I guess PC World is tasteless too.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/187966/um_apple_about_that_ipad_name.html

Taste and class are things of the past.

bad taste is infinitely better than no taste at all ;-)

The clip linked to in the first post was a Mad TV skit from 2007.
Do you think they will sue Apple for copyright infringement for stealing the name without compensation?
:-)

Mike

mike! apple sue?

That was very funny! The choice of name is under-whelming. For the price you would expect something more full featured.

I am an Apple fan, not a fanatic, but a fan and I am underwhelmed as well by the product. The price is definitely less than expected and I am sure some of the new UI will be very cool, but why would you buy this instead of a laptop?

What am I missing?

Courtesy of Gizmodo:
8 Things That Suck About the iPad

Mike

I'm a not fan of Apple but do buy Apple products when needed (kids) ;-)

iPad name is going thru a challange because another major electronic manufacturer started producing an iPAD in 2002.

I like the multi-touch color screen for a reader but there is a lot of things that could be improve for a earth moving product that Steve claimed.it is. But $499 for color vs a DX, I probably go the "iPad". Perfect for all those pod people(science-fiction characters) ;-).

I don't understand why so many people were jumping up and down with excitement even before the announcement.

At this stage, the product has been used by a small number of journalists at the launch, for minutes, not hours.

It will take some time before we know what this thing is good for and where it doesn't fit.

Here are some suggestions from a filmmaker in another pro forum:


Interactive time code slate and on-set logging tool.


And here's a completely different kind of view from a geek (John Gruber on Daring Fireball):


There was a meta-message in today’s Apple event, not about the iPad in particular, but rather about Apple as a whole. Jobs’s brief preamble included a bit of extra emphasis on the fact that the Apple now generates over $50 billion per year in revenue.

A different analysis compared to most other journalistic views I've seen so far, but it will probably soon be repeated by everyone else.

And I expect the iPad to put another nail in Flash's coffin.

Mobile video is becoming more and more important, and Flash is a major CPU hog (aka battery sucker).

HTML 5 just got a boost...

And HTML 5 is likely to be about 50x more secure (because it is video-centric rather than "do everything-centric") compared to Flash which is surpassed as a hacking gateway only by PDF.

I was expecting a long post from our resident Apple fan boy extolling all the virtues of the new wonder of wonders from Apple, the iPad. I didn't have to wait long.

Here is a link to an iPad article by someone that hasn't been brainwashed by the cult:

http://gizmodo.com/5458382/8-things-that-suck-about-the-ipad?skyline=true&s=i

>>>And I expect the iPad to put another nail in Flash's coffin. <<<

More likely it will be the undoing of this crap pad thing and shows just how far out of touch with reality you have gone. Flash cannot be replaced by any other form of video because it does far more than just video. html5 will take a while to get here and be a viable option and even then you won't be able to do 5% of what you can do with flash already.

>>None of us could shut up about it. It feels impossibly fast.<<<

Of course if is fast when it doesn't do anything other than the very basic stuff.
Can you play a game on it ( a flash game perhaps ), can you edit HDV?
I had a computer running at 33ghz back in 1991-92 that could probably do more than this thing today.

Any smart person will buy a laptop. You would truly have to be retarded to buy an iPad.

Like I said:

It will take some time before we know what this thing is good for and where it doesn't fit.

I have no plans to get one, and I can see that this is not for everyone.

There's currently about a 20:1 ratio of negative to positive "reviews" of the iPad, but like I suggested, it is too early to even say whether the glass is half empty or half full. This of course doesn't prevent journalists as well as professionally opinionated bloggers to say things before they have complete information. It's men's form of gossip, really.

And there is a huge wave of negativity in our country right now. People want progress, but change frightens them greatly.

This is of course nothing new to the science of psychology. When we are fear-driven, we try to minimize what we have to deal with. It's one of the oldest responses and fundamental to being a human (although it may possibly exist also in other animals; it seems every year there is a new scientific discovery where it turns out that there is less to separate us from the other animals than previously thought).

So those who like Windows are "enthusiasts," but those who see some value in OS X are "fan boys?"

Perhaps the computer industry is catching up on the auto industry, with refusal to consider the virtues of any car not owned by the "opinionator."

Still, I see more willingness to discuss the merits of the technology in say Lotus vs. Porsche automobiles than I see in the discussion of say Linux vs. OS X vs. Windows.

Tolerance is a big step for many, and it is easier to say, "The sports team from my area is better than the sports team from your area." Regardless of the facts.

"I had a computer running at 33ghz back in 1991-92"

No, you had one running at 33Mhz.

