

The Apple Tablet Is Here, And It's Called the iPad - jasonlbaptiste
http://i.gizmodo.com/5458292/the-apple-tablet-is-here-and-its-called-the-ipad

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dlsspy
So, it's an iPod Touch. A large one. The iPod touch is a min-iPad and this is
the max-iPad.

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maukdaddy
Really?? This isn't digg.

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cookiecaper
I don't get it. Why is his comment Digg-like? It seems adept to me.

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nollidge
max-ipad => maxi-pad. Not sure if that was intentional on the OP's part.

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blehn
It was great how Steve fully acknowledged the problem with tablets, "So all of
us use laptops and smartphones... the question has arisen; is there room for
something in the middle. We've wondered for years as well -- in order to
create that category, they have to be far better at doing some key tasks...
better than the laptop, better than the smartphone."

Then he proceeded to introduce a device that underperforms vs either
smartphones or laptops in almost every way.

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RyanMcGreal
No keyboard. Less space than a netbook. Lame.

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bmj
Keyboard dock available. Obviously, not part of the $499 package, but still,
it's out there.

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cliveholloway
[http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23/1816257...](http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23/1816257&tid=107)

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quantize
The innovation was in the iPhone. The news apps, book apps, content
consumption and games, all MOBILE. The i-pad makes these innovations PRACTICAL
with a bigger screen, and that is something worth buying.

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kyro
I don't know how I feel about this. Part of me wants to say this'll be a great
light mobile device to carry around, and the other part says this is somewhat
useless as I can do most of these things on my iPhone. I really don't see
anyone using iWork on the iPad to create presentations or documents. You
usually wanna crank that stuff out quickly, and the speed at which you can
type up a slide title, browse the net for an image, copy and paste it over,
etc, on a laptop is, I'm assuming, far greater than you'd be able to do it on
the iPad. Not to mention, I'm worried that typing on this thing is going to be
extremely awkward. The keyboard is too big to use while holding the iPad with
your hands (unless you're a hunt and peck typer), and laying it on a flat
surface will mean you'll have to hunch over to see what you're typing. The
screen real estate is great, and I can definitely see myself using it to read
books, but for $500, I'm not quite sure it's worth it. I would've loved to see
them unveil some sort of medical charts app for use in hospitals. That
would've been a wow moment for me. But they didn't, so I'm torn.

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nopinsight
In 10-15 years, I can see most students carry an iPad-like device to school
instead of a bunch of books many (esp in Asian countries) need to put in their
bags today. It would also be a great replacement for brick-heavy textbooks. If
we can collectively break the textbook oligopoly, the costs would be much
lower as well.

Together with video lecture inserts to clarify difficult points and
interactive & intelligent tutoring software, this could potentially change the
way people learn.

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TeHCrAzY
The price would need to drop quite significantly, and/or the durability would
need to increase drastically (children + strong, well engineered device =
broken device in short amount of time!)

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darien
I see this going the way of the Macbook Air.

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stevejohnson
Except that the Air has a much different price point.

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TeHCrAzY
I disagree. The iPad is directly competing with netbooks, but providing less
functionality at a higher price point.

A quick survey around the dev team here highlight this: They think it is too
expensive and impractical. (and this is no anti-apple bias, a good 3/4 of the
team have iPhones)

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elblanco
But people will buy it. Everything Apple sells can be categorized in that way
"less functionality at a higher price point".

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ryandvm
Yeah - it's a big iPod. _yawn_

As an instant-on, full-page web browser, it's far more useful than a netbook,
but it's pretty underwhelming for everything else.

With shorter battery life, greater cost, and more eyestrain than the Kindle, I
doubt it will have much impact on the e-reader market.

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ericd
How many do you think are going to look at the Kindle at $250-500 and then the
iPad at $500 and choose the single-purpose-does-one-thing-somewhat-better
device?

If Amazon dropped the price to sub-$100, I think they'd sell them by the
boatload, but at current price points... nah.

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ryandvm
At 24 ounces, the iPad is a brick. There's no way you can comfortably hold
that thing like a book for more than 30 minutes. No wonder Ives has arms like
a prison guard.

Like I said, it's a fine netbook killer (though I think the segment was
killing itself). But there is no way this thing is taking market share from
the e-books.

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ericd
I don't think it's going to impact the decision of people who care more about
reading than anything else, but I think this will steal a large portion of
more casual readers that would have gotten the kindle.

It's a bit heavier than the average book, but it's by no means a brick. This
claims that it puts it at roughly the 75th percentile of books in terms of
weight: <http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_much_does_1_book_weigh>

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mattwdelong
I thought you are supposed to under promise and over deliver?

I see nothing new and innovative.

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sker
To be fair, Apple didn't promise much. The lunatic media did.

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borism
isn't "lunatic" media the result of Apple marketing?

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access_denied
No, it's the result of lazzyness of "journalists" who don't want to do
research and come up with real content by themselves.

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joubert
Starts at $499. Suck that, netbooks.

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varenc
you can have root on a netbook...

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swannodette
How many of your average computers users really care about that? If I can
access a shell and write some code on this thing, I'm sold. The battery life
alone is worth it.

