

Steve Wozniak on iPad - ash
http://www.newsweek.com/id/235567

======
ComputerGuru
What an engineer! The pragmatic appeal of his actions is incredible:

 _By the way, I solved the problem of battery life and [the lack of]
multitasking on the iPhone.

Really?

Yeah. I just have two iPhones, so if the battery runs down on the first one, I
can use the other. And if I'm talking on one, I can use the other one to look
something up. You would not believe how much use I get out of that._

~~~
teilo
This totally cracked me up. It reminded me of this guy I know who wanted a
computer to take with him when he visits his lake cabin up north. Laptop you
say? No no no. He only wants to use it IN the cabin, where He already has an
old monitor, keyboard, and mouse. So he bolts a metal handle to the top of his
mini-tower. "This is my portable!" He was so proud.

~~~
_delirium
The Apple //c was pretty much made for that purpose, though it seems that with
the advent of affordable real laptops, nobody makes the luggable-with-a-handle
form factor anymore.

~~~
sp332
You need a Frag Box from Falcon NW: <http://www.falcon-
nw.com/images/FragBox_OrangeFlames_hi.jpg> Well, you probably don't _need_
one, but you definitely want it!

------
viraptor
> Think about students going off to college. They want an Apple product, but
> their parents don't want to spend that much. Now they have the ideal thing.
> They can go to college and someone may have a whacked-out $6,000 laptop, but
> the guy with the iPad will get all the attention.

Good to know that the main reason for having a computer in college now is
about showing off a gadget with a known logo. And not about silly things like
reading, writing coursework, sharing information, taking notes, communicating
with others... (where iPad is almost useless in most of these cases)

Are we seriously at the stage where people want "an Apple product"?

~~~
dagw
My college had plenty of 'proper' computers that students could use 24 hours a
day. If I was in college now I could easily see myself using the iPad for
reading and note taking in class and then going to one of the workstations
when I had to do more demanding work.

~~~
viraptor
Yeah... there are schools that have all the equipment you need. But you can
consider yourself lucky. In the first place I went to, there were probably 10
computers available for students in total. In the second place there were 3
floors of library full of computers, but it was still very hard to find a free
one during exam weeks. It would be a mistake to rely on them being available
every time you need them.

~~~
robryan
Depends if your doing something with comsci classes in it to. There has never
been a time I couldn't get a computer at uni but if you didn't do comsci
classes you can't get into those labs and the library has a lot but usually
all being used around peak times.

------
alanthonyc
I met him on the BART once, when I was 14 years old. I shook his hand, then
walked away. I am such a nerd.

------
gcheong
I wonder if he ever visits Steve Jobs, whips out his Nexus one and says "Man
this thing is awesome!".

------
bensummers
The layout of the page is terible:

    
    
      Gallery, in a box
      Byline
      Sharing widgets
      First paragraph
      SUBSCRIBE link
      Rest of article
    

Maybe I'm being dim, but it took me a very long time to work out where the
article text was. It's positioned where the comments are in every other
article, and the gallery in a box at the top looks like the actual content of
the page.

------
jsz0
I would find it difficult to go back to using only one SmartPhone. I carry two
phones (work/personal) and often use both at the same time for different
reasons. Usually it's as simple as needing to look at one e-mail for reference
and write another -- or I run IM on one and browse the web on another. Even
though the Android phone multi-tasks it's too bulky and unusable to really
jump between apps for multi-tasking mostly due to the lack of a taskbar or
dock but also because the built-in apps simply aren't friendly to it. You
can't "alt-tab" between two e-mail messages for example. The app simply isn't
designed for that. Network redundancy has saved me a couple times too. I can
be pretty confident I won't be without coverage anywhere I go.

~~~
mclin
Hold 'home' on android to 'alt-tab' between running apps.

------
chanux
So iPhone and iPad should come in double packs to actually be useful?

~~~
staunch
The price range is about half of what most people expected, so buying two
isn't all that expensive.

~~~
jrockway
The Force is strong in this one.

------
sown
Sometimes I think that the iPad is what netbooks should have been.

~~~
jrockway
Unusable for anything but reading pre-approved ebooks, light web browsing, and
posting to Twitter?

~~~
froo
I have a friend who plays WOW on his netbook, so they have other uses too.

~~~
sown
I wonder if one could get away with playing WoW on the iPad. Tons of hotkeys
but I could still see it happening with a custom UI add-on for simple things
like grinding, etc.

~~~
jrockway
I am not an iPad or WoW fan... but this almost sounds fun.

------
eogas
Why does he need two extra navigation systems in his car that has a built in
navigation system?

~~~
cfinke
It's like the space shuttle. They use three decision-making computers for
redundancy. If two say "turn left" and one says "turn right", you turn right.

~~~
dkokelley
I'm not sure if you meant to say 'you turn left' or if you were just being
funny. Coming from someone who just completed 10 hours of driving (and has
another 6 tomorrow) while using GPS systems, I'm inclined to think you meant
what you said. :P

------
mahmud
_I have two iPhones, a [Google] Nexus One, a [Motorola] Droid, plus a Garmin
[GPS] and TomTom [GPS]. I turn them all on at the same time, plus the
navigation system in my Prius._

I find that .. sad.

~~~
froo
What? That the guy who basically invented the PC by hacking together parts of
other devices likes to carry lots of technology with him?

I don't see the problem at all, it fits his profile.

Now if it was someone like your average soccer mum who had this, then there is
a problem.

------
theDeveloper
Taken from the article:

"What's your favorite phone? The iPhone, because of the apps. By the way, I
solved the problem of battery life and [the lack of] multitasking on the
iPhone."

Did Woz jailbrake his iPhone? :))

------
smoody
" _Who else is the target audience for this?_

My wife's parents — they're not ready for the complicated computer world. They
have these old computers."

How much is Woz worth? And even with that kind of money, he won't spring for a
couple of iMac for his wife's parents??? :-)

~~~
froo
My grandmother. She had asked about the internet and emailing and I decided to
purchase one of these for her.

It was a tossup between a PC with all the peripherals or the ipad where she
just touches the screen.

I thought the latter would be easier for her and a much less threatening.

(That being said, I haven't purchased one for myself. I already have enough
devices that are adequate that perform the job the ipad does, so I don't see
the need for one yet. Maybe in the future if I need to replace a few things)

~~~
Angostura
I'm in pretty much the same position with my parents. The main issue as I see
it is getting the thing to drive a printer since they will occasionally want
to print documents or photos. Let's see what's in iPhone OS 4.0

