Buy on the Rumor, Sell on the Fact
UPDATE: datacharmer at Bluematter thinks visually.
Bruce, yesterday:
Unless you have had the experience of using an advanced smartphone it is hard to explain how transforming it is to have the Internet in your pocket, if I have a question about anything it is mostly as close as my left pocket. But like the iPhone the Tablet is a lot more than a combined phone/usable web browser, it is a host for Apps, millions of them. And it is the Apps that are the game changer. Because the possibilities are quite literally endless.
Sarah, today:
iPad?! Really?! REALLY? Gosh, I’m sorry I no longer have a Nook now. They would have been great partners.
The iPad, now available in Light, Maxi, and Super (8Gb, 16Gb 64Gb)? As Tessa Dare said, are there NO women at Apple who could have given them the heads up (HA) that this is a BAD NAME?…
This isn’t “standing on the shoulders of Kindle.” It’s giving the Kindle half a nod from across a ballroom full of other people you’d rather talk to….
What about onboard social networks, email functionality, or notation from inside iBooks? Wouldn’t that be a key feature to intregrate with the endless onward wanking about Pages? For example: writing a report… and easily with a single gesture including both the source material and the citation using iBooks and Pages?
I realize that reading isn’t the utmost important thing for everyone else, but come on now! Productivity in all forms includes printed material. The lack of interaction demonstrated in iBook makes me hope for other reading alternatives on the iPad (DEAR GOD THE NAME). Color me underwhelmed in a big, big way.
UPDATE II: Brad piles on:
But ffs, it can’t handle flash, and it doesn’t have any way to access media not on its own HD, no disc drive, no usb port in. That’s fine for a phone but not for a potential media player. Apple has finally made something I have no interest in owning.
I tune out complaints of the “why doesn’t it do X” variety, when X is something that can be implemented in software. The only really surprising (hardware) omission is that of a webcam.
If your sane the only way you can get through the state of the union address is by playing a drinking game. Hereis one that is sure to get even the most alcohol tolerant drunk off their ass…http://reason.com/blog/2010/01/27/sotu-drinks-and-links-play-alo
My money is on crediting the stimulus is the number one hit, with lying about healthcare coming in a close second.
You can get an Archos 60gig media tablet running Windows 7 right now for $550 USD, and it has a camera. It has multitouch, you can actually run real world applications on it.
You can even install iTunes on it, and plug in your iPod or iPhone and sync it.
But I can guarantee that Apple will sell more of their unit than Archos will theirs. What a freaking nutty world.
The entry point for the iPad is $495 and it comes with adapters to import photos from an actual camera or a SD card, why I would want to take photos from a tablet with no view function baffles me.
The archos may be a fine tablet. Does it come with built in GPS? Integrated oh a map function? Does it come with th built in functionality of an iPod?
Frankly I don’t know what Ken’s point was or what the point of this comment is, absent a full run down of comparative features this is ridiculous. Do markup features in a Kindle really outweigh all the capabilities you get here like seamlessly resizing graphics and maps? Does th ability of the iPad to be a pretty cool game machine out of the box count for nothing?
I could go on and will tommorrow but I don’t find some snarkish hysterical review revolving around vaginal hygeine products particularly compelling. “Ha,ha Jobs said pad!” WTF?
I don’t know who this Sarah is but no one expected this product to just be an e-book annotation and reporting reader, it is instead like I suggested a way to keep the internet in your possession anywhere you go. Want to update your blog on the go? Without ostentaciously opening a lap top? Now you can. Want to just look something up? Or find the nearest Fed Ex? Or check your Facebook page? Are you two clicks from that on an Archos? Can you do it at all on a Kindle? How is that movie playback thing working for you?
Blinders.
What Bruce said.
Most critiques via tech specs (e.g. ‘no disk drive’) miss the point. Apple has a huge iPhone OS base that’s voted with its wallet for not caring about that stuff. There’s no reading other than that they’re deliberately ceding the Linux-on-netbook market on the elementary grounds that there’s no money there. A 1.5-lb information appliance with a screen that betters most netbooks and runs a Unix-like OS under the hood is not obviously unmarketable. Price matters, for sure, but they clearly beat expectations on that front.
Brad is a moron on this.
First there is an adaptor that takes SD disks to transfer photos and a different adaptor that takes those transfers direct from digital cameras, there is so reason to believe those won’t be avaialable to transfer other data types.
