"I used it for a day and a half and think that it will be an excellent couch companion PC"
and
"This version isn't a replacement PC for anyone yet, but future versions might be. You probably want to save your cash until then."
and I roll my eyes. If the casual browsing bit sounds good to you and you have the extra scratch, do yourself a favor and buy this thing now or you'll be screwing yourself out of 1-2 years of an awesome cutting edge experience.
I do agree with him that user profiles should be implemented, but his other complaints are nit-picky. I personally think the lack of Flash is a feature, not a problem, considering I have flash block installed on all my browsers. If Apple had included flash support, it'd be very unlikely that they'd have provided a flash blocker, so I'm actually very grateful that they made this decision. In my opinion, flash is only good for two things: games and videos; and I tend to avoid both of those things when I surf anyways.
As far as the keyboard goes, I can actually type on the damn thing almost as fast as I can my laptop keyboard, but that's probably because I'm so awesome. I do, however, often find it hard to get into a good position for typing, however, since I'm usually using the iPad in some obscenely relaxed pose.
I'm a total Apple fanboy and in love with my iPad though, so take what I say with a grain of salt.
I also roll my eyes when people compare it to a PC replacement. It's not, just like your xbox or nintendo ds is not a pc replacement. It's an entertainment device.
The problem is that we see web surfing and think it must be done on a Work Machine (tm). And therefore we also need to be able to edit word docs, answer our bosses emails, video conference on skype, etc.
Nope. It's about having some time to play games, read a book, browse the web, watch a video, glance through your pictures at a leisurely (singletasked) pace. If you expect it to replace a PC then just get a tablet PC or an android phone with a terminal. But that's not what most people want to do for fun.
Is the browsing experience really better than the iPhone, or is it just faster? There are things that annoy me on the iPhone, but screen size has never been one of them. I wish my phone had the computing power of the iPad...
Definitely better... No question. I actually prefer it to the desktop because of the double tap to center and zoom your screen on a paragraph of text or a picture. Using the iPad for a while and then going back to the iPhone makes me feel like the phone is a toy. This device is actually letting me read some PDFs that I have been putting off for a while because reading PDFs on the computer screen is just so damn inconvenient. Reading it on the iPad is very sharp and overall a good user experience.
I do wish this thing had competing web browsers like chrome and opera but safari is ok for now.
There’s just something about surfing the Web
using Safari on the iPad. It feels different,
somehow. Apple’s marketing pitch says “it’s
like holding the Internet in your hands,” and
while that’s a little bit cheesy, it’s not
far off. There’s just something different about
holding that Web page in your hands, rather
than seeing it on a desktop or laptop PC, or on
a tiny iPhone screen. Tapping on links doesn’t
feel the same as clicking on them with a mouse.
It’s a good feeling.
"I personally think the lack of Flash is a feature, not a problem, considering I have flash block installed on all my browsers."
That's contradictory. If you think that the lack of Flash is a feature, then why do you have it installed at all on your computer? The mere fact that you use Flashblock means that while you don't always want to see Flash applets, there are cases in which you do want to see them.
I occasionally watch a video if the description is compelling enough, but more often than not the only videos you find are humorous or better off being text. I enable flash so rarely these days that I might as well uninstall it. Also, the majority of the videos I run across are on YouTube anyways, and other than them the three sources of video I use the most are netflix, Hulu, and TED, all if which are iPad compatible.
"My iPad has no 3G, therefore it has no GPS. But applications were constantly asking me for permission to use my location. This seems like an oversight: if you don't have a location sensor, don't ask! Even the built-in Map app asked me for information that it could not possibly have."
I posted a nearly duplicate comment (now deleted). My iPad has successfully located me in the Maps application in several different places. It's actually quite accurate.
Accurate and fast! I had location services turned off because it's slow on the iPhone 2G. I just fired off Maps, hit the crosshairs, and ZAP. It was right there. 3 seconds later, it corrected by 30 feet. Right on the money!
There also seems to be some caching going on. The maps application in my iPod touch could track me accurately when walking around the city – with Wifi turned off. It seems to download the locations of all the Wifi routers in your area as soon as you have a internet connection, when you lose that connection it can still find out where you are (it needs only the MAC addresses).
I ran a test this morning, running the Google Maps application as I traveled to work. Wifi-only geolocation continued to accurately position me to the nearest intersection for about 3 city blocks after I left my home access point (and without connecting to any other access points for network access).
So it's got a cache of nearby access points it can use for positioning even without a network connection.
About 4 blocks away, it mistakenly placed me on a hillside 4 blocks in the opposite direction from my starting point -- but the local topography makes it very possible it caught a momentary signal from a faraway access point still in its cache.
