IPad: Giant Meh
mattmaroon.com
mattmaroon.com
Also, it did sell more than 10 millions units by the end of 2008 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:IPhone_sales_per_quarter_s...
Apple comes out with something attempted by the Wintel cabal 4 to 5 years ago. (The Windows Tablet also had magazines and many other parallels with iPad.) However, Apple does it with a much better design, presentation, and end-to-end experience.
Techies who use tech so easily that they don't need the above so much proclaim that such things were already around, we can get better spec devices that do the same thing for cheaper, etc. (I call this the CmdrTaco syndrome.)
My prediction: this is only the first step. The functionality of the Newton/Microsoft Courier is the way forward. Integrate a camera with the thing, and we'll have augmented reality in a practical way. (One that doesn't make you look like a Cyberpunk RPG nerd in public.) I can imagine executives keeping their personal assistants on tap through iChat with this thing. I can imagine the same executives sitting in meetings with this propped up on its docking station/stand like a teleprompter, their staff listening in, and popping up relevant information for them. (And if someone develops a software bluetooth keyboard/touchpad App on the iPhone, they can do discrete chat under the table to ask their staff specific questions.)
Actually, integrate two cameras with the thing, so you can iChat and stream the video of the meeting/presentation.
Apple should do some Bonjour integration with Keynote, so that you can do a low-bandwidth sharing of someone else's currently playing Keynote presentation on a different through iChat by just pressing a button. The presenter could flip a setting and multicast the slides. Anyone on the same WiFi subnet could then share it with iChat partners automatically.
iPad isn't aiming for us members of the nerd herds that are using laptops and netbooks and for whatever reason we're hauling them around; it's not a laptop replacement. Duh.
It's an eFrame for your desk that you can do stuff with.
It's a data entry device for the back of an ambulance or in an ER.
It's a device that can replace a rack-n-stack LCD console in a server room, or that can sit on an operator's or guard's desk or maître de's podium, showing status.
It's a device your mom can use for pictures of the kids, and for hosting cookbooks and recipes in the kitchen.
Add a cash drawer via that dock connector and...
Its an instant and portable Point-of-Sale device; the Apple folks will have these all over the Apple Stores just as soon as they can.
It's a dorm TV.
It's for a bunch of tasks we haven't even yet thought of.
Most of us nerds suck at this non-nerd UI stuff. And we can assume that what we want and what we understand and what we need is what everybody wants. And that isn't necessarily reality.
Whether Apple hit their target markets here remains to be seen. But I can see use.
Specs alone just aren't the way to win people over or to judge a device like this. The experience matters and the iPad offers an experience custom-tailored to tables, unlike other slates where Windows 7 is slapped on without modifications.
having said all that, i agree with matt's main point. i'm a little underwhelmed with the ipad as well. the scuttlebutt was that apple had tried making tablet computers for years, but jobs always torpedoed them with "what is this for, other than reading the web on the can?" since they were finally releasing a tablet, i figured they had thought up a compelling use case, other than reading the web on the can. personally, i'm not seeing it.
seems foolish to bet against jobs, though. if he thought it was a good product, i think it might catch on.
colligan quote here: http://www.palminfocenter.com/news/9110/colligan-laughs-off-...
What I've been hoping ever since yesterday is that someone should release an "iPad" with a heavily customized open source OS on it. Add some Amazon integration (ala iTunes for books/music), customize the main apps to suite the form factor and a semi-open repository/app store for extra apps.
I'd buy it in a heartbeat.
There appears to be a distinct lack of touch based 'remixes' of Android or Ubuntu though.
I think the conventional wisdom for Apple products can be applied here: don't buy the first gen device. Think about it this way, right now the iPad starts at $499. I mean that's almost two netbooks... On the other hand what if the next generation one is 2-3 times cheaper, with a better screen, etc. Where I wouldn't buy a $500 iPad, I might consider a $200 iPad.
I don't know if he owns an iPhone but he's wrong about web surfing. I often wish I could navigate on my desktop they way I do on the iPhone. Double tap to zoom is a killer app.
I'll also note that despite the multi-touch hype I never use the pinch gesture while surfing the web on the iPhone, the auto-zoom double tap works in basically every situation.
A bit hasty there. This is something that you can actually carry around like it was a Frommer's guidebook. Put a camera on this form factor, and you have the potential for some really kick-ass Augmented Reality. That's not something you can do with a Laptop. (Unless you're willing to look very dorky. http://amzn.com/B001G713NO )
With such a light form factor and a freaking month of standby, you can treat this thing like a journal or a sketchpad. At $15 a month, college and high school students can actually afford to connect this through 3G. (If Apple is smart, they'll student discount this thing like mad!) You can basically replace your phone use with Skype IMs for paging and do your heavy voice communications when you get to a cafe with WiFi. Not something that I would want to do. But my broke-ass violinist bandmate working at a technical bookstore? Yes, he'd do that in a heartbeat.
If Apple can take a cue from Facebook and co-opt the College crowd, the High School crowd will follow, then everyone else. We'll have angsty teens writing on Facebook walls from cafes, posting their Brushes sketches, Skype calling their girlfriends.
The Apple of 2001 is certainly not the Apple of 2010, so it won't be all that similar, but relativly slow yet steadily accelerating uptake coinciding with constant evolutionary revisions seems plausible.
The only difference is that in 2001 not many cared whether the iPod would become a success or not. Apple was still the Mac company, that's no more the case today. If the iPad uptake is relativly slow we will most certainly see dozens of "iPad dead" articles within the first month the device starts selling.
1) I didnt own an iPhone
2) I didnt own a MacBook Pro
3) It had at least 1 camera
4) It was hackable or could run any OS X app
5) I could use it for general purpose storage
Maybe iPad 2.0 will have some of these, as someone posted above... I think this is just a first step and future versions might have some of the above.
That's just going from the listed tech specs. I sincerely doubt the JooJoo is faster or easier to use than the iPad, nor do I think they will develop anything close to the App Store.
But no, the iPad is going to bury itself because it's locked-down and feature-anemic. Any competitor can beat this, and many are coming.
The Crunchpad/JooJoo seems like a dead project to me, so it doesn't take up any space in the forefront of my thoughts.
The irony I'm mentioning here is that if the Crunchpad had launched, the iPad would be inferior in every way: feature set, pricing, etc.
The Crunchpad has really never been more than vaporware (in essence). So any speculation about coulda/woulda/shoulda comparisons is kind of a pointless effort.
The history of the tech landscape is littered with visions and reality. I don't mean to be overly critical of your post, I'm just saying that I've long given up on comparing Vendor X's spec sheet or demo video to Vendor Y's actual shipped item.