Via The Daily What via Fark of course
On the keyboard
It’s the first thing I thought about: the angle for your wrist reading your iPad on your thighs is the worst ever to type something. The only way to type easily on a flat surface is to have it laying.. Flat on a desk. In this situation, having the screen on a flat position is awful for reading. I don’t see a lot of that comment on the web (actually beside Lâm I didn’t see this comment often).
On the multitasking, relation with the processor
Yeah I don’t think it’s a big deal either. I prefer being able to multitask for sure but in a casual setting, when I’m not working I don’t use three or four applications, I usually use only one: media player, game, etc. I don’t close everything because I can on a laptop but in all fairness, I’m monotasking in these cases.
What I find crazy is reading an article on Engadget saying
“There’s no multitasking at all. It’s a real disappointment. All this power and very little you can do with it at once.”
If it’s blazing fast with just one application, be sure that it’s not the same experience on multitask. It’s linked that it’s fast and not flexible. Android does more vs the iphone therefore is not providing the exact same seemingless UI flowing because with widgets and 7 screens refreshing together while downloading an app and tweeting yeah, it’s not perfect on the old smartphones based on it (though the 2.1 update makes it much better).
I mean a tech blog this size not understanding how Apple thinks, how they always put the user experience joy bells and whistles first, doing the teenager geek who wants everything is not what I expect from a professional article on a new device hands-on.
If you want to multitask, buy another tablet computer. It exists since 2001.
Same
On the noiseless experience
People focus on the mobility of this “new” device but I like to point out that it’s also about the noise: smartphones, tablets are totally noiseless computer. If they were doing a little spinning annoying noise while on use, I’m pretty sure everybody would rather be on a desk with a big screen to read emails. With noise too but at least your sight thanks you.
It’s awesome to be in the silence of a bedroom and reading without being disturbed by the “computer noise”. It’s not just about the portability (because of course, you lose a lot going from 24/17/15” to 4,5 or 9,7” for reading). It’s also about ears freedom.
On games
The iPad seems to be a perfect game machine we were I think, a lot dreaming about. And yet Apple doesn’t care more than just bringing a fucking car race and a fps on stage. They have the same pattern all the time: do a device focused on experience delivery, contact publishers. Of course they go for EA and Gameloft, making so much money on iPhone.
But the iPhone is pretty popular in the game industry and in the geek/tech culture not because it’s cool to develop for (it’s not), but because the device is awesome and made super weird and unique games some major hits. The day these indie devs quit for another platform providing more support and more openness, the Apple touch device serie is going to be much less trendy.
I still can’t believe how Apple reacts about games. Steve must have a problem with them. Computer games made Microsoft in the 90s (DirectX). Computer games made Apple since 2007 (iPhone). Computer games made Commodore in the 80s (Amiga). Computers get popular in the mass market with games since always. They don’t with iWorks or Excel.
Pushing about how it’s cool to read books on a multitouch device in 2010 is more than meh. It’s kind of dumb.
On Apple politics
No camera, closed system.. I have no problem with people getting crazy and wanting to buy it like they want to pee so bad even if they know the 2G is going to have a camera. It’s business. But I’d rather have Apple be sure that I would not buy a 1G without camera because I know that every fucking netbook has one since day one. I’d rather have Apple be sure that I have some brain you know. The same with accessories sold at insane prices.
For Flash, I don’t care as a user. I hate Flash as a user. On the other as a developer I know how Adobe’s product is pretty neat, allowing fast prototyping and stuff like that. And I know that HTML5 is totally not ready yet, so the web without proprietary plug-ins is still a dream.
Some people think that it’s sad that the iPad is a closed platform (I guess they beefed up the protection against jailbreaking?) and that if they were starting their career today, they may not because they could not code and hack their computer like they want.
Well, I guess a teenager today who wants to code would buy two netbooks for the price of the iPad, install Linux/7/OS X and would play with them and learn to code. I’m not worried about how future generations are going to produce software because the world is full of computers.
It’s amazing how in a week like this you almost end up thinking that no, there’s only one computer company in the world.
And they are launching a product with which “you can browse the web with it”.
Saying that without laughing out loud in 2010, only Steve Jobs can.
One reply on “<insert obligatory iPad thoughts>”
I can’t point for now what really nettle me with iPad for now, maybe (as a visual artist) that it have a fucking limited 1024×768 resolution screen despite the true hight quality of LED system, and that he doesn’t even try to compete on the real nervous point of the Kindle -true readability via e-Ink-…
I read here and there (Alex Payne note) that iPad is a "personal computer". But it’s not. I’ve checked, you cannot find a sentence on Apple wesite calling iPad a personal computer, it’s a "device". And that’s what it is, just a device, an true XL iPhone without (or add money to) 3G, camera and so on. But as Alex says iPhone have the legitimacy to be simply a device by the history of the phone industry, iPad don’t. As you say my friend, they clearly put their feet plainly in the netbook warfield… but netbooks are real personal computers, the same for Tablet PC.
So if the iPhone is plus than a simple phone, iPad is minus than a simple notebook, in a way. I’m not sure but maybe that’s what bother geek community.