The Apple Ipad Had Landed

[darien]

I think it's an excellent device for its target market. The iPhone screen is too small to do certain things.

For that one person who does 'x' job, he/she has a device that will do anything in a form factor that's allows them to work while standing/sitting without a table or balancing anything on their laps. It's light, you can do everything by holding it up with one hand and using the other to interact with it. When it comes to price and performance, they will probably never need more than what is there, and if they need the object to do more, they can just buy the app off the appstore. If they need something done, they can get an app developer to make it possible.

It will get jailbroken. I'm betting it's jailbreakable out of the box so anyone who doesn't care about getting apple's approval can still use it to their heart's content, but let's face it, most of the target market will be just as satisfied getting content from iTunes. Pretty much every good App is pirateable but only a few tens of thousands out of tens of millions actually do that. I'm personally a paying customer.

No-multitasking is frowned upon but honestly, that's kinda the point. The super appliance was never meant to be one thing that does everything but transform into many things capable of doing something different. I mean what would you do if you could multitask? I mean actual real examples. Listen to music while using another app? Well you CAN actually do those that if the app allows you to. I know that you can check your mail, browse the web (continuing where you left off if you home out) and even play certain games with the music still going. Pretty much everything built in by apple will do that. It's wildcard with 3rd party apps. I'm pretty sure it's not going to ruin your day that you can't be booting another app in addition to other things, rather just focus on one at a time. I'm just wondering how many people think about the journey of the end-user as oppose to the specs because as someone whose job revolves around User Experience, I think they're happier keeping it simple and they're happier when it works how they expect it to.

 

[slaanesh]

I love Apple computer but I don't own a single Apple gadget. Like someone said, Apple tend to release a gadget and then later on release a better version of it later on. Which is just annoying.

I like the iPad as much as I like the iPod and iPhone, but I wouldn't get one.

Pandora for me.

By the way Craig, where are those 4000 Pandoras at?

 

[Sphinxter]

iPass.




The arguments for this device are so inconsistent and full of contradictions it's pointless to point them out. You either chug the kool-aid or you don't.

 

[lizard808uk]

I guess you would need an iPlankofWood if you wanted to prop it up and watch movies in bed.

 

[danielliu88888]

A capacitive touchscreen which means no pressure sensitivity and can't use a pen on it, so useless for any art students, which would have been a good market for it.

this. it was the only reason i might have gotten one.

 

[Exophase]

Usually people are rallying behind the Apple devices full force when I see them as being not very special, pushed into markets where they don't really belong, littered with compromises, and marketed without shame. But this time it seems very few people are into this, in fact, everywhere I go people are hammering it. Even Apple TV got a lot of rationalization and I don't think that sold that well. But Apple TV was also nowhere near the scale of this launch.

Could this become Apple's first bomb in one of their focal post-iPod gadgets? Or will their style and advertising still manage to sell things as usual?

 

[torpor]

Could this become Apple's first bomb in one of their focal post-iPod gadgets? Or will their style and advertising still manage to sell things as usual?

For sure they're going to sell a lot of these to grandma and grandpa, and tons of casual users. Its not a power-user device but instead more of a sit back and relax and not get any work done sort of gadget .. fun for porn, for other kinds of movies, and for a bit of reading .. but I wouldn't get one to write a paper on it or try to keep up with my email accounts or anything.

I'm going to play with it as soon as I can, and get a good feel for it - no doubt the families are going to be getting them soon in my neighborhood - but I won't invest in it, personally. Much more interesting to me is what happens with Plaszma .. the Zii Egg is a better iPod Touch, imho, so lets see if ZiiLabs end up with a tablet-sized competitor that does: multitasking, no DRM, etc.

 

[Chip]

Engadget is now claiming that the A4 is an A9 with an ARM Mali 50-series GPU. Interesting choice, since the SGX worked so well in the iphone. ARM's site has very little in the way of hard details on the core, but the 55 is definitely on the low end of their spectrum.

 

[senquack]

I'm with DaveC about this. Apple hardware has always been a racket and it looks like it always will be. Say what you want about their software but their desktop hardware is overpriced and limited in so so many ways.

Don't really have an opinion on the iphone or the ipod however, as I've haven't tried them out much. But the fact that they limit what you put on it instantly turns me off any platform instantly and permanently. Can't get away from the stink of it quickly enough!

 

[craigix]

By the way Craig, where are those 4000 Pandoras at?

Yours is closer than you might think

 

[Javacat]

At first I was a bit "wtf is that freak?!?!!", but after thinking about it for a lil bit, I can see where it's coming from. To me it looks more like a pimped eBook reader or MID, rather than a true tablet.
It would have been better if they had made an actual tablet based around the MacBook Air, but I guess the battery life would suck and it would cost a lot more.

