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[Arachno-capitalist]

http://media.freescale.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=196520&p=irol-newsarticle&ID=1370004
This thing is everything the ipad is not. Camera, removable storage, not locked to itunes/ATT, flash enabled, and multitasking.
"The solution is intended to enable a second generation of smartbook products with prices less than $200..."
Summer 2010.

[Choop]

too bad it looks like that.

wait.
hang on a goddamned minute.

they can sell these things for two hundred bucks but the OLPC project can't build theirs for a hundred bucks each? something's fuck*ng giraffey.

[Lister]

I'll be excited about the iPad when I can figure out something I want to do with it and that thing is something it actually can do.

So, like, three years from now when HTC makes one that's running Chrome.

[Choop]

i don't think that's as far off as you think it is lister

[KeithHernandez]

I don't really understand this.  It is not as good as a laptop and it doesn't fit in your pocket, so where does its purpose come in?

[jaydub]

I'm inclined to agree.  It looks like its bigger than a Kindle/Sony-reader too.  Readers can get away with being the size of a paperback because that's what they're replacing.  Even the "cheap" iPad is pricier than a Kindle.

[CortJstr]

What we all want is a PADD. So I say Apple just needs to suck it up, license LCARS, and give us a freaking PADD already.

[Thomas Pain]

I don't really understand this.  It is not as good as a laptop and it doesn't fit in your pocket, so where does its purpose come in?

Dom Joly will probably buy several of the things.

[Drygioni]

Dom Joly will probably buy several of the things.

He lives in my village

[Thomas Pain]

I don't really understand this.  It is not as good as a laptop and it doesn't fit in your pocket, so where does its purpose come in?

seriously though, the purpose of this thing is that it's a particular size and weight.  You can compare it against a laptop, but such a comparison only goes so far.  To the extent that you don't care about the size and weight of a device, then yes, you can compare it to a laptop.  Many users do care a lot about size and weight, however.  So really, it's better to compare it to an ebook like the kindle.

Also, besides size and weight, the shape of this thing is another attribute that many people will care about.  it's flat.  almost all laptops are not flat.  I know IBM makes one where you can spin the screen around so it is flat, laying face up over the keyboard, but that's several grand and bulky and heavy.

And you can't compare a tablet to a phone because of the screen size.  If you want a big screen size, but you still want as much portability as possible, then you want a tablet.

There are so many applications where a large screen is desirable, but at the same time portability is critical.  reading a book is one such application.  using a GPS in your car is another.  If you've ever tried to use a laptop with a GPS program in your car, you know it's simply not workable.  other applications:  reading a newspaper, surfing the web... who wants to surf the web on tiny screen?  there are hundreds of thousands of web sites that people use on a regular basis.  Many of these sites will have more value to many people if people can access them without having to walk across the room to sit down in front of the computer, or get in a posture such that they can occupy their lap with their laptop, or even have to own a computer at all. 

technically you don't NEED a tablet.  technically, it was also possible to program VCRs to automatically record a show, and while many people bought VCRs partly with the intention of using that feature, virtually no one ever did use it.  Human impulse and creativity and expression doesn't fit in a box or a cubicle.  It can't be chained to a desk top workstation.  People are mobile creatures.  People also have varying degrees of organization... yes if you are organized about it you can maintain a home with an office and a computer on a desk or a laptop and a charger...

this thing about wireless chargers that use AC magnetic fields to charge the device so you don't have to plug any wires into the device you're charging... they're ridiculous... no one needs that.  yet, if given the chance, people will use them, and in doing so, that's one more barrier overcome... these barriers to a seamless personal expression experience, they seem minor maybe, but they all add up.  And people have money to blow, so even the most subtle of barriers is worth several hundred if you can offer a device which overcomes that barrier.

[KeithHernandez]

See, I get that, just don't necessarily understand how this helps.

[a lot of shit i took out]

I had to buy a new power cord for my macbook recently and it was like $80 (thats how they get you).  I had to replace that shit on the dell I had previously too.  The last thing you mention sounds heavenly, actually.  Having to move around that fuck*ng cord is like my only complaint with my current laptop.  Seems like it would make what you want more possible too, when paired with a laptop.

Just, like if it is not really portable, and you have to have it in your hands or on some stand to watch stuff on it, how.. I don't know, whatever, just don't have a use for this I guess.

[Thomas Pain]

you just described your use for it.  With an ipad, you could move it around, sit down and show someone a video, a web page, a vacation photo, whatever, without having to drag the power cord with.  yeah you can do that with a laptop too, but the laptop is heavier, and has less battery life.  This thing can last probably twice as long as most laptops on a single charge.

but geez, Apple's design philosophy is idiotic in some ways... like how it takes so much work and technical expertise and therefore expense to replace the battery in an iphone.

