iPad

alf101 said:
Well if there's a world record for whingeing about something you've never seen or used before and won't be buying, you'll be the holder of it.

You must have 1000 ipad posts already. :D
Click to expand...

I've seen the specs and so have seen enough. And you must really like to convince other people that they must like something because Steve Jobs thinks it's cool. I remember you also throwing personal insults at me one time over this issue.
 
PeterCH said:
I've seen the specs and so have seen enough. And you must really like to convince other people that they must like something because Steve Jobs thinks it's cool. I remember you also throwing personal insults at me one time over this issue.
Click to expand...

lol
touchy aren't you?

I don't care about the iPad, just like laughing at you.
 
alf101 said:
lol
touchy aren't you?

I don't care about the iPad, just like laughing at you.
Click to expand...

Play the topic and not the man. I just find it amazing that some people are so incapable of arguing the facts and not the man.

Enjoy.
 
PeterCH said:
The point is what Steve Jobs'o makes it out to be -- as the Reg said - it's a portable Telly?
Click to expand...

What I meant was I wouldn't carry both my 17" MBP and a Netbook, but I would definitely do so with an iPad.

It seems, to me at least, as a natural progression depending on the type of work I want to do. iPhone for the basics, to iPad for work of 10mins or less, then only to laptop when I need to do some heavy graft.

I just don't see the point of having a Netbook and a laptop?
 
PeterCH said:
Let me rephrase my opinion cerebus. I don't mind the iPad in its present form. I do however not see it as a replacement for ultramobile notebooks and netbooks. Jobs said this is better than a netbook but I feel only in certain narrow regards. It is better if you want an utterly simple appliance experience and can easily gain access to Apple content and only want to do that. However, if you want anything more you will suffer with the iPad. For example, if you want to load your own content or used other content providers, you may have to go through more trouble than someone who is using a netbook. Now if Apple made an appliance which could handle all types of content, including from Apples' competitors and peoples' own content, it would be a much nicer appliance. I would still not think it a netbook replacement.
Click to expand...

This is a reasonable position. There's no denying that the IPad offers a crimped experience - but it also cuts the dross away from netbooks in certain key (positive) regards. Namely that netbooks don't need to have a full OS experience - you pointed out that the original netbooks appealed to Japanese housewives, which I feel is somewhat the demographic that the iPad will target - who value simplicity over flexibility - and those original netbooks didn't even use a full fledged desktop OS.

Plus it can do many things well - multitasking aside (which was the central complaint you had) - web surfing looks very comfortable, in fact all the apps shown so far are highly professional and polished. Yes it is limited to the iPhone ecosystem but with 140,000 apps available is that such a bad thing? I don't foresee lack of multitasking being a great hindrance to those for whom it is designed - it's a non-issue with my iTouch right now; even though I have the ability to multitask I never use it.
 
VertigoZA said:
What I meant was I wouldn't carry both my 17" MBP and a Netbook, but I would definitely do so with an iPad.

It seems, to me at least, as a natural progression depending on the type of work I want to do. iPhone for the basics, to iPad for work of 10mins or less, then only to laptop when I need to do some heavy graft.

I just don't see the point of having a Netbook and a laptop?
Click to expand...

What exactly are you going to do on the iPad that you couldn't just do on the laptop? I understand that you could do some things that you already do on your laptop, but I don't really see any worthwhile gain from doing so. It puts the iPad right back at 'somewhat nice but pretty much superflous'. I'm not really a netbook fan, and I can't really see much gain from having one and a laptop, unless you have something like a 17" desktop replacement laptop that isn't nearly as portable. A netbook is a cheap and low power laptop, imo. That said, I can't see a gap for the iPad (that is a consumer gap, since professional tablets certainly have their niche, mostly as clipboard replacements, afaik). After all, Jobs, stupidly imo, compared the iPad, which is really a MID, to the netbook, which is very much a PC.

The iPad is also just crippled in too many ways: microsim 3G (and expensive on top of that); lack of expansion options; small fixed storage; poor ergonomics; and software limitations. It's 'nice' but I can't really see a useful place in a quite saturated mobile computing market for what is essentially a device with the limitations of a smartphone and the portability of a netbook. To my mind, it is pretty much the definition of a luxury electronic device.
 
