iPad

[Ronstar]

Went to the Apple Store last Sat - we had to wait in line to get in. I'm impressed with the Ipad, but didn't pull the trigger. I need something to make sketches and hand notes. I think I found an app for that, so I'll be back to get one.

 

[explanade]

There's also suppose to be a special pen available for doing handwriting.

 

[Bestwifeever]

The iPhone and now the iPad really have affected our culture. Here's a story on vending machines that look like giant iPhones. The interesting thing to me is that the iPod/Phone/Pad hand actions that manipulate the screens are second nature now to a lot of people:

iPhone-like vending machines - chicagotribune.com

From the story:

...Kraft's Diji-Touch resembles the menu on an iWhatever and offers images of those chips or candy bars. Tap it, the image enlarges. Brush the screen, the item swivels, allowing a peek at ingredients or nutritional information. "For 20 or 30 years nothing much new has happened with vending machines," said Kelly Brennan, a Kraft marketing manager. "This is the next step."

,,,,Your first instinct is to swipe your hand across the front, and flip through the brands the machine holds. "...We have kids walk up to it (a handful of the machines are being tested in shopping malls) and try to enlarge the images with their fingers. It's incredible how much Apple has influenced our basic actions."

 

[FIREd]

My favorite handwriting app is called "penultimate". It is fantastic.

 

[RonBoyd]

And once you are fully trained:

YouTube - lang lang playing flight of the bumblebee...on an iPad

 

[explanade]

Actually, those touch screen gestures are patented or Apple is trying to patent them.

They've already sued a rival phone manufacturer and if they succeed with that suit, you can expect more of the same.

 

[harley]

Went to the Apple Store last Sat - we had to wait in line to get in. I'm impressed with the Ipad, but didn't pull the trigger. I need something to make sketches and hand notes. I think I found an app for that, so I'll be back to get one.

My Sony eReader has the sketch and handwriting capability. It's pretty nice. Useful.

I just bought 3 iPads for the video test lab (I have a little (tiny) business buying unusual equipment for the company I used to work for), and have to admit to being impressed. Being a world-class cheapskate, though, I'll wait for the eReader to die before shelling out for the iPad. Hopefully the price will drop by about half by then.

 

[Nodak]

Actually, those touch screen gestures are patented or Apple is trying to patent them.

They've already sued a rival phone manufacturer and if they succeed with that suit, you can expect more of the same.

Apple has had a history of actions like that for at least the last 25 years.

 

[explanade]

One, Apple is the target of a lot of patent suits, often by parties who've never produced anything but managed to get a vague patent. For instance, they just got sued by a company which has a patent for a portable computer with wireless access to the Internet. The company never produced even a prototype of the thing. They got the patent in '99.

Two, the patents you get, you have to defend. If you let one party use patents without paying royalties, then other parties will as well, in which case there's no point in having gotten the patent in the first place.

 

[Ronstar]

My Sony eReader has the sketch and handwriting capability. It's pretty nice. Useful.

I just bought 3 iPads for the video test lab (I have a little (tiny) business buying unusual equipment for the company I used to work for), and have to admit to being impressed. Being a world-class cheapskate, though, I'll wait for the eReader to die before shelling out for the iPad. Hopefully the price will drop by about half by then.

I'm waiting for the price to go down too - if not I'll get an etch a sketch - thats really what I want

 

[Katsmeow]

Sigh.

After dithering about it, I decided I would leap for the 3G iPad. By that time I knew that if I ordered online the fastest I would have it in my hands (if I paid for overnight delivery) was 5/10. So I decided to try to pick one up in a store. The stores around here have been out of stock.

So today DH went over to the apple store in the mall next to his office. He called to tell me that if I wanted one that the store had in stock a 64GB 3G iPad. Did I want it?

Yes. I was so happy.

A few minutes later he told me that when the sales clerk went to get it another clerk had just sold it to someone else and it was their last one. They think that they will have more tomorrow or the next day. So he put me on the waiting list.

Sigh, again.

 

[DangerMouse]

Resistance is futile, you may as well just go with the flow and buy one of the darn things.

 

[IndependentlyPoor]

Gaack! I've had my iPad for less than a week and I have already spent $30 on books and apps. Resistance is indeed futile.

 

[explanade]

So some feedback on which apps. and books are good would be good.

 

[harley]

The free ones, I would guess.

 

[WanderALot]

I have a second-hand iPhone and like it a lot, but the closed nature of Apple really bothers me. Also, in the interest of protecting the user and making things easier, they simply remove functionality. Their Airport Extreme router is a great example of this.

I went to the Apple store last week and tried out the iPad and absolutely loved it! 1080p video was just gorgeous on this thing. I just wish this thing had a USB port where I could plug in a memory stick or a SD slot. Instead, there is a proprietary adapter to USB connector that can be used to hook up to a camera-only! I'm sure someone will jailbreak this so that other external devices to be connected.

 

[explanade]

It doesn't support 1080p video I don't think.

They can hack the software but doubtful it would support various peripherals unless someone writes drivers for them.

 

[FUEGO]

I have a second-hand iPhone and like it a lot, but the closed nature of Apple really bothers me. Also, in the interest of protecting the user and making things easier, they simply remove functionality. Their Airport Extreme router is a great example of this.

I went to the Apple store last week and tried out the iPad and absolutely loved it! 1080p video was just gorgeous on this thing. I just wish this thing had a USB port where I could plug in a memory stick or a SD slot. Instead, there is a proprietary adapter to USB connector that can be used to hook up to a camera-only! I'm sure someone will jailbreak this so that other external devices to be connected.

These parallel my general concerns about the iPad. Very expensive to get one, then very expensive and time consuming/cumbersome to get compatible peripherals and apps to do what I already do on all my other computing devices.

