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Meet the Apple iPad
Just in case you were far from the internet this afternoon and didn’t realize, Steve Jobs announced Apple’s latest product – the iPad – a tablet computer. Kind of like a big iPod but with more, you know, stuff.
Looking over my wish list, I’m actually pretty pleased. The iPad has ways to do all of these things via accessories, including a sweet keyboard dock to make actual typing quicker and more productive. I’m happy for the newest version of iWork – with a la carte pricing to boot! The price point is also far better than I’d expected. At $499 for the base model, it nicely fills the gap between iPod and MacBook. I think too, the features fill that gap as well.
The iBooks application looks killer. I love the idea of the interface being controllable via font selection and type size and am charmed by the page-like look to it. I don’t want to scroll – I want to flip pages. And it looks like Apple’s designed this eReader functionality perfectly. (Of course, I have to ask, will iBooks be available for the iPhone as well? Like a mini iBooks?)
But, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little bit disappointed, and I’m not sure exactly why.
No camera?
What about chat?
And only 64GB at the high end? I’d blow through that with a few HD movies.
It’s all the hype. It’s reading that it would be a game-changer. Well, it certainly could. I’ve long envisioned our desktops truly being more like this than laptops. Plug it in and dock it when you need to do some serious work, take it out and use it anywhere for fun or to browse.
But to really do that, it needs a few things. More storage, or the ability to connect to external hard drives. It needs to be able to run more standard applications. What about writing and testing code? It’s not OS X, so I’m assuming there’s no terminal window. And how about a camera for video chat? We’ve got ‘em on our laptops now. Is it a memory handling issue? Is that going to be in version 2?
I don’t know. For what I’d use this for, it would have to be a lightweight version of what I do on my laptop. I’d love to have something like this as our second computer. And it does like 95% of what I’d actually use. I just wanted something…more.
(And just in case I’m not clear… yes, I still want one.)
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January 27th, 2010 at 3:50 pm
I totally agree. Have heard that you CAN connect to a hard drive, but still. Waiting for version 2. Hard to do, but I did NOT regret the wait for the Kindle 2 or the 3Giphone…
I’m applying liberal amounts of chocolate to soothe my sad.
January 27th, 2010 at 3:56 pm
You know what’s most frustrating to me? That it’s so *closed*. Apple still wants to control every facet of the user experience. If it could connect directly to a NAS and play your media over WiFi, rather than having to store it, it would be more and more useful.
But that’s not good business.
It is about as “cool” as it can be while still leaving 100% total control in the hands of Apple (until you jailbreak it), and it will definitely arouse interest. I just long for the day when people will scratch their heads and say “why don’t they let me do all this right out of the box? Why do I have to hack it?”
We’re starting to get better “cool” things, but I really wish we had some timeline for actually having “open” things.
January 27th, 2010 at 4:37 pm
I need something smaller and lighter than my laptop to travel with when I give lectures. This comes with Keynote. I think it might be my solution. But like every Apple device, I wait till at least the 2nd generation. There are always big bugs in 1st gen Apple thingies.
January 27th, 2010 at 8:29 pm
I still want one too, though I’m trying to convince myself not to be an early adopter, and to wait until the price goes down/hard drive space/capabilities go up.
ps. Don’t feel too bad about locking yourself out. Mom and I locked her keys in the car (in the ignition, in the on position so she could open the sunroof) at a knitting festival. I’m grateful the Unique Sheep didn’t rib me in my next club package
January 28th, 2010 at 10:49 am
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Amy Swenson, michellehp and Larry King, Technology Hot News. Technology Hot News said: "Meet the Apple iPad" and related posts: indigirl: a life in stitchesJust in… http://goo.gl/fb/mnSQ #technews #tech [...]
January 29th, 2010 at 4:54 pm
apple should have a lot better… in the first place i dont see a market for tablets anyway, there are computers and iphones and gaming consoles… yes,k ipad is a really cool gadget to own but could have been a lot more useful
May 26th, 2010 at 4:44 pm
[...] the iPad was officially introduced, I wrote a bit about being slightly disappointed, without knowing exactly why. Although the iPad had just so much, it wasn’t exactly what I thought it would be. It was [...]