Rudimental said:
What exactly are you going to do on the iPad that you couldn't just do on the laptop? I understand that you could do some things that you already do on your laptop, but I don't really see any worthwhile gain from doing so. It puts the iPad right back at 'somewhat nice but pretty much superflous'. I'm not really a netbook fan, and I can't really see much gain from having one and a laptop, unless you have something like a 17" desktop replacement laptop that isn't nearly as portable. A netbook is a cheap and low power laptop, imo. That said, I can't see a gap for the iPad (that is a consumer gap, since professional tablets certainly have their niche, mostly as clipboard replacements, afaik). After all, Jobs, stupidly imo, compared the iPad, which is really a MID, to the netbook, which is very much a PC.

The iPad is also just crippled in too many ways: microsim 3G (and expensive on top of that); lack of expansion options; small fixed storage; poor ergonomics; and software limitations. It's 'nice' but I can't really see a useful place in a quite saturated mobile computing market for what is essentially a device with the limitations of a smartphone and the portability of a netbook. To my mind, it is pretty much the definition of a luxury electronic device.
Click to expand...



Look - I might be wrong but I think Apple is trying to define a new market space with the iPad - or tap into an unfulfilled demand which netbooks have begun to do already, but to a large extent failed through lack of clarity about whom they were meant to be targeting. It's an ultra-simplified and ultraportable laptop - and I believe that there is demand for such a device.

Look - a netbook isn't meant to be a cheap crippled notebook - it should be a very simplified and portable (i.e. can fit easily into a handbag or side pocket of briefcase) web surfing, media aggregation tool. Something that can be picked up and switched on immediately, intuitively manipulated (anti-technocratic) and stored away - used for short bursts of time (over a coffee or lunch break, or travelling to and from work). Don't you feel that there would be a great demand for something that filled that space? From where I stand netbooks are being marketed in the same space as notebooks, just more cramped and with cheaper build quality and underpowered specs. iPad is coming from the opposite vantage point.
 
Rudimental said:
What exactly are you going to do on the iPad that you couldn't just do on the laptop? I understand that you could do some things that you already do on your laptop, but I don't really see any worthwhile gain from doing so. It puts the iPad right back at 'somewhat nice but pretty much superflous'. I'm not really a netbook fan, and I can't really see much gain from having one and a laptop, unless you have something like a 17" desktop replacement laptop that isn't nearly as portable. A netbook is a cheap and low power laptop, imo. That said, I can't see a gap for the iPad (that is a consumer gap, since professional tablets certainly have their niche, mostly as clipboard replacements, afaik). After all, Jobs, stupidly imo, compared the iPad, which is really a MID, to the netbook, which is very much a PC.

The iPad is also just crippled in too many ways: microsim 3G (and expensive on top of that); lack of expansion options; small fixed storage; poor ergonomics; and software limitations. It's 'nice' but I can't really see a useful place in a quite saturated mobile computing market for what is essentially a device with the limitations of a smartphone and the portability of a netbook. To my mind, it is pretty much the definition of a luxury electronic device.
Click to expand...

As I said, I have a 17" MBP and an iPhone. Almost everything I do online I've moved form my MBP to my iPhone. If anything, its the iPhone that's crippled... and I feel at the moment I'm asking too much of my iPhone, but not enough that it warrants hauling out a laptop. The iPad fits neatly into this gap. As for expansion ports etc, I just don't see a need for that.. If I'm at the point where I'm plugging in devices etc, then I've already hauled out the laptop, which is always going to do a better job than an iPhone/iPad/Netbook.
 
My girlfriend advised me not to buy this Pad because it doesnt have wings ...
 
cerebus said:
Look - a netbook isn't meant to be a cheap crippled notebook - it should be a very simplified and portable (i.e. can fit easily into a handbag or side pocket of briefcase) web surfing, media aggregation tool. Something that can be picked up and switched on immediately, intuitively manipulated (anti-technocratic) and stored away - used for short bursts of time (over a coffee or lunch break, or travelling to and from work). Don't you feel that there would be a great demand for something that filled that space?.
Click to expand...

Quite simply, no. Firstly, I don't agree with your notions of what netbooks are meant to be, but that is neither here nor there, since it's pointless to argue about how things should be, when the issue is the consumer. Most people in fact get confused between notebooks and netbooks, preferring notebook-type functionality, and the portability issue seems moot, since most people also never take their netbook out of the house (link). I don't think that this is because they aren't portable enough, but simply because they don't see a need to. Secondly, I can't see how you would need an iPad when travelling to work, or that on a coffee break you would not just be able to use a normal pc (especially since drinking a beverage and using an iPad seems problematic). We have already got smartphones for things like this anyway, what could you need to do that requires an iPad? Sure it could be nice to use an iPad instead of your iPhone, but with the increased size and weight, and the need to have your phone anyway, it doesn't seem very practical. Another note is that the iPad looks pretty fragile (as most netbooks/laptops are) compared to a smartphone, which counts against its portability.

