

IPad, the destroyer - ZeroGravitas
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2010/04/02/ipad-the-destroyer-19-things-it-will-kill/

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nosse
This kind of radical apple fanboyism is one of the biggest things keeping me
away apple products. The biggest reason is that I'm poor.

But I have to say I like the impact apple makes on the industry. Lots of
people are worried about all kinds of pads being uncreative and mind dumbing
because apple is showing them to that direction. But there has always been mp3
players that don't require you to use iTunes. And there has always been
laptops that let you choose your desktop backround color freely, not just from
handful of options.

So people, don't worry. There will be cheap and crappy pads you actually can
open. And there will be Apple's iPad. There will be kids who get a cheap and
accessible pad when they are young and they became hackers. And there will be
rich kids who just play games on their iPads. This whole pad thing might
change the way computers are used, but not the way people go on with their
lives.

PS. It has always taken a couple of decades for any industry to mature. After
that things like usability and reliability and ease or repair starts to matter
to the sales.

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JarekS
The fact is that very rarely new technology is killing the old one. Radio
never killed newspapers. TV never killed Radio. TV never killed books. We see
marketshare shifts, new niches are being created are we simply use more
devices (radio while driving, TV on the evenings, books we read before we go
to sleep etc.).

iPad is really interesting because touch interface is so much more natural for
us then mouse or keyboard. We just have to wait and see how we will apply this
new technology in our life...

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ugh
I’m quite tired of those grandiose declarations of what the iPad will achieve
myself but I have to correct your history a bit.

We know of examples were new technology of delivering media killed old
technology. CDs killed LPs, DVDs killed VHS tapes. (In the same way in which
cars killed horse carriages – there are still some out there but they don’t
really matter.) Other technologies fundamentally changed just how we use
media. DVRs did that to TV.

So just why do we see certain change but not other kinds of change? My
personal little theory is that certain modes of consuming media will pretty
much always be useful, independent of the available technology.

Delivering just text will in certain situations probably always be cheaper
than delivering visuals and audio (no need to produce expensive visuals or
hire a speaker), I also think that it just might be more effective to take in
certain information by reading rather than any other way. Consequently
something like newspapers and books will always exist (with or without the
text being printed on dead trees). You can make a very similar argument for
Radio.

The big thing about computers has always been that they can potentially
deliver everything. Just text. Just audio. Just visuals. Or all that in any
combination you wish. So, sure, computers (and that includes the iPad) might
just be able to kill newspapers, radio, TV, books. But just as we _know_ them.
There will probably always be devices which allow us to read text, listen to
something or watch and listen to something.

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axod
"Who wants to shell out $30-50 for a dopey game title when you can download
cool $1-5 games to your iPod touch on a regular basis or get rich, major games
from big publishers for $6-12 on the iPad? They’re beautiful, wildly
interactive, and are going to slay Nintendo and Sony in the portable gaming
market. Nintendo’s boss says he doesn’t get the iPad. That’s executive speak
for “I’m going down with the ship.” The correct answer was: “We’re creating
iPad titles based on our beloved franchises as fast as we can.” Ya’ll are
dead."

This is hilarious. Pretty good satire piece.

~~~
ryanb
Somehow I don't think it was meant to be satire, but I agree with you.

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dmd
People who predict the death of Office/Word have clearly never written
anything longer than a newspaper article.

Try writing a 500 page document, complete with TOCs, indices, tables, lists,
footnotes, endnotes, references, etc. in something like Google Docs sometime.

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rbanffy
Why?

Why, in this day and, would anyone want a 500 page printed document? Something
that would need updating as soon as it's printed?

The only reason I use 500+ page things is to read them from my couch,
something the iPad (and the Kindle, the Sony and the Nook) can do very, very
well. In fact, I carry about 100 books in electronic form with me on my iPod
(which could be described as an "iPad Nano")

And any reader can do even better if it's not a monolithic 500+ page monster,
but a neatly organized and searchable website.

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rbrcurtis
My wife is a grad student. Every time she writes a paper, no matter how long,
she prints it out and then marks it up with a red pen to go over changes she
thinks it needs. I always think this is extremely backwards and she should
just edit it directly in word, but it is what works for her. She will surely
do the exact same thing with the book she is working on as well.

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carterschonwald
A lot of recent articles such as this one seem to think that dedicated ebook
readers are now doomed... I couldn't disagree more. This has been said by
other folks, but it bears being repeated: Eink displays function act in the
same way optically as to actual books, by reflecting rather than shining light
into your eyes (i know which i can sustainably stare at for hours with far
greater comfort).

One thing which I don't see discussed as much as I thought it would be in IPad
press has been the absence of something like electromagnetic induction stylus
capability from the device. I certainly know a number of folks who would be
much more interested in the if it had such functionality (and thus actually
enabled a digital analogue of the pad on paper note taking abstraction)

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Anon84
Ask and you shall receive: <http://tenonedesign.com/stylus.php>

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carterschonwald
unfortunately, theres a big difference between and EM induction stylus and
capacitive, namely being able to have your hand on the writing surface even
slightly while writing :-), capacitive alone doesn't let you do that, and once
we have screens that support both, it'll be really amazing! (think two panes,
one for a previous set of notes/ text youre moving through and occasionally
annotating, and the other where you're writing up some other document).

I'm actually very much hoping that the microsoft courier product (if it ever
materializes), allows that sort of setup !

edit: turns out the most recent lenovo tablets work thusly!
[http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/23/lenovo-
thinkpad-x201-tabl...](http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/23/lenovo-
thinkpad-x201-tablet-review/)

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sandee
Glanced the article and stopped reading when i read 'brochures'. Obviously
this guy has no idea the reasons for which brochures exist.

