

8 Things That Suck About iPad - vaspers
http://i.gizmodo.com/5458382/8-things-that-suck-about-the-ipad

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jacquesm
No voice calls is the big one for me. I can see they were thinking if we
enable voice calls people might choose for an ipad instead of an iphone, but
we want to sell them both.

The same happened when they crippled the newton so it wouldn't compete with
the mac.

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peterwwillis
If you loved the iPhone but hated all that annoying fits-in-your-pocket and
voice-calling and _typing_ , you're gonna be AMAZED at the bullshit we've come
up with! Now open your wallets and bend over.

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sree_nair
Out of 8, I feel the following 2 as let downs. No Multitasking No Cameras

These two would have been nice to have. No HDMI Out No UsB Port

the other 4, No problem.

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ytinas
The [non-existance of the] Camera is a let down to be sure, but multitasking?
What do you need multitasking for? Doing some action at a specific time and
doing async operations right? If the OS provides this then I don't think
multitasking is needed (and it adds a huge amount of complexity/stability
issues).

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jacquesm
Multitasking doesn't need to add complexity and stability issues, if ubuntu
can do it then so can apple.

It does add more power consumption.

Multitasking is useful because humans are multitasking.

For instance, a navigator that guides someone to their destination could run
in parallel to lots of other applications and be very useful that way.

Single tasking computers are pretty much done for, multi tasking is the norm,
not the exception. By choosing for a single tasking environment a decision has
been made that is going to be relatively hard to undo. All sorts of
assumptions have now become embedded in places where they probably shouldn't
be, such as dealing with screen input (focus).

I can see why though, it is possibly much harder to get a user interface up
and running on a multi-touch display without a mouse if you have multiple
applications active.

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ytinas
>Multitasking doesn't need to add complexity and stability issues, if ubuntu
can do it then so can apple.

That it can be done doesn't mean it isn't complex. It is.

And by "stability" I didn't mean the phone/tablet constantly crashing, I meant
having inconsistent performance. Once you get into multitasking, everyone and
their brother is going to have some really "good" reason they need a service.
Some of these will always perform well, some wont.

>Multitasking is useful because humans are multitasking.

Humans are incredibly awful at multitasking.

>Single tasking computers are pretty much done for, multi tasking is the norm,
not the exception.

Computers sure. But this is an instant-on consumer device. I think the use
cases for such a device are different enough to warrant at least consideration
for a different kind of OS for them.

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jacquesm
> Humans are incredibly awful at multitasking.

On the contrary, we excel at it by pushing things 'down' when we have mastered
them.

For instance, driving and talking to a passenger, walking and thinking about
something and so on.

We are so good at it that most of the time we don't even notice any more how
many things we are doing at the same time.

The only time we are _not_ multitasking is when we are really concentrating on
something difficult, usually problem solving or learning a new skill.

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ytinas
Fair point. But I would point out that the only things this works with are
things we have _thoroughly_ mastered (e.g. walking). People have issues
talking and driving (e.g. in parts of Europe it's illegal to talk on a cell
while driving because of all the accidents it causes).

In my experience it depends on the amount of processing required. If I'm
driving a straight away with traffic going mostly the same speed I can hold
complex conversations. As soon as something happens on the road I drop the
conversation until my attention isn't needed on the road anymore.

~~~
jacquesm
Yes, that's exactly how it works. It seems as though the lower level tasks
have the ability to push themselves in to the foreground when something
happens that they don't know how to handle.

It's an amazing mechanism. Animals can do it too, birds can sing 'on the
wing', there are lots of other examples.

Fascinating stuff.

