Come see our latest creation

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shurcooL said:
iPad:
+touchscreen
+instant on boot up, no fans, no noise

Acer Netbook:
-no touchscreen
-30-60 seconds book-up, heat, noise

They're not in the same category. No one is stopping you from getting both.

But the iPad should be great for casual web surfing while sitting on a couch with its touchscreen interface. Using a netbook on your lap isn't as comfortable IMO.

Please find a netbook with a touchscreen for under $500. They're not as cheap as the regular netbooks.
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1. for casual browsing, i use my iphone 3gs(which somehow apparently costs apple more to make cause it is 599... gg on that one apple)

2. Looking at the thing, i bet it's just as uncomfortable as a netbook. You pretty much have to have one hand holding, and another moving around all the time. Unless you prop your feet up like a girl. It gets old, i've done it with a tablet.
 
Verge said:
1. for casual browsing, i use my iphone 3gs(which somehow apparently costs apple more to make cause it is 599... gg on that one apple)
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Fair enough, but what if you want a slightly less casual browsing experience? Something between the iPhone and a full blown desktop/laptop? That's where Apple are trying to fit this device in.

Whether or not it's worth it to you for the price is another question.

Just keep in mind that there are moms and grandpas out there who will love this as their primary "PC" to check email and surf the web once in a while. People for whom a real OS is too much maintenance, and others around them don't wanna hold their hand every time they turn on the PC and get a new virus or ask how to find the window they've just accidentally minimized, etc.
 
osalcido said:
At half the price it would be the price of an Ipod Touch... so... No..
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Which is why I don't own an iPod Touch. Apple can keep their price premium. What I'm saying is that at $500 minimum, the product is way too expensive. It's a convenience item, not a must have by any stretch of the imagination. Most people don't pay $500+ for a convenience item. Especially when you can buy a cheap laptop that will do more for around the same price. I'm sure there are plenty of people interested in something like this iPad, but at the pricing levels I don't think it's going to be as successful as Apple would like.
 
wtburnette said:
Which is why I don't own an iPod Touch. Apple can keep their price premium. What I'm saying is that at $500 minimum, the product is way too expensive. It's a convenience item, not a must have by any stretch of the imagination. Most people don't pay $500+ for a convenience item. Especially when you can buy a cheap laptop that will do more for around the same price. I'm sure there are plenty of people interested in something like this iPad, but at the pricing levels I don't think it's going to be as successful as Apple would like.
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But a lot of people do pay $500+ for convenience items. Check how many people here have 2/3+ monitor setups in the Monitor subforum, but I doubt it's really critical for their everyday life.

Suppose the enjoyment you get from using this device is higher than that from using a desktop PC (for some tasks). Imagine that it's a fun experience to use the device thanks to its friendly user interface and likely more stable OS, no viruses to worry about, etc.

After all, why do you think Rolls Royce exists?

I'm just saying, not absolutely everything has to be absolutely necessary and useful.
 
I'm gonna weigh in....

Personally, I totally want this. This thing will be awesome for reading in bed at night (I hate hardback books because of the tendency of the book to want to close), also browsing the internet in bed, or on the couch, and what not. I love the iphone interface, the multitasking thing doesn't bother me either. I have a macbook pro and a macbook so this is no notebook replacement nor is it meant as one. Yes, it is a non-necessity, but it will fulfill a role in my house.
 
DragonMasterAlex said:
If the iPad is like the iPod and iPhone, bootup is NOT instant on. Instant on is from STANDBY ONLY-and it's available on Windows or Linux just as easily. From OFF, the iPod touch and iPhone both take AGES to boot up.
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True, but the difference is that the iPod, iPhone, and iPad all use ARM CPUs instead of X86. ARM has significantly lower power consumption in a standby mode than X86, which makes standby a much more reasonable mode to leave the device in when you're not using it.
 
gwu168 said:
Wow, huge disappointment!
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For you, yes. (that's a very nice article morgrar, thanks!)

On a side note, you can get much more capable win7 netbook tablet with multitouch for slightly less ($484)
http://www.amazon.com/T91MT-8-9-Inc...f=sr_1_19?ie=UTF8&s=pc&qid=1264781038&sr=1-19
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Nothing against the T91MT, I really like it. But people already know about it, and they weren't that excited:

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1468295

The T91MT is probably more capable, but it is so at a great cost of usability. It's much less user friendly and "fun" to use, I bet. Apple polishes their user interface to an unbelievable shine that really stands out imo, making for an enjoyable usability experience. Usability > capability.

For some people the T91MT may be the better choice, but for many many more other people, the iPad will be a much better choice.
 
