The Apple iPad

4743hudsonj

I have to say, i like it but i cant help but feel disappointed, i think a shrunk osx would have been better than a blew up iphone os3, i wouldnt say no to one but not over a macbook pro. Personally i think theyre highly desirably but you would have to be a numpty to spend that money on something that you cant really take everywhere with you, and when you get home, cannot do everything you may need to like on a proper laptop.

I think its on the verge of being a solution for a problem that doesnt exist and you would have to have wads of disposable income to justify one. I.e you would need to spend money on a good imac, macbook pro and iphone before this.

Styling is not great either, massive bezel and is it me or does it look like an odd aspect ratio? it doesnt look 16:9 or 16:10 making movies look cramped(letter/pillar-boxing) or looking zoomed in and parts cut out. Maybe im wrong but thats how it looks, surely this will also affect web pages that are designed for widescreen monitors?

penrhyn

I believe Apple regard the iBookstore as the killer app, of course they will be going head to head with Amazon and the Kindle. I wonder if anyone has taken an iPad outside in the sun and tried to read the screen?
Agee about the huge bezel, I suppose 4x3 is more appropriate for book reading.

BillScarab

Apparently the reason it is 4:3 is that 16:9 or 16:10 are not very effective when it's used in portrait mode.

The bezel does seem rather large on it.

Marty_J

penrhyn wrote: »

I wonder if anyone has taken an iPad outside in the sun and tried to read the screen?

I haven't seen anyone mention it, but it will certainly look much better outside than an OLED screen would.

Agee about the huge bezel, I suppose 4x3 is more appropriate for book reading.

There's a reason it has a large bezel, which would become abundantly clear after 10 seconds of use. It has a touch-screen, and building a product with a touch-screen that requires you to put your thumbs all over the screen in order to hold it isn't a terribly good idea.

randomtask_2

the large bezel is intended to give the user something to grip when holding the device in any orientation. Otherwise your thumbs would be continually registering an input on the touchscreen...though I agree it is a bit too big.

that said, is multi touch tech at a point where it could disregard inputs around the edge based on automatic detection of the orientation and the likely gripping points?

poppy10_2

LOL, what a piece of crud.

A processor as slow as that in the Google phone, that can't even handle multitasking - if you want to copy text from your web browser to your text editor, you have to first close the browser, open up the editor, save, close the editor and then reopen the browser. Welcome back to 1982.

Actually, copy/paste probably won't even be available, you'll probably need to purchase an upgrade pack for that, knowing Apple's history.

The thing is an oversized iPhone, not a proper computing device. Yet it's too heavy to be easily portable. The only market for this will be rabid Apple fanbois.

RobTang

randomtask wrote: »

that said, is multi touch tech at a point where it could disregard inputs around the edge based on automatic detection of the orientation and the likely gripping points?

not realiably, and TBH I never hold my tablets in the same way consistantly, It could frankly be anywhere on the bezel in funny positions, with different fingers... any way that works really, like a proper book

sweetstudent

It does look good, even the 'Apple' hater at work agreed that the iPad looks good. I think that yes it is going after the eBook market taking on Amazon, Sony and Barnes and Noble. Apple don't always make their products and the target market clear - at first.

Who thought that Apple would go after the portable games market, taking on the PSP and the DS!
iTunes - taking on Wal*Mart.
Steve Ballmer stated that the iPhone would never work and nobody will buy it...three years later, Appple one of the largest smart phone manufactures.

What i am trying to get across is that Apple are not just going after the eBook market, but a market where people who are on 'their sofa' can get just pick up the iPad and go online, listen to some music, play a game - do what they want and put the device down, just like picking up a magazine. Without waiting for a computer to boot up and load whichever application they need to use.

My only issues with it is - will apps and software only be allowed from the App store or will you be able to install your own browser, ie FireFox. Or they may just go the way like the MacBook Air and have remote installtion....

4743hudsonj

sweetstudent wrote: »

My only issues with it is - will apps and software only be allowed from the App store or will you be able to install your own browser, ie FireFox. Or they may just go the way like the MacBook Air and have remote installtion....

seeing as its os bares more resemblance to the iphone im guessing no.

I suppose the bezel does make sense thinking about it but still too large, as for the aspect ratio, i would have thought a compromise between 4:3 and 16:9 would be best. sacrificing the rest of the features for the sake of ebooks sounds silly. 16:9 would look silly too but a compromise probably just right as movies wouldnt look so squished or cut off and books could simply be resized? or filled out with some neat visuals or something.

Marty_J

randomtask wrote: »

that said, is multi touch tech at a point where it could disregard inputs around the edge based on automatic detection of the orientation and the likely gripping points?

Possibly, but just keeping the user's thumbs away from the screen is a much simpler solution.

poppy10 wrote: »

A processor as slow as that in the Google phone, that can't even handle multitasking - if you want to copy text from your web browser to your text editor, you have to first close the browser, open up the editor, save, close the editor and then reopen the browser. Welcome back to 1982.

The processor is an Apple A4 Cortex-A9 MPCore running at 1 GHz. It's very similar to the Tegra 2 chipset which will be gracing other tablets later this year. A 500 MHz A9 renders webpages as fast as a 1.6 GHz Atom, it can playback HD video better than Atom, it can run 3D games better than Atom, and it can do all this while using less power than an Atom processor.

The processor in the Google Nexus One is a Snapdragon ARM which, while running at the same 1 GHz clock speed, is nowhere nearly as powerful.