From that point on, it provided no additional updates to my location -- even though I was following a 'directions' route previously called up, stepped through, and zoomed-on. From this I conclude: it precaches Wifi points near where you are when initially using location, but not along planned paths or all map areas viewed.
The Wifi doesn't have to connect to know where you are. I'm pretty sure it's not doing anything fancy like caching -- it's just occasionally looking at available wireless routers and locating from their broadcast.
Sometimes the location manager will also just report the billing address of your credit card if all else fails. And hey, a stopped clock is right twice a day.
In a way this is a good sign. You don't have a game changer unless you can take it far enough to get a Slashdot contributor to wonder what it's really useful for.
That said, it's a roll of the dice. It's just like the original Apple computer. It's a great device looking for its killer app. Steve pushed it so far, there is no known and tested current use case to fall back on.
Now it's up to those of us who see the potential to implement the future.
Finally let me talk about the device itself. It's heavy. I mean, surprisingly heavy. The specs say that it is 1.5lbs, which sounded very light on paper. For the first few minutes, I liked the heft; I felt that I was holding a solid, well-crafted item in my hands. But then I started trying to figuring out ways to type. ...After a day of heavy usage, I felt a little sore.
Get the apple case. It's very well made and thought out. For one thing, it increases friction, so typing on your lap is a whole lot more comfortable. I can type full speed this way. Doing it now.
Speaking of typing, has anyone here tried out the new Dragon Dictation app? Sounds like a natural for the iPad (I'm waiting for mine - got a preorder of the 3G).
I played around with one for a few hours. Typing was far better than I thought for the form factor. Would I use it to write a novel? No, but that's not the point. I was able to type little things like forum responses reasonably well. There cases where the form factor is actually better than my netbook, like standing (It's not great, but it's better.)
The lack of flash, usb and a webcam are pretty much the only things that prevent me from buying one. It's too bad, the price isn't half bad, the device fells pretty good, I didn't really have any problems using it.
But those things are the easy stuff and they aren't even present on the device and they effectively lock me out of most of the daily web sites I use, connectivity to devices without buying some ridiculous adapter connector, and the ability to use it for the one thing that it seems to be absolutely designed to do, video chat.
It's interesting he mentions Flash being a problem. I've yet to see the blue lego block. Not even once. It really depends the type of sites you visit. For some people the lack of Flash is a big deal, for other people it's not at all. Unfortunately this requires the customer to know a bit of technical background on the sites they visit frequently to judge how much of a deal breaker the lack of Flash really is and they won't easily know if the site serves up H264 to iPads based on the user agent.
Unless something has changed with the iPad from the iPhone I would wager that if you want to do the scrolling in a frame like he was talking about that he could do a two finger scroll which should break the focus from the main page to the captive frame.
"Do you know what iPods have now? Wireless and more space than a Nomad! Not only was he correct about the iPod, but his comment directed Apple on the course that ultimately led to the iPhone. You fanboys owe Rob Malda for everything."
Time to coin a new unit: the milliTaco. 1000th of the innovation necessary to flummox a Slashdot editor. Thought to be the quantity of innovation required to make a game changer.
My take: It is both awesome and meh, at the same time.
The web browsing experience is really fun and satisfying in a way that's different than on a desktop, laptop or iPhone.
The Google Maps app is much nicer because the view window is so much bigger and it can show so much more detail.
The Book reading thing was also pretty meh for me.
Verdict: I'm much more likely to buy this for my mom than myself, for reasons similar to what others across the web have said already. I can see it filling a niche, but for me, those niches are all already filled well or well enough that I can't justify the price. But I see how it could be mind-blowingly awesome and a great fit for some folks. Just not me, not right now.
"I used it for a day and a half and think that it will be an excellent couch companion PC"
and
"This version isn't a replacement PC for anyone yet, but future versions might be. You probably want to save your cash until then."
and I roll my eyes. If the casual browsing bit sounds good to you and you have the extra scratch, do yourself a favor and buy this thing now or you'll be screwing yourself out of 1-2 years of an awesome cutting edge experience.
I do agree with him that user profiles should be implemented, but his other complaints are nit-picky. I personally think the lack of Flash is a feature, not a problem, considering I have flash block installed on all my browsers. If Apple had included flash support, it'd be very unlikely that they'd have provided a flash blocker, so I'm actually very grateful that they made this decision. In my opinion, flash is only good for two things: games and videos; and I tend to avoid both of those things when I surf anyways.
As far as the keyboard goes, I can actually type on the damn thing almost as fast as I can my laptop keyboard, but that's probably because I'm so awesome. I do, however, often find it hard to get into a good position for typing, however, since I'm usually using the iPad in some obscenely relaxed pose.
I'm a total Apple fanboy and in love with my iPad though, so take what I say with a grain of salt.