I have a nice $200 netbook that suits my needs very well. It can do a lot of things that the iPad can't do. And the netbook obviously can't do a lot of things the iPad can do.

Take photography for example. I pop the SD card out of my camera, pop it into my netbook's SD slot, double click slideshow from the auto-run menu, and in about 15 seconds I have an instant slideshow for the day's photos and videos for family and friends to watch, albeit on a 10" screen. WAAAY better than huddling around a 2.5" LCD camera screen and flipping through pics and vids. Sure, sure, I know, you can do this with iPad. Just get out your adapter for the SD card or Camera adapter, then get out your case or stand so you can prop up the iPad, and 5 minutes later, once you got it all set up (and your friends/family have moved on to more interesting things) you can watch your slideshow all by yourself!!

The one thing I love most about the iPad is the rave reviews. This means other manufacturers (Dell, HP, Asus, etc) will produce cheaper, better, faster, PC-world compatible touch screen tablets very soon. Maybe then this cheap bastid can afford to get a $200 ipad knock off.

 

[explanade]

The one thing I love most about the iPad is the rave reviews. This means other manufacturers (Dell, HP, Asus, etc) will produce cheaper, better, faster, PC-world compatible touch screen tablets very soon. Maybe then this cheap bastid can afford to get a $200 ipad knock off.

Remember before the announcement the rumors were that iPads would be around $1000?

It seems the other manufacturers had to scramble to make $500 touch-screen tablets. HP is said to be canceling their Slate tablet because performance and battery wasn't up to snuff, not to mention Windows 7 wasn't as slick on a tablet.

Lenovo put out a "convertible" Ideapad but it's gotten weak reviews for being slow.

So it may be later this year at the earliest before someone puts out a competitive product. And it needs to come from a big company, none of these startups which may not be around next week to support the product after the sale.

 

[calmloki]

....

The one thing I love most about the iPad is the rave reviews. This means other manufacturers (Dell, HP, Asus, etc) will produce cheaper, better, faster, PC-world compatible touch screen tablets very soon. Maybe then this cheap bastid can afford to get a $200 ipad knock off.

Plenty cheap here too - but still not seeing the Iphone knockoffs that are anywhere comparable to the original. Might be a long wait for an Ipad clone.

 

[audreyh1]

I went to the Apple store last week and tried out the iPad and absolutely loved it! 1080p video was just gorgeous on this thing. I just wish this thing had a USB port where I could plug in a memory stick or a SD slot. Instead, there is a proprietary adapter to USB connector that can be used to hook up to a camera-only! I'm sure someone will jailbreak this so that other external devices to be connected.

The iPad is just not designed to work like a computer with peripherals. Just load the photos from your computer onto your iPad using the USB cable that comes with the iPad. No need for special devices or cables.

The iPad won't replace a desktop or laptop for using peripherals like cameras and printers and external drives, etc. - it's not intended to do that.

Audrey

P.S. The "proprietary" nature of Apple products never bothered me at all. That's what it takes to make them so user friendly. The fact that they support third party software developers makes it open enough for me.

 

[FUEGO]

Remember before the announcement the rumors were that iPads would be around $1000?

It seems the other manufacturers had to scramble to make $500 touch-screen tablets. HP is said to be canceling their Slate tablet because performance and battery wasn't up to snuff, not to mention Windows 7 wasn't as slick on a tablet.

Lenovo put out a "convertible" Ideapad but it's gotten weak reviews for being slow.

So it may be later this year at the earliest before someone puts out a competitive product. And it needs to come from a big company, none of these startups which may not be around next week to support the product after the sale.

I don't mind waiting a year or two or three.

 

[FUEGO]

Plenty cheap here too - but still not seeing the Iphone knockoffs that are anywhere comparable to the original. Might be a long wait for an Ipad clone.

I'm no cell phone person (my throw away tracfone has been forgotten on the kitchen counter all week), but I think the Droid Incredible is getting pretty rave reviews and looks to be better in many respects than the iphone.

 

[FIREd]

The iPad is just not designed to work like a computer with peripherals. Just load the photos from your computer onto your iPad using the USB cable that comes with the iPad. No need for special devices or cables.

The iPad won't replace a desktop or laptop for using peripherals like cameras and printers and external drives, etc. - it's not intended to do that.

Audrey

I think you will be surprised at how much you can do on an iPad. Assuming you use you laptop like most people do (email, internet, word processing, banking, calendar, playing games, watching videos, storing your photos, etc...) the iPad could easily replace a laptop. It has completely replaced mine for sure.

The one adapter I use a lot is the SD card adapter which makes it easy to transfer my photos from a camera to the iPad for sharing. The adapter is tiny and light, no bother at all. I love the virtual keyboard on the iPad and I think that an external keyboard is superfluous (my Apple wireless keyboard works great with it though). Even a dock in unnecessary IMO (I still don't have one and don't plan on buying one either). Printing is easy and requires no external adapter, cable or driver. You just need to have a printer on the network you are sharing and you can connect to the printer via wi-fi. No need to install drivers as you jump from printer to printer either. In the end, if you compare the size and weight of a netbook + power adapter to the size and weight of an iPad + power adapter + SD card reader, the iPad still wins by a huge margin. As for external drives, yes you can't connect them directly to your iPad but if you use cloud computing services like google docs, external drives are mostly irrelevant anyways (who wants to lug around an external drive?). In the odd chance you need to transfer docs directly from your desktop, it can be done easily with no cable and no adapter using simply a wi-fi transfer.

 

[FUEGO]

Firedreamer,

I use google docs for most of my commonly accessed and frequently edited word docs and spreadsheets. But there are a number that I keep in excel only due to the nature and complexity of the spreadsheet. Can ipad run an excel app or an excel-compatible app (open office??)?