Second even the iPhone has full access to files stored on the web, say in your .mac now .me space.
Rush to judgement by critics here.
The inability to run Flash is the result of some deep licensing clash between Apple and Adobe and not a technical barrier per se. Apparently there are a bazillion forum threads on this on respective tech sites, you can seek out the truth or semblence thereof there. It is not like Apple just overlooked this out of carelessness.
Here’s John Gruber:
Apple COO Tim Cook… told BusinessWeek, “We believe in the simple, not the complex. We believe that we need to own and control the primary technologies behind the products we make, and participate only in markets where we can make a significant contribution.”
Apple now owns and controls their own mobile CPUs. There aren’t many companies in the world that can say that. And from what I saw today, Apple doesn’t just own and control a mobile CPU, they own and control the hands-down best mobile CPU in the world. Software aside (which is a huge thing to put aside), it may well be that no other company could make a device today matching the price, size, and performance of the iPad. They’re not getting into the CPU business for kicks, they’re getting into it to kick ass.
They’re Microsoft and Intel rolled into one when it comes to mobile computing. In the pre-taped video Apple showed, Bob Mansfield said of the iPad, “No one else could do it.” Only Apple.
Unix-like is a misleading statement, it’s BSD under the hood, which is as UNIX as you get.
As for “on the go” neither the Archos nor the iPad have 3G so the on the go part is going to be limited in either case to places that you have access to a wifi hot spot. And yes, two clicks (or rather taps) will quite easily get you to fedex lookup or facebook or arbitrary whatever in 7 (hello jumplists).
I don’t know what a Kindle does, it’s not a device that has ever interested me. I’m not honestly interested in either of these devices either (I do own a different Archos product). I like devices that are either extremely specific in purpose or are sufficiently powerful and configurable to be considered an actual computer. The Archos at least falls closer to that latter category (a little underpowered IMHO, but the equal or better of the iPad).
This post got me thinking about the history of the PC/Mac wars and man those PC people sure carry a grudge, maybe from the iconic Big Brother commercial that showed them as mindless proles. GET OVER IT. It was a commericial, nobody forced you to spend the next thirty five years validating it!
What is striking about the war is how petty the PC side. When the Mac came out it was ridiculed for using a 3 1/2″ hard-shelled floppy. Why? No body seemed to know, apparently if you didn’t carry around a limp, easily damaged 5 1/2″ floppy you weren’t a real man. Or something. Same with the mouse. How ridiculous! Why you had to take your fingers off the keyboard to use it. Hmm well you kind of had to take your fingers off the home keys to use the numeric key pad, and mostly to use the F-Keys, or for that matter the arrow keys to move your own cursor, so what’s the dif? And then God Help us it was the clear God given obvious advantage of C:/ over a GUI. Once again Real Men were in CONTROL of the COMMAND LINE. I am the GREP master! Move over or I’ll RMDIR your ass until your USR/LOCAL/BIN directory quakes in fear. Or would if UNIX commands weren’t case sensitive.
The whole thing was and remains silly and behavior that was more suited to the decades old Ford vs Dodge truck spilled over into geek-world. Look there were always three legitimate reasons to prefer PC to Mac. One you likely used a PC at work. Two a lot of game titles were either not available or not optimized for Macs. Three PCs component for component were generally cheaper, in relative terms. In absolute terms people should cry when they think of what they paid for that PC Junior or Mac IISI compared to today.
I don’t know how the iPad is going to stand up against the Kindle as a dedicated eBook Reader and I doubt Sarah does either since she had to be speaking third hand. But I bet the iPad is a hell of a lot better media player, and full color web-browser, and GPS enabled map reader, and compass, and photostand, and clock radio, than a Kindle because near as I know the Kindle doesn’t have any of the functionality to start with.
It is a computer that you can hold in one hand and use standing up, lying down in almost any environmental condition, it is a nine by seven window into the internet whose physical limitations are only those of distance to a WiFi station and hours of battery life. Forget about the specific capabilities, the form factor of the iTab and the copy-cats to come will be category killers, the clamshell design of the typical laptop will soon be seen as quaint. Why carry around a physical keyboard when you can just plug your tablet into one in the airport lounge?
BTW Sarah is not the only wit that ‘Pad’ is hilariously funny and calling it the iTampax. Jeez get out of fifth grade, you guys must be laugh riots at the partners meeting at the law firm “Hey can you grab me another couple of legal pads!” “Ha, Ha he just said ‘pad'”