iPad...failure? Or just the beginning of an era?

[Wonderful Pork]

Interesting take on this thing and honestly, you probably explained exactly how I'd end up using and then ditching the iPad. Thanks for saving me $500.

No problem. Just to be clear, I didn't just play with it for 30 minutes...that was just the store display model. I put it through its paces all week, THEN ended up returning it.

I would 100% buy it back in a heartbeat if it had handwriting support/stylus and I could get rid of the spiral notebooks I carry around at work. Which has me interested in Courier as well. I guess that would be my killer use-case.

(Also, I forgot to mention my dual band Airport Extreme.)

adblock = icab mobile browser. 2 bucks. Haven't seen an ad since, also has plenty of other features on top of safari.

Didn't know about that app...thanks.

 

[Kaido]

No problem. Just to be clear, I didn't just play with it for 30 minutes...that was just the store display model. I put it through its paces all week, THEN ended up returning it.

I would 100% buy it back in a heartbeat if it had handwriting support/stylus and I could get rid of the spiral notebooks I carry around at work. Which has me interested in Courier as well. I guess that would be my killer use-case.

Yes...my boss bought me one at work. If it had pressure-sensitive Wacom pen support, tablet-style, I would buy one in a heartbeat. But Jobs said that if it had a stylus, they did it wrong. Totally dumb approach. How exactly do I take notes in math and science class where I need to draw figures and diagrams? Imagine sitting there with your digital textbook...and a paper and pen. What the heck. I want a stylus even more than I want a webcam on the thing!

I do want to say, the iPad is NOT for reading. Sure it's for magazines and Internet, but it's not for reading books on. I've tried, and I just can't get into it. Even with the backlight on low - it just doesn't work. The Kindle is the best thing I've seen so far for reading digitally on (e-ink screen), but it doesn't do PDF's (at least not well, with conversion software), and I like that even better than black & white paper (dark gray text on a light gray background is soooo much easier to read), but even the Kindle doesn't nail it just yet.

I think that iBooks was (1) an afterthought, and (2) a marketing ploy to bring people into the iPad. "Oh yeah, yeah, read books on it, and then download some apps..." Most people I've talked to wouldn't be as inclined to look at an iPad if it didn't have an advertised book reading program, but once they try to read on it, it's not really so great, but there's so many cool apps that they're sucked in anyway - where they might have not been had it not been advertised as an e-reader. Reading on a computer is one thing, but reading on an iPad so close is another. Don't get me wrong - the screen is great - I just can't plow through a novel on it.

I think magazines and comics are pretty great on it. Internet surfing is fabulous. But even Jobs himself said "no one reads anymore". Marketing it as an E-reader is simply bait to get the initial population to buy it and convince other people to hop on board, and furthers Apple's desire to control the market of all things related to digital media. But really it's bait...hence Amazon having their own book app available for the iPad.

I'm up in the air about buying one myself. I do really, REALLY like doing video training on it - my Lynda.com tutorials load *perfectly*, and I spend at least an hour a day on that site doing software training. PDFs load decently in GoodReader, although I still don't like reading even technical documents that much on it. I DO love reading Engadget on it though

 

[BD2003]

No problem. Just to be clear, I didn't just play with it for 30 minutes...that was just the store display model. I put it through its paces all week, THEN ended up returning it.

I would 100% buy it back in a heartbeat if it had handwriting support/stylus and I could get rid of the spiral notebooks I carry around at work. Which has me interested in Courier as well.

http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/cel...d/?cpg=froogle

Stylus for capacitive touch screens.

There are plenty of apps for taking notes with the iPad and a stylus, some free, some with syncing, some with handwriting recognition.

As much is it pains me to parrot their marketing....there's an app for that.

 

[Wonderful Pork]

I have seen the capacitive styluses(?) but none of them get very good reviews or offer the same writing edge as a pencil/pen. I understand why, and i would expect a company lime Apple to come up with something "better".

 

[BD2003]

I have seen the capacitive styluses(?) but none of them get very good reviews or offer the same writing edge as a pencil/pen. I understand why, and i would expect a company lime Apple to come up with something "better".

Hmm yeah...that tip does seem rather thick. I cant imagine this is too hard a problem to solve though? Does seem like theyre missing out on something rather obvious.

 

[TheWart]

Hmm yeah...that tip does seem rather thick. I cant imagine this is too hard a problem to solve though? Does seem like theyre missing out on something rather obvious.

That reminds me, is the Courier resistive touchscreen or is it a capacitive with a 'normal' stylus?