I think a major application for many people will be that the ipad runs Apple's OS, and is therefore more reliable than Windows.  At $500, it's about half the price of the cheapest Mac laptop.  Yeah it can't do much, but what it can do, it will do well.  I'd say the fact that Windows completely sucks at almost everything is the major driving force behind single-purpose hardware.  Anyone who is literate understands that in theory software should be able to do anything, but in practice, you have to be extremely literate to get that out of Windows.  If you aren't literate it's only a matter of weeks before your Windows experience starts to go to hell with trojans and viruses and pop-ups and unwanted add-ons and outright crashes.  Not so with Apple products.

I was just at this guy's house helping him with his laptops...  he had two laptops and two of those stupid Acer little mini laptop things, all running XP Pro.  It was all f-ed up beyond belief.  His level of computer literacy was clueless beyond clueless, meaning it was about par for a PC user.  The thing about Windows is the whole environment actively strives to hold your literacy back, so you're not going to develop any sort of understanding of computer architecture if you're using Windows.  Weird erratic behavior that's obviously caused by a faulty hard drive (complete with SMART bios warnings on boot) are perceived by the average user as on the same level as the browser's default home page being inexplicably changed as the nth malware toolbar is installed by the user. 

I went over there thinking this guy was slightly classy, that he might offer me some pizza or something, but no, the kitchen counters were overflowing with dirty dishes that looked weeks old, I rummaged through some drawers looking for a non-existent silverware drawer and found dead fruit flies instead... I was like WTF...  The wife was off at work and the kids were well behaved, but the selection of TV programming - Simpsons followed by dumb-ass sitcoms... man, Rosanne looked good compared to the sh@t they put on TV these days.  Or ALF.  What ever happened to ALF.. or the muppets... Even Sesame Street programming has gotten dumbed down in recent decades.  Anyway... a cockroach skuttled across the floor.  The big screen TV was one of those old projection style TVs, and it was bashed in from the kids having run into it so many times, so the projected image was this weird ghosting of the same image repeated as different overlapping primary colours... all out of focus.  Yet no one seemed to mind.  One of the laptops had a F*ed screen, all cracked, again from the kids, and he was trying to load Windows on it despite a faulty hard drive, for one of the kids...  I'm like...  sure why not...  you're giving your kids Windows, you may as well go all the way and give them a laptop with 1/4 of the screen dead due to cracks running through it.

I felt sorry for those kids.  The most this family had going for it was his new android cell phone.  That was the one ray of light anywhere in all of that, the one artifact that might not completely suck, that might stand out as an example of what technology can maybe do, and maybe be.

yeah so I googled and found that alt-f10 gets you into a recovery menu on those acer mini-laptops.  It pulled up a cloning program that looked a lot like Ghost.  So we ran that, but halfway through, it failed.  Oh well.  I was like, hey, get a USB hard drive and a USB CDROM drive, and maybe we can use clonezilla to clone your working ACER's hard drive onto the dead ACER's hard drive.  He'll have to be doing that without me, however.  I got a life I need to be living.

[littlefallsmets]

It's a giant iPhone, that isn't a phone, that you can't multitask on, that you can only use Apple-approved programs on and you can't modify basically any of the programming on any level.

It's a Kindle you can write e-mail on and that plays that Apple approved media.

Boo to that.

[Thomas Pain]

yeah, but keep in mind, as god-awful as the ipad is, the competition is worse, or if there's something better out there, they apparently have used up their PR budget.

sure you can buy a kindle which is better for the specific application of reading books, but the idea behind buying an ipad is that it features more than the kindle... print, video, photo, and audio multimedia, internet browsing, and runs most iPhone OS apps...

You can't even do a lot of the stuff the ipad can do on a laptop.  The ipad runs iphone apps.  many iphone apps do stuff that laptops can't do.  there you go.  has there been a baby shaking application on the ibook yet?  No?  Okay, then what's your point exactly?  When I can shake a baby to death on your ibook, come show it to me.  until then, I don't wanna hear this uhhhh iphone is pointless uhhh  ipad is pointless uhhh uhhh anymore.

sure, you can say it's basically an iphone minus a lot of features, but it has a bigger screen.  but that bigger screen means that it can do stuff that the iphone can't do.  pretty soon you're gonna see all kinda apps for the ipad that wouldn't really work on the iphone's small screen.  All sorts of apps targeted at kids, for example...  kids will love the ipad.  You gonna give your 4 or 5 yr old your laptop and say 'here go have fun with this game app?'  no.  it's not workable.  the laptop is too heavy, and not enough battery life.  I mean, sure, you can do, it's just, the ipad will work better for so many situations. 

y'all need to put yer friggin' myopic egos aside for a minute and consider that there might be other people out there who use computers for other things and in other ways than you do! ! ! !

y'all would be like, in response to the idea of people using the telephone for socializing 'that's the dumbest idea, what a waste of bandwidth.  the telephone is for business applications only.'  That's what people who used the phone initially thought about it.  Because it was stuffy head business people who used it.  The phone companies initially discouraged people for using the phones for socialization.  After a while the realized that business was not the main application of the phone, that they would find a much bigger market in socialization application.

-- edit
 
I'm sorry I used the word friggin' that was uncalled for

[AugustWest]

Or maybe Apple isn't infallible.