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Let me rephrase that. IMO, I believe that:

Fun/intuitive/easy to use + slightly less capable > Irritating/hard/slow to use + slightly more capable.

This is where Apple wins imo.
 
morgrar said:
As I mentioned yesterday in my post, this is like the Wii for computers, and low-and-behold, there's an article on TechCrunch that matches that exactly:

http://eu.techcrunch.com/2010/01/29/get-real-geeks-the-ipad-is-the-apple-for-mum-not-you/
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Superb article. Nails it imo.

The more I think about it, the more I'm inclined to believe that this could really be the start of something HUGE.

Can you imagine more people owning iPads than there are PCs + Macs combined right now (i.e. like the Wii)?
 
shurcooL said:
But a lot of people do pay $500+ for convenience items. Check how many people here have 2/3+ monitor setups in the Monitor subforum, but I doubt it's really critical for their everyday life.

Suppose the enjoyment you get from using this device is higher than that from using a desktop PC (for some tasks). Imagine that it's a fun experience to use the device thanks to its friendly user interface and likely more stable OS, no viruses to worry about, etc.

After all, why do you think Rolls Royce exists?

I'm just saying, not absolutely everything has to be absolutely necessary and useful.
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A Rolls isn't a convenience item, it's a luxury item and those are two different categories. Yes, plenty of people, like those here in the [H] forums will buy high end equipment and such, but we're a small percentage of the market in all reality. This product is a niche product that Jobs said should be a third device between a smartphone and a full fledged computer. I have to wonder how many people need this third device and how many people want to spend $500+ on it, that's all I'm saying. Personally I'd much rather have a more functional netbook that I could get for around $300.
 
shurcooL said:
For you, yes. (that's a very nice article morgrar, thanks!)


Nothing against the T91MT, I really like it. But people already know about it, and they weren't that excited:

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1468295

The T91MT is probably more capable, but it is so at a great cost of usability. It's much less user friendly and "fun" to use, I bet. Apple polishes their user interface to an unbelievable shine that really stands out imo, making for an enjoyable usability experience. Usability > capability.

For some people the T91MT may be the better choice, but for many many more other people, the iPad will be a much better choice.
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Very true and as I owner of a Dell XT why I'm frustrated that no one has bother porting smart phone web browser functions and apps to winodws 7. Seriously, it can't be that hard. If that gets done, the gap in usability will be drastically reduced.
 
shurcooL said:
Can you imagine more people owning iPads than there are PCs + Macs combined right now (i.e. like the Wii)?
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It could be interesting, but eventually, people will become very aware of the iPad's current limitations. There's going to be the "I want to play too" factor when it comes to the average person seeing another person using an iPad (like with practically any device -- I mean how envious was I when I saw someone using an iPhone for the first time?), but the problem is that it's a device that requires asking oneself "What would I use this for?".

The iPod's function is very self-explanatory. The ordinary Joe's going to buy a laptop because he wants/needs to do X on the go/on the plane/in the hotel room. This thing requires more of a hard sell -- people aren't going to go out and buy it unless they have a pretty compelling reason to do so. It's not super-expensive, but it's not super-cheap either.

It's an intriguing device, but it's also confusing. It's cool, but it's also "what?". You can't say many other products in Apple's history have quite fallen into the predicament the iPad's fallen into where Apple's trying to establish a need rather than filling an existing one.

But, yeah, it's cool. I'd buy one. It seems like a slick toy, and I see the potential of it. Right now, though, I'm thinking "yeah, but $500 for a toy?".
 
zaxour said:
I'm gonna weigh in....

Personally, I totally want this. This thing will be awesome for reading in bed at night (I hate hardback books because of the tendency of the book to want to close), also browsing the internet in bed, or on the couch, and what not. I love the iphone interface, the multitasking thing doesn't bother me either. I have a macbook pro and a macbook so this is no notebook replacement nor is it meant as one. Yes, it is a non-necessity, but it will fulfill a role in my house.
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I kinda agree, and I wouldn't mind using it for the purpose of browsing in bed at night too.

But, unlike the iPhone, this thing rotates in all 4 directions (even upside down), so I really hope there some way of overriding the orientation to make it possible to use it while laying on your side in bed. =/
 
shurcooL said:
Yeah, I admit, I meant iPad standby instant on vs. Windows cold boot (or hibernate).

Because face it, the iPad has over a month of standby time, so you will never turn it off on a day to day basis.