 

[DaveSimmons]

Jobs' crusade against cross-compilers (Flash, C# etc. compiled to native Objective C) has me downgrading the iPad a bit, and lack of good stylus support for drawing is another strike against it.

I'm now much more likely to wait for a good android or windows (but not windows mobile) tablet instead.

 

[Kaido]

Jobs' crusade against cross-compilers (Flash, C# etc. compiled to native Objective C) has me downgrading the iPad a bit, and lack of good stylus support for drawing is another strike against it.

I'm now much more likely to wait for a good android or windows (but not windows mobile) tablet instead.

I think Android really has a chance to take the market, as far as tablets go. They can't win iPod/Smartphone, but they can add a Wacom pen, a webcam, a camera/camcorder on the back, SD card slot, HDMI out, etc. With a Tegra 2 chip for 1080p, that wouldn't be too bad at all. And iBooks is a gimmick, and the Kindle app will be/is cross-platform.

 

[BD2003]

That reminds me, is the Courier resistive touchscreen or is it a capacitive with a 'normal' stylus?

I cant imagine itll be anything but a capacitive screen with a stylus that works with it. A resistive screen would be absurd at this point. But no one knows for sure yet.

I wonder if they can pull off a screen that has the hover and pressure sensitivity that the old tablet PCs have, yet the sensitivity and accuracy of capacitive screens.

I really don't have much faith in the courier at this point though. They've tried and failed at making hardware too many times. If it runs windows it'll be a total fail, and their newfangled windows phone 7 OS seems completely inappropriate for a tablet. The ipad being a big ipod touch means it makes a lot of sense to people, right from the start. The courier is probably going to leave most people scratching their heads, and it'll probably fall by the wayside like UMPCs before long.

 

[Tegeril]

That reminds me, is the Courier resistive touchscreen or is it a capacitive with a 'normal' stylus?

The Courier is currently a computer generated video...

 

[Wonderful Pork]

Hmm yeah...that tip does seem rather thick. I cant imagine this is too hard a problem to solve though? Does seem like theyre missing out on something rather obvious.

Well, there needs to be some amount of thickness so that the digitizer picks the input up, which is why you could use a slim jim instead of a finger, but not a fine pointed stylus.

And, the reviews for that stylus with a cotton ball at the end basically says the ball compresses and you end up scratching the screen.

Maybe a combo resistive/capacitive screen? (Yes, I just made it up with absolutely no thought into the actual engineering of said device, it probably isn't possible.)

 

[yuppiejr]

From my perspective the iPad appears to be a completely viable mobile thin client for IT shops that have leveraged desktop virtualization:

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/wyse-pocketcloud-remote-desktop/id326512817?mt=8

We're right in the middle of a PoC with the VMWare View 4.5 to serve Windows 7 virtual desktops + various applications to around 250 users and I'm planning to test the iPad in the hope it will prove a viable mobile endpoint. Even if I end up equipping everyone with a traditional thin client + an iPad I'm out less per user than purchasing traditioinal corporate laptops/desktops and should be able to run pretty much anything we use today without the traditional cost and complexity of supporting thick desktops.

We've done some testing with various touchscreen mobile products (the DT360 slate, Toshiba Tablets, etc..) - this one looks as close to perfect as I've seen yet. Pair the iPad with a more full featured dock to allow an external display, keyboard/mouse and perhaps ethernet/USB and I might just be able to skip the thin clients entirely...

 

[mchammer187]

Well with sales like this and generally good reviews than I'm pretty sure it can't be labeled a failure now unless there are massive recalls or something.

Once it gets iphone OS4 (yay multitasking) than it should be a good device for what it tries to be.

I still find it ugly though. I really wish it had the design of the iphone 4g than it would be sexy as hell imo.

 

[James Bond]

Well with sales like this and generally good reviews than I'm pretty sure it can't be labeled a failure now unless there are massive recalls or something.

Once it gets iphone OS4 (yay multitasking) than it should be a good device for what it tries to be.

I still find it ugly though. I really wish it had the design of the iphone 4g than it would be sexy as hell imo.

Aren't they nearly identical? (iPad and new iPhone?)

Edit:

 

[Pliablemoose]

http://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ:AAPL

Wow, Apple's best non-holiday quarter ever, again...

The stock is up nearly 6% after hours.

 

[VinylxScratches]

Sigh, I wish I bought Apple stock when it was 88 bucks...

 

[mchammer187]

Aren't they nearly identical? (iPad and new iPhone?)

Edit:

for some reason i thought they were like the ipad was like the iphone 3gs