Edit: Sadly reading this thread is like reading Slashdot about the
announcement of the iPod.

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blhack
>| How many of your average computers users really care about that?

I'm sorry, but this is a terrible argument. None of my users care about having
root on our file server either, but if _I_ didn't have it, it wouldn't be
useful as anything more than a very expensive paperweight. Most readers
probably don't care if the authors have access to a typewriter, but they
depend on that to be able to read books.

Similarly, most iPad users won't care about having root on the thing, but they
_shouldn't_. They people that do care about this are the developers, and the
work of the developers becomes the tool of the masses. The complaint about
this thing not being open is that apple is restricting what sorts of tools can
be made. While the end-user might not care about the specific mechanism of
restriction, they do feel its effects.

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MrSartorial
Presentation just finished. I have to say I'm disappointed. First point is
trivial; they should have gone with a new name like iSlate. Playing off of
your own products name (IPod) is weak marketing. It sounds like something
somebody would try to knock off an iPod with.

Actual problems with the iPad:

1)It should have 128GB of storage available. I understand this would lead to a
big price leap, but availablility would be nice

2) They should've gone 16:9 Aspect Ratio. EVERYTHING is that ratio now. Notice
all the vids didn't fit the screen? Furthermore, the keyboard built in would
be much more effective with the increase in dimensions.

3)Thank the lord they have 3G. If they didn't I would've lost it. But why
can't they just put this on the same bill as my phone? THAT would've been a
good contract negotiation. That way Phone providers get even more of our data
usage and it's built in. This would help me use up my 6GB monthly dataplan. I
want simplicity Apple, not another plan to activate.

The battery life is brilliant though.

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fretlessjazz
The target demographic for this device may not be current iPhone, iPod or
MacBook users. Consider the many people that want MacBooks but can't afford
them. The iPad + keyboard dock is a lower-cost alternative, especially with
iWork applications for $10 a pop.

I see this product as doing nothing but growing Apple's customer base.

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tortilla
I can see getting this for my mom. All she needs is email and some light web
browsing.

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paydro
Would also be great for her if there were a camera for video conferencing!

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elblanco
One thing we have to think about with this is that Jobs is not afraid of a
wholesale platform change.

This makes me think that his is really a quiet thrust back into general
computing, from a platform, hardware and software ecosystem that's been very
successful and is wholly owned and controlled by Apple.

The current Mac ecosystem is basically no different, or just a variation on,
the PC open platform. Jobs has stated many times in the past that he prefers
to "control the end-to-end user experience" which is code for "prefers to
control the margins on Apple products, from hardware to software".

Everything in the iPhone ecosystem allows Apple to control the end to end
margins retrievable from the consumer. The Mac ecosystem lost this message a
long time ago and this seems to me like a soft-shoe effort to turn the Apple
consumer onto a new computing platform that's on the Steve Jobs "margin
controlled" message.

It also cleanly gets the moved away from the Wintel style computing and back
into proprietary and incompatible land. Within two years, people will be using
these things for general computing, with mice and keyboards and webcams and
all kinds of specialized docks and iPad 2nd monitors and such. Within 5 years
they'll offer a complete out of the box computer running in this constrained
ecosystem and traditional Macs will be relegated to some type of "Pro"
offering targeting writers and artists.

Already it's principle release feature is the presence of 140k apps, ready to
roll with it that you can purchase only from the Apple controlled online
store. And there's discussion on porting more traditional productivity apps
(iWorks) to the platform.

Effectively, this puts the iPod/Phone/Pad derivative products into direct
competition with Apple's own products, which already have plenty of
competition from traditional Wintel boxes, Netbooks of all varieties, other
tablets, the upcoming Chrome OS machines, and Android computing platforms. But
because it's so tightly controlled the intersection in the primary computing
ecosystem is minimal.

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chrischen
Truth is between my laptop and my iPhone, there really isn't space left for
another $500 device. If I can take the iPad around I can take my laptop too.
IPad can't beat iPhone in terms of taking out of my pocket and quickly getting
some info. Can't be my laptop because it can't run my work apps.

It's an entertainment device that _can't_ fit in my pocket, and can't work
like a bigger computer. I've got some space for it in my bathroom though,
however doctor says I shouldn't sit there too long.

Seriously if it ran OS X it might be enticing, but why get an oversized iPod
touch that can't fit in your pocket.

I'm going to wait for the iPhone with pico projector embedded.

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biggitybones
All the flash (or lack there of) got me excited, but there are a few glaring
questions left unanswered:

1) Support for multi-tasking? This is a must on something like this. Perhaps
they want to ensure performance of single applications by restricting multi-
tasking?

2) Flash support? When Steve was browsing the flash plugin was missing...
another must on a device that is trying to act as an intermediary between
laptop and phone, primarily for web usage.

3) All of the focus on the iPad as an e-reader is neglecting the fact that the
screen will be difficult to read off of. The screens of Kindles and Sony
e-reader products are the major attraction, in my opinion. There's no way I
could read for several hours on a backlit screen.

It's a great multimedia device, and has some awesome practical implications.
However, I think the things I listed above are big time issues for the
intentions of this device.