 

[Enverex]

By the way Craig, where are those 4000 Pandoras at?

Yours is closer than you might think

And everyone elses?

 

[Exophase]

This is the furthest back source for the Cortex-A9/"Mali-50" claims for A4:

http://www.brightsideofnews.com/news/2010/1/27/apple-a4-soc-unveiled---its-an-arm-cpu-and-the-gpu!.aspx

It doesn't site its sources or give anything to establish credibility. It does incorrectly label Snapdragon as a Cortex-A9 though. The only thing that might qualify as "Mali-50 line" is Mali-55 which is much too weak to provide performance on par with iPhone 3GS, much less surpass it. I think SGX is much more likely, possibly a 535 clocked higher than in 3GS or a 540+.

 

[craigix]

The most interesting part about all this is the beginning of ARM chips in something close to a laptop. Microsoft must be whipping their ARM-Windows staffers like crazy to get something which looks like Vista running well.

How long before Intel start to look towards ARM too?

Clever people in Cambridge. It just amazes me that ARM seems to make such a small amount of money for all these designs.

 

[Exophase]

How long before Intel start to look towards ARM too?

Intel already acquired an ARM line, made their own iteration with relatively mediocre performance (although with good adoption rate in hardware), sold it all to Marvell, then started pushing x86 aggressively in the embedded space as part of a campaign to try to make x86 the only relevant CPU architecture anywhere. I'd say the odds of them going back to ARM now are close to nothing, but I guess it can't be ruled out entirely.

If A4 is a custom implementation then ARM probably makes much less money per unit than if it were one of their designs. I doubt it costs nearly as much to license the ARMv7a architecture.

 

[craigix]

Exophase, how do you see the future panning out in regards to ARM vs. Intel?

 

[Exophase]

I'm not really good at predicting market trends, god only knows what makes people buy the things they do.. but if I had to guess:

Desktop and laptop space: ARM doesn't stand a chance. People will still insist on running the same software, games will continue to be x86 binary-only.
Netbooks: x86 will continue to retain majority, but Intel's non-Windows supporting chips will force more Linux netbooks onto the market and will boost sales somewhat for the entering ARM netbooks.
Tablets: If iPad sets a trend at all then I don't think x86 is going to make a lot of headway. But I don't think they'll see as much mobile use as netbooks, so battery life won't be as big of an issue.
MIDs and UMPCs: I think this will continue to be a market with a ridiculous number of devices that not very many people are actually buying.
Phones: ARM almost completely. Battery life is too important, although iPhone doesn't do that well on this front already. But Apple has already secured ARM's place for a good while to come and I don't

I don't think Windows 7 for ARM would make a huge difference. Would be bigger if there were dual arch binaries like OSX brought forth, that people could start easily generating and distributing - including Visual Studio support of course. Would make a bigger impact if it had really state of the art x86 emulation (way beyond what stuff like qemu is delivering now, and tweaked for Windows apps). Ports of Office might help move things a little more.

 

[mali]

I agree with the above and want to add something.
Smartbooks have a chance to gain marketshare if they are smaller(lighter, more mobile) and cheaper than Netbooks and have access to a proper Appstore. It's all about content, architecture is secondary, imo. I guess that Android Tablets will be the winners and build up steam in 2010.

I think that we will see more hybrid systems in the future. x86 for brute force computing and specialized hardware for lighter usage and more battery-life. A SoC integrated into the mainboard of an x86 laptop with instant on media and surf OS makes sense. You could play mp3 for several weeks on a x86-battery powered ARM system for example.

 

[Exophase]

I agree with the above and want to add something.
Smartbooks have a chance to gain marketshare if they are smaller(lighter, more mobile) and cheaper than Netbooks and have access to a proper Appstore. It's all about content, architecture is secondary, imo. I guess that Android Tablets will be the winners and build up steam in 2010.

I think that we will see more hybrid systems in the future. x86 for brute force computing and specialized hardware for lighter usage and more battery-life. A SoC integrated into the mainboard of an x86 laptop with instant on media and surf OS makes sense. You could play mp3 for several weeks on a x86-battery powered ARM system for example.

The main problem of course being that right now tablets are being priced much higher than netbooks, rather than lower.

I don't see hybrid systems catching on very well because it's too much added complexity/non-uniformity for the end user. And it's a pretty big extra cost in components and design, not to mention logistics in getting these things to share peripherals or communicate with each other.

 

[mali]

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. ARM themselves have hybrids in mind, as can be seen in some documents. Also that Acer Smartmonitor with integrated ARM system is one example. It's not exactly a hybrid, but you do have two seperate systems when you plug in an ordinary PC. Small and light ARM SoCs can be stuffed in everywhere when the price is right. ARM _has_ to go a different route because direct confrontation with the x86 top dog won't work, like you pointed out.