a moot point that a device can run 4 things at once if it doesn't make it any easier from the user's experience. The regular person is looking for ubiquity. It is a bigger iPhone that can't make phone calls, but the screen size is important for productivity too.

 

[TheRain]

Just because the device performs something better or faster doesn't mean the user can use it any easier. It's almost a moot point that a device can run 4 things at once if it doesn't make it any easier from the user's experience. The regular person is looking for ubiquity. It is a bigger iPhone that can't make phone calls, but the screen size is important for productivity too.

I think the argument for the iPad (and possibly ipod/iphone) is really form over function. It looks nice, it's really thin, and it makes the common things you would do with the device simple and nice.

I don't believe the iPad is going to fly far though, unless the content really starts to sell the device (like ebooks or whatever). I do see one compelling application for the device that I myself would use though: electronic music creation and live music control. The form factor here is really quite ideal for that- a big problem with Electronic Music instruments is that they need to fit a lot of physical controls so that music creation is real time- but there are so many functions a lot of times things wind up burried in long strings of menus or complicated button combinations/modes. Software versions of the same have even worse failings, because they are able to be even more complex, but wind up not being as easily controlled in real-time.

A device like this has potential to make a very complicated set of functions real-time controllable in a way that fits electronic music as an application I believe.

 

[Exophase]

I really doubt the iPad is going to have a monopoly on its form factor (is it even unique right now?)

 

[TheRain]

I really doubt the iPad is going to have a monopoly on its form factor (is it even unique right now?)

It's unique because it's a 10 inch capacitive multi-touch device with very smooth reactive UI. That said, it wont be unique for long I don't think.

But all of the demos of Win7 multi-touch devices I've seen have either poor multi-touch response, or poor UI response.

I do think it's likely the iPad will be a big FAIL though. It's too niche and I think it's utility is questionable. I think it's biggest hope is if people in the market for an e-reader device start thinking it's the device to have.

 

[torpor]

As far as competition with the iPad is concerned, I know for example that Creative Labs will put the Zii/Plaszma environment in an iPad competitor this year too, and actually thats going to be highly interesting .. the Zii Egg (iPod Touch equivalent product from Creative Labs) is already proving to be a formidable device in this competitive market, although its still developers-only at this point .. Creative don't mind building a better iPod touch and adding things like SD card for user-expansion, and so on. So the ZiiPad is going to be quite a big deal when its released, I think..

 

[lulzfish]

Say what you will about me being an apple fan boy or whatever, but I'm their target market (Design student, reader, technophile).

I'm just going to say that I need a word to distinguish between "person who likes technology" and "person who likes to know everything about technology, and dreams about building their own".
Apple targets consumers, and they build consumer electronics, and this works well. They aren't targeting me, so all I can do is wait for someone like OpenPandora to target me, and occasionally complain that there aren't enough people standing by my target.

 

[Esn]

Scott Adams (creator of Dilbert) has some interesting thoughts about the iPad that sound sensible to me:
http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/ipad/

I think you can predict acceptance of a new product by what people will compare it to. For example, the iPod was compared to all of the other ways you could organize and carry your music around, and the iPod was just plain better.

Then Apple introduced the iPhone. It was compared to other phones, and in that comparison it won easily, unless you expected to do a lot of e-mail.

Yesterday, Apple introduced the iPad. What do you compare it to?

The iPad borrows a little from phones, and a little from laptops, and a little from their own iPod and iTouch, and a little from the Kindle. It's better in some ways than all of those things, but less portable than its smaller cousins, less functional than a laptop, and more expensive than a Kindle. There's no comparison that is a clean win.

I think the human brain will automatically compare the iPad to a laptop, mostly because of the size. And I think most people will come to the conclusion that since an iPad won't replace your laptop, and it's too expensive for a toy, it has no place.

Betting against Steve Jobs is a fool's game. But the iPad doesn't feel like a genius creation. I think Jobs was focused on his health when the iPad was conceived. It looks like committee work to me.