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a-priori
I don't have a need for one of these things, but I think it might be great for
my mother or grandmother.

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nopinsight
If they include a pull-out or pluggable physical keyboard, arranged to allow
the pad to stand like a frame, it could be a great replacement for most
netbooks and allow for hands-free reading--therefore a Kindle killer as well.

Wonder if they have ever considered the idea and reject it simply for the
aesthetics of having the simplest, smoothest device possible. Aesthetics is
good, but if a small compromise can be made for much greater functionality, it
would be a good trade-off.

I think some other companies might have come up with a device I described
above. Anyone here knows of one? I would consider buying it. A link would be
appreciated.

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sumeetjain
Looks like you got your wish:

[http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2010/01/apple-...](http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2010/01/apple-
creation-0387-rm-eng.jpg)

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spamizbad
i was underwhelmed until I heard the price: at $499 this thing is going to be
a huge hit.

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andreshb
So far, I think ill stick to getting a netbook, just because im not a fan of
depending on the iPhone OS on anything but a phone, and even that is a deal
breaker for me. Maybe if it came with Mac OS

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rinich
Your words make no sense. You don't like the OS except on a phone but not on a
phone but this isn't the iPhone OS whatsoever.

Also: Can we _not_ say stupid things until Steve finishes telling us
everything? As I type this they're _just_ announcing iWork. I don't fucking
see iWork on my fucking iPhone, or on a netbook for that matter, so let's not
conflate the two.

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randallsquared
_I don't fucking see iWork on my fucking iPhone, or on a netbook for that
matter, so let's not conflate the two._

Well, any hackintoshed netbook could run iWork, so there's that.

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joubert
Also runs on Apple's own silicon. The A4.

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rcoder
I love the "notepad" joke implicit in that name.

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khelloworld
What about a camera? Did I miss anything?

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xsmasher
No camera; that was a surprise to me. Apparently there's a "camera connection
kit" to let you copy photos from your camera or SD card though?

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dzlobin
Horrible name, and no flash..again? What a serious waste of money

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Perceval
I agree that the name is lame. Regarding Apple and Flash, Gruber has a pretty
good overview: <http://daringfireball.net/2010/01/apple_adobe_flash>

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Keyframe
Can't wait to see what other devices like this will be out there in a matter
of months based on Nvidia Tegra - and at what price. Could this be the
downfall of netbook growth?

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hop
And how much is it... refresh refresh refresh

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asnyder
It seems like it will be excellent for for salesmen or pharmaceutical
representatives.

Personally, I'm fighting whether I should continue with my Kindle DX purchase,
or get this instead.

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jwhitlark
I was in the same boat. I went with the DX. Not making my eyes bleed after all
day looking at lcd screens, transfer things with usb, (don't need iTunes), and
last more that one day on a single charge made my choice easy.

This device looks interesting, and might open up new use cases, but I'm not
interested in going back to a walled garden.

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hop
Charging $100 extra per 32GB must be a big money maker for Apple. I just
bought a 32GB USB stick off newegg for $70 and considering Apples buying
power, it probably costs them a lot less.

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khelloworld
It seems their main target is the macbook-buying college student. I wish this
thing doesn't cost more than 499 ($599 max).

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chrischen
A college student with a MacBook is NOT going to get this. They lug around a
computer already, what's the point of lugging an ipad around too?

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khelloworld
I was talking about the soon-to-be college students, not the soon-to-be-
graduating ones.

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chrischen
I was talking about the already college student. And soon-to-be college
students applies to. They obviously aren't going to be getting a tablet as
their main computer. It's an entertainment device. And I doubt most would have
the money or reason to get both a laptop/desktop and an iPad.

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nopinsight
The pricing suggests they plan to make a lot more money selling apps &
books/magazines than the hardware itself.

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cliveholloway
I wonder if it will come with wings? So we can (say) safely use it while
exercising ;-)

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andre
ATT providing the 3G service: #FAIL

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DrJokepu
however, all model are shipped as GSM unlocked so there's nothing stopping
anyone from signing up with another GSM provider.

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holdenk
But do we know which 3G bands it supports? i.e. for American users will it
work on t-mobile 3G?

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ericd
I would assume so, unless T-Mobile uses a different GSM freq from
international carriers. They don't want to have to make separate hardware for
the international market.

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NeilCJames
Probably will work on T-Mobile's EDGE, but not GSM (they use 1700 Mhz, and the
iPad spec sheet says it supports 850/1900/2100 Mhz).

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ericd
Ah I see, thanks for the correction.

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anonjon
ynterestingly, Fujitsu already have this particular product name trademark and
apple has been trying to wrestle yt away from them for a while now.

yt ys an ynteresting feat of branding that apple has been able to establish
president that they have claim to any name starting with the letter i. (The
same thing happened with Cisco and the iPhone).

Personally, y've always found that particular piece of branding obnoxious.
Really? a lowercase i?

Luckily we have cognates and perhaps y-combinator can release its own brand of
yPhone, yTouch, and yPad? (all, of course, running on a lisp OS).

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pavs
you accidentally, i.