~~~
mojuba
Every time I see the phrase "stopped reading at X" I downvote. You may be even
right about brochures, but the "stopped reading" people in general are bad at
understanding someone else's thoughts, are rude towards the author and usually
don't get the entire article except the point they stopped at. It just looks
bad. I'm sorry.

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RyanMcGreal
I stopped reading your comment at "I downvote". ;)

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jimfl
The iPad is going to kill technology news. At least for a couple of months.

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rbanffy
Not kill. Just dumb them down.

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chanux
DVDs? (& all the similar disks are dying anyway. It doesn't take iPad to kill
those).

Text books? I think iPad is the third or so to kill text books or maybe Text
books have multiple lives.

Brochures? Is he outta mind or something?.

(stopped reading at Brochures.)

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cubicle67
> Idle moments. Remember when you used to sit in the park, lost in your
> lover’s eyes? Now you’re both busy checking messages on your iPhone.

I know this is toungue in cheek, but it's also kind of true and sad at the
same time. I speak as a guilty party :/

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ThomPete
The iPad is going to kill none of those things. If it will be killed it will
be by technology in general not the iPad.

The iPad is expensive not everyone will be able to let alone want to pay that
much.

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Tycho
Now we're talking. Will this be the point in history when everything shifts
towards the Touchable User Inteface? (the... Toohey?) I'm sure in the back of
Steve Job's mind this isn't just a cool product, but a way to reclaim the
mainstream computer market. Which is still a long-shot, but in Apple's case it
seems that _criticism is the sincerest form of flattery._ Why else would so
many bloggers waste so many words on a product they don't want to buy, unless
they sense the genuine threat of a new paradigm that could leave them behind.

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bmj
_Single-purpose industrial gadgets_

Not with the current App Store model. We absolutely drool over the potential
of the iPad/iPhone/iTouch for our applications, but there is absolutely no
enterprise support. On top of that, you can't take over the device, or at
least limit access (necessary in some cases), so that's a problem for some
domains, too.

MS and HP could take a big chunk of this market with the Slate, if it is
accommodating to single use applications.

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balding_n_tired
The paperless office, my old friend these 35 years. I wondered where he'd
been.

Odd that Mr. Dilger forgot "The critical faculties of hordes of bloggers and
journalists."

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neondiet
Dam, I can't believe I got suckered into visiting that site again. DED from
Roughly Drafted is a rabid, frothing at the mouth fanboy who does Apple no
favours. He's demonstrated in the past (in a heated exchange of words with me)
that his grasp on real world business computing needs and technology, beyond
the confines of his bedroom leave a lot to be desired. I'd advise you not to
pay any attention to anything he has to say.

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stcredzero
It occurs to me, typing on this iPad in landscape, that this thing would be
_perfect_ to implement something like Microsoft's Courier concept or it's MS
Research ancestor, Inkskein. Now let me see what Evernote is up to...

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Qz
Those Courier concepts turn me into a drooling fan in an instant.

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chanux
So is it going to kill printers along with office?

<http://government.zdnet.com/?p=8616>

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omellet
I stopped reading at the eReaders point. Ganz falsch.

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nickpp
Very flame-bait but a fun read nevertheless. Let the wars begin!

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philwelch
No, let's please not have that kind of nonsense on Hacker News. We used to be
better than this.

