Wednesday, January 27, 2010

iPad Premieres




Check out the book interface on the thing.

And the video flacking the new toy from Apple, here: iPad.

The techno crowd will undoubtedly carp about what isn't there, but it sure looks way cool to me. (And I'm glad I didn't get a Kindle ...)

9 comments:

Jay said...

I will have to see it and play with it - I am old fashioned when it comes to reading a book - it could be from eye fatigue ala too much screen time.
I wasn't to interested until I saw the demo.
I am still saving up for a new iMac however. no big hurry, my macbook is doing just fine.
My first thought truly was, "Hey, my 5-year-old would dig that..."

Daniel Keys Moran said...

I like it, at first blush, and I'm not an apple fan generally -- never owned a Mac, could take or leave the iPhone. But I think they hit the sweet spot on the curve with this thing -- $500 for a device that does everything this thing does is reasonable, as is $829 for the fully-configured 64Gig version with 3G.

I wasn't planning on buying one, but I may have changed my mind.

J.D. Ray said...

I, on the other hand, am a more serious Mac guy. Between Jen and I, we have three Macs, two iPhones, an iPod or two... I'm excited to get my hands on one, and I'm fairly certain I'll have an iPad by this summer. Well, presuming I have a job by then. Fingers crossed, and all.

I went as far as to put up a blog post of my own about it. Don't mean to hijack your blog, Steve. Posts of my own are rare, so I thought I'd mention it.

People are bitching about the lack of multi-tasking. I'll wager that the next version of iPhone OS, probably due out this summer, supports it.

All hail the Jesus Pad! (just kidding)

Daniel Keys Moran said...

Yeah, the two lacks -- Flash & multitasking -- they could add with a single patch. Wouldn't surprise me at all if the next iPhone OS has both, but just for the iPad.

The name's stupid, but as with so many other things, people will get over that.

Kindle DX -- 10", mono, 4GB storage, reads books, 3G ... $489

iPad -- 10", color, 16GB, reads books, plays music and movies and games and runs apps ... WiFi, $499; 3G $629.

I'd rather have one than a Kindle DX, let me tell you.

William Adams said...

In a lot of ways, its a realization of what Apple was originally trying to create w/ the original Macintosh, an information appliance (the screen resolution is a bit more than 2x larger, from 512 x 342 up to 1024 x 768), and when sitting in the Dock w/ the keyboard it looks an awful lot like a 128K Mac.

Wish it had a stylus, pressure-sensitivity (a la Wacom) and handwriting recognition, but I guess this will just spur me on to put a solid-state drive in my Fujitsu Stylistic and to get Mac OS X running on it.

William

Old Weird Ken said...

Here's an article from CNET.com about the 10 things a Netbook does better than an iPad.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10443246-1.html

I'm sticking to Netbooks for now.

Steve Perry said...

Ken --

Not going for the same market, I don't think. My primary use for it would be a reader, with email and net cruising running behind that.

I'd be surprised if it wasn't running flash -- and jailbroken -- by the time the second versions hit the market ...

Unknown said...

My issues with it are that it does not have stylus input, no pressure sensitivity and no handwriting recognition.

I had hoped that when Apple entered the netbook/tablet market they would use some of what they did right with the newton. Alas that is not to be. I forgot how Steve Jobs Hated the Newton.

I wanted this to be able to take notes (handwriting) and sketch as well as listen to music, etc. and this will not do that, so will not be getting one.

I own a first generation kindle. I have a friend with a new one. I prefer my old one to his because mine has a SD card slot and you can get to the battery easy to replace.

No card slots in the Pad either. :(

for me it is just a big Ipod Touch, and I have a normal one of those.

Steve Perry said...

There is a term I came across after I got my iPod Touch -- jailbreaking. This allows users to use 3rd party apps without going through Apple.

You can download the software lots of places, and a how-to-install-it off YouTube.

Not that I would ever do that, of course.

Voids the warranty to do this, of course, but you can restore your device at iTunes to its original configuration at any time.

If the iPad will use the iPod/iPhone apps, then you can book it that there will be patches galore once the thing hits the streets. I'd expect Flash to be one of 'em, officially or unofficially.

Handwriting recog probably won't be far behind, along with a multitude of players for most of a Mac's OS software.

Apple is paying attention, they'll buy the best of these and offer them, since a lot of folks want to stay legal -- as long as it doesn't cost too much.