I'm not denying there is a market, I'm just saying that this market is not any sort of 'mainstream' user, who on buying the iPad will probably not get any benefit in usage terms over netbook/notebook/smartphone. Also, the mainstream market for computers is not 'anti-technocratic', and that would be targetting a minority fringe market, and I'm pretty sure this is not what Apple is doing. They're aiming this device at people who already use PC's and want some of that functionality in a very portable way. Even the examples you give are of luxury use, or perhaps compulsive behaviour. The average person is not going to need or really want to carry around such a device just so that they can squeeze in some browsing or something similar in the little free time they have during the day when they are not near a PC. I especially can't see anyone with 'anti-technocratic' tendencies doing anything like this. The market for this device seems very niche, imo. Maybe I'm out of touch, though, maybe a lot of people are sitting at the table after lunch thinking, "I can't really sit here and enjoy the company or do anything worthwhile. What I need to do is check Facebook right now, but I don't have an iPad. Oh the horror! The horror!"

Sorry, I can't even really take the iPad seriously sometimes.
 
Look we'll have to wait and see whether I'm right, it could be a monstrous flop or only sell amongst a niche core of money-wasters. Personally, I carry an iPod Touch around with me for nearly exactly the purposes that the iPad would do much better. It's instant-on, compulsive, useful for e-reading and so forth. In a sense my iPod Touch substitutes a proper notebook for me - for proper computing I use my multicore 24" etc desktop - for portability the iPod Touch does everything I'd need a netbook for. If it was bigger and had an always-on internet connection and better battery life, it would be nearly perfect for me. (Although personally I lean strongly towards the Notion Ink vs the iPad).

In console gaming the Wii did a similar feat - opened up a market that nobody knew existed - not the traditional 'mainstream' but an untapped mass of non-gamers who never touched a console - and there were far more of them floating about than what constitutes the mainstream. It can accomplish pretty much everything that a laptop can do as far as that consumer actually needs from a laptop, with a sexier form in a proven upscaled mobile OS with a huge already-existing application ecosystem. I know for a fact that my wife would absolutely love something like that - and her parents who are scared to death of computers - if you ramify those types of people, the numbers are staggering. But I could be wrong.
 
Creating a new market is always risky. Seeing as I have both a PC and an iPhone I dont see the need for an iPad. I guess there are many othes like me and that they will not be willing to fork out a good R6000 (http://www.have2have.co.za/index.php?cPath=676_31_6428) for one. Although Im sure you can get cheeper from an international source.

Maybe if you dont have a PC or a cellphone/iphone and you need both then it may be an option. In some ways it does look like Apple are in a way reinventing the wheel?
 
Ladies & Gentlemen, the iMat....:D

500x_evoipad21.jpg
 
I used to be an anti-Microsoft hypocrite, whilst all my software and OS were Windows. Truth be told Microsoft makes brilliant OS'es and software, yeah the dominate the market but lets face it Excel were eons ahead of visi-calc and lotus 123.
Then I shifted my hypocritical energies to Apple; but once again when faced with an upgrade on my mobile contract, I fell in love with the iPhone (yes it was that strong).

I tell you all of this cause I noticed there is a lot of folk on this thread, spending energy criticizing without actually using any Apple products.

Yes, Apple is hype and their products are expensive but it certainly are great to use. And so will the iPad be.
 
I see someone revived this thread, I got an iPad two weeks, its awesome... Use it quite a bit at work, extremely responsive. Integrates with Exchange very well and the onscreen keyboard is fantastic for typing on during meetings. I can also email out my notes if i need to before i even leave the meeting venue, which is awesome!
 
Received my 64GB WiFi+3G a few weeks ago, cost me R10G's ... Was a tough decision as it is a hell of a lot of money, and you can probably get a decent laptop for half of that. Well, after owning it for a few weeks now, I can now honestly tell you that if I lost it and they doubled the price, I would definitely buy another one!
 
Well there's a $3 app that streams video from your PC/Mac. Kind of negates the point of the 64gb option!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X