It was way ahead of its time :-) and according to Jobs still at least 5 times slower than any Mac of that era.

It's great for old farts like me because the smart phone screen is just way to small. Oh, wait you can't make calls. What? No usb port, just apple apps that you have to pay for. No flash for web browsing and not even a Camera?.

Seriously, I just don't get it. It's between a smart phone and a net book with a pretty slim feature set. that doesn't fit the bill at the 4:3 ratio screen and not 16:9 I still can't believe.this. Even the Zune and PSPs have thought this out.

Okay, at least it has a cover for this while you lug it around right...or is that extra money too.

I too was hoping for more than this.

Someone told me it would make an excellent gift for a Wife.

My response; Yes, and while she is beating you about the head and shoulders screaming, "YOU COULD HAVE BOUGHT ME A PAIR OF DIAMOND EAR RINGS FOR THE SAME PRICE OR LESS!!!", what are you going to do?

Seriously, this is a product looking for a reason to exist. It really does not fill any need that something else will do, and usually do better. It really is a non-product.

I am sure the Apple zealots will buy it, but I will go ahead and put my neck on the line and say it is ultimately going to fail in its current incarnation. If I am wrong, then take one and freely beat me about the head and shoulders with it.

The current reaction is reminiscent of the iPhone introduction a few years ago.

Everything was wrong about that product from a peanut company that had no experience with phones and would quickly get crushed by the established manufacturers.

Today it's got something like 90% of the world's smartphone traffic.

I didn't buy the first generation iPhone because the sound quality was mediocre.

The 3G had great sound, so I got it to see if I liked it as much as the reviewers I generally trusted.

The result? I haven't been happier with any product I have ever bought.

But if my first priority in life was texting, then I'd probably get the best Blackberry model which allows typing at more than the 45 wpm or so that most iPhone users can achieve using the on-screen keyboard with minimal practice and instruction from someone experienced.

I just love to listen to the Apple staff stand on stage an use all the verbage over and over and over and well you get the point, I can only handle some one saying "its so simple" or Amazing or geat or so easy or OHHHHHHHHHHHHHH just on and on.

They are trying to brainwash us all into believing it is all that and more. Do they have a department just writing super wonderful things for them to say on stage, it must take a long time to make all this stuff up... :-) But I still want an Imac ( OOOOO they got me)

We seem flooded with the tech that's built in the hope that we'll find a use for it. Apple might be at the pinnacle of this but they're far, far from alone. Even when we find a use for it there's still the question of useful is the acitivity.
Just take something as simple as SMS. Indeed it does have it's uses but the extent of it's productive use is pretty small. I recall an analysis that showed something like 98% of text messages are simply chatter. Even discarding the chatter the useful feature of a text based messaging system is it can be responded to when convenient. and yet 99.9% of SMS users seem compelled to reply immediately.
I recently needed a new mobile phone and I'll admit for a long time I was sorely tempted by a smartphone and came pretty close to buying the latest HTC Android. Sanity took over though. I now have a very basic, extremely cheap Next G flip phone. The battery life is around 7 days, speech quality is excellent, the keys are large and black with big white numerals. Handsfree using just the phone works very well. Well it will playback video, it does give me internet access and I bought a 4GB microSD card for it thinking to load a showreel or some such into it. Further thinking makes me realise this is pointless. Who wants to show a showreel on a tiny screen with horrid sound and doing so while holding the thing. Much better to use dedicated device of any ilk.

As for the iPad. The only part of Job's presentation I saw was where he says a laptop is no good as an eBook reader because the keyboard gets in the way. As I've been looking around for an eBook reader this got me interested but that lasted for only a few seconds until I realised it uses an LCD screen not E Ink. Epic fail but worse Apple seem determined to tie it into THEIR store. Back to the Kindle I guess. It's now available and supported down here but only the model with the smaller screen which is a bit of PIA for the good woman whose eyesight isn't so good.

I think your previous comment about people being afraid of change is very apt. We seem to have had a decade of change with no progress. We've been flooded with new tech that has done very little to make real improvements in our lives. Availability of medical services is still a problem, our financial systems are in dire trouble, the health of our planet is in decline. I suspect a lot of the attraction of much of the new tech of the last decade is the escape it provides from the real world.

Bob.

We seem to have had a decade of change with no progress. We've been flooded with new tech that has done very little to make real improvements in our lives. Availability of medical services is still a problem, our financial systems are in dire trouble, the health of our planet is in decline. I suspect a lot of the attraction of much of the new tech of the last decade is the escape it provides from the real world.

I nominate that for Comment of the Decade.

Very well put.

well said bob!!! agree 150%