Yet no one keeps a netbook on for 30+ days in sleep mode, do they? This is interesting, though, as I'm sure a netbook could get at least a couple of days of battery time in sleep mode. =\ So why do I always turn mine off? :|
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I'm betting you won't leave the iPad on in standby for a month *ever*. The iPhone needs to be rebooted frequently because apps close incorrectly, or crash and don't release their memory, making the system unstable.

As for your comparison, come on, man! You can't make a reasonable comparison of one thing to a completely different thing. Compare like to like. As for how long a netbook will last in sleep mode, I can only speak from my experience with an Acer Aspire One running Windows 7 Professional. I can leave it in standby for about a week. Granted, I almost never do, but then again, I almost never reboot it, either.

Honestly, I REALLY wanted to be in love with the iPad. Sadly, since it's little more than a gigantic iPod, I can't help but feel utterly underwhelmed.

On the other hand, the Win7 slates demonstrated at CES appear to be unilaterally more functional, powerful and capable than the iPad, with most being rumored to drop at $350-400 price points. Hopefully we'll see more soon. What I'd like to see is if anybody will build one running Windows Mobile 7, which is slated to be revealed next month. Here's hoping there's not another round of disappointment, but I guess only time will tell :)
 
I'm not even going to touch this one, since you all know what my position on Apple's closed hardware model is. Any order you choose: Apple, sucks, USB, codecs, Windows Mass Storage support, Office, big Ipod, Steve Job's cadence, HP Slate, laptop, multitasking, $130 3G, Steve Jobs "It's awesome at browsing. It can really browse. Wow is it so much fun browsing. Wow look at me browsing. I'm really browsing and its really cool."

I'll say the design is pretty, and I love how thin it is, but a little "uncanny valley" type effect going on here: why am I looking at a 4:3 screen? What on earth will I use a 4:3 screen for. Heck even their promo materials show a lot of black borders; NFS:Shift in a "black border box", apps in "black border boxes". I'd rather buy a slimmer, easier to hold 16:9 device that makes use of the full screen real estate, than a 4:3 screen that loses 20% of its pixels every time you load up a cross-platform app.
 
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DragonMasterAlex said:
Which must be why Amazon, Borders and Barnes and Noble are doing so well? There are more bookstores *today* than their were when I was a kid in the 80's.
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And fewer libraries.

edit: And one last thing: I enjoy reading physical books, smelling the pages, feeling the texture, feeling like I hold in my hands something personal, made of the earth, that I can see the effort the author put into his work, how he carefully ordered the arrangement. I must be a dying breed, but I'm only 23 so I can't imagine that I getting so old that I'm developing technology myopia (more like macular degeneration). It's always possible that I've become a total fogy, but I just don't see the appeal of ebooks.
 
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akotlar said:
And fewer libraries.

edit: And one last thing: I enjoy reading physical books, smelling the pages, feeling the texture, feeling like I hold in my hands something personal, made of the earth, that I can see the effort the author put into his work, how he carefully ordered the arrangement. I must be a dying breed, but I'm only 23 so I can't imagine that I getting so old that I'm developing technology myopia (more like macular degeneration). It's always possible that I've become a total fogy, but I just don't see the appeal of ebooks.
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I don't know where you live, but I see larger, nicer libraries where I live than we EVER had when I was a child. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE paper books and own WAY too goddamn many of them. But ebooks are a *complement* to paper books, not a replacement for them. It's handy to have a fat stack of books with you in your pocket while standing in line or riding the train or being a passenger in a car.

The problem isn't that people read less--that's the biggest lie of our age (well, second biggest, the biggest is that Obama is meaningfully different from Bush), it's that what they read is predominantly *crap*. Anything from Stephanie Meyer qualifies.
 
DragonMasterAlex said:
I don't know where you live, but I see larger, nicer libraries where I live than we EVER had when I was a child. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE paper books and own WAY too goddamn many of them. But ebooks are a *complement* to paper books, not a replacement for them. It's handy to have a fat stack of books with you in your pocket while standing in line or riding the train or being a passenger in a car.

The problem isn't that people read less--that's the biggest lie of our age (well, second biggest, the biggest is that Obama is meaningfully different from Bush), it's that what they read is predominantly *crap*. Anything from Stephanie Meyer qualifies.
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You're right. I don't agree about libraries though, I haven't seen any library expansion were I live. Collections have been mostly stagnant for the 17 years I've paid attention. But I guess that's a regional question. Yeah I've seen a lot more bookstores crop up. But they're in vogue for the coffee and Dan Brown. Heck even Dan Brown thinks his stuff isn't great:D (I read that in a magazine interview, he was joking; I have a lot of respect for him).
 
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