

Axiotron - Modbook (the iPad we actually wanted) - elblanco
http://www.axiotron.com/index.php?id=home

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wmeredith
Yep. This is exactly what I've been thinking for the last several days while
reading through all the piss and vinegar the technorati on the web have been
throwing at the the iPad.

The iPad cost $500-$900 and does a few things exceptionally well. (Like hook
into iBooks, iTunes and Apple's App Store.)

The Modbook on the other hand, starts at ~$1700 and does all that other crap
the technorati wanted the iPad to do. I think everyone just wanted Jobs to
come out with a tablet computer that was cheap and badass like MacBooks are
and, unsurprisingly, that didn't happen.

I mean, I'd _love_ it if Chevy held a press conference and said they were
going to sell Camaros for $10k. But it won't happen and I'm not going to get
all indignant about it.

After all, Steve Jobs said himself they couldn't build a computer for $500
that wasn't, "a piece of crap." So I don't see what the big deal is about the
iPad, in that sense. (I think it is a big deal in several other senses, like
the piggy-backed announcement of iBooks and the A4 chip, etc...)

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Dav3xor
My wife has a modbook, and it is made of unmitigated awesome. It's a little
heavy, and the display is a bit dim because of the glass screen cover... But
it's awesome. And the price is very reasonable. The stylus works really well
(and comes with several different types of tips, including a felt tip that
feels just right...)

She bought it to do UX design work with it, and started on a webcomic with it
because she just liked playing with it so much. ArtRage is awesome on it.

~~~
elblanco
It's always surprised me that, given the number of artists Apple targets with
their offerings, they have absolutely no offering like this that artists can
use.

Here's a review of a similar workflow _from 2002_ by the Penny Arcade guys
using a Windows tablet.

<http://www.penny-arcade.com/2002/11/27/>

and here is their take on the desire of web artists to have a tablet from
Apple right before the iPad came out.

<http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/1/22/>

~~~
Dav3xor
Yeah, she she's spent a lot of time on setting it up to work (mostly) without
a keyboard -- She says Quickscript is really good (but has some bugs). I want
to play with it more myself, but it's one of those "you can have it when you
pry it from my cold dead fingers" kinda deals.

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nkassis
My office bought one of these a year ago to try it out. It was extremely heavy
for a tablet and the person who was going to use it just couldn't use it for
what she wanted to do. Basically it was meant as a way for a Professor to
bring it to class and meetings, take notes, do presentations and all kinds of
stuff the iPad seems to be aiming at. I think in the end the iPad will have a
market. No where near the iPhone but a decent size. I think this is going to
replace the MacBook Air.

Personally, I'm waiting for the android tablet about to come out from MSI. I
prefer android as a platform. But the iPad is far from the failure people seem
to claim it is. It's built for a certain kind of user and they usually have
the money to spend on this stuff. I can think of doctors,lawyers and
professors as people who already use similar devices.

~~~
olefoo
I find the rush to judgment on whether the iPad is or is not a success to be
wildly premature. We won't really be able to tell until it's been shipping for
at least 6 months.

~~~
edd
And even then we will only have half the picture as the first well thought
out, well designed apps will just be making it out. The iPad is just as much a
platform for 'awesome' as it is a complete device.

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almost
That may be the iPad _you_ wanted but to me it just looks like a Tablet PC
running OSX.

~~~
epochwolf
It's a Macbook turned into a Tablet PC. It would be rather funky if it didn't
run OSX.

~~~
almost
Yes, I know that. I just think it's odd that the poster was hoping that the
iPad would be something that already has existed for a while (a standard
laptop without a keyboard).

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elblanco
Why would it be odd for Apple to add a sensible product to a hole in its
product lineup?

It seems to me that very few people are actually impressed or interested in
the iPad, particularly since expectations, desire and hype was for what this
basically is...not for an overinflated iPod touch.

~~~
almost
But it already exists, see the link. Or you could do a hackintosh with a
windows tablet. But then all you have is a laptop without a keyboard and why
would you want that?

I guess I wasn't paying much attention but what I heard pre-launch was that it
was going to basically be a giant iPod Touch. Which seems like quite a good
idea to me. Not quite a cure for cancer but what do you expect?

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sid-
Surely apple will learn lots of good stuff from the iPad and one day bring
that technology to the MacBook Pro (MacBook Pro Touch ??). Its got to be there
in their roadmap somewhere.

~~~
dkasper
I agree and would predict that in the future all of Apple's computers will be
touch screens. They've already done away with the mouse buttons on their
laptops to get a bigger touchpad, and it seems like the next evolution of that
is a full touch screen. Maybe they will truly become like phones and we will
have iPads with slide out keyboards for the people who need to type a lot
(kind of like the Lenovo hybrid).

~~~
wtallis
I'm still wondering when Apple will get around to buying Wacom. They bought
FingerWorks to get the best multi-touch technology, but I don't think that
multitouch will be quite enough to accommodate the full range of capabilities
we geeks want from our tablets. The combination of pen input and multitouch
offered by Wacom's Bamboo and apparently Axiotron's upcoming Modbook Pro is,
however, enough for general purpose computing. (Command lines and programming
are still hard with pen input because nobody has made a pen input system that
is optimized for all the strange punctuation.)

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w3matter
Sigh. We geeks want a do-it-all tablet in the fevered imagination of our wet
dreams.

Meanwhile, Apple has leapfrogged all of us, and made the iPad (and iPhone) so
easy, that my toddler and my grandma can use it without a manual. Think! They
can actually email, facebook, and freaking save someone's name with their
telephone number without freaking out over some craptacular user interface
that someone like me made in a lab somewhere.

Remember, we are not the iPad's target audience. The target audience is the
guy that picks up a mouse and tries to speak into it.

Just don't think that Apple somehow failed you, because you did not get
exactly what you wanted.

