Since its appearance on the app store, nothing has yet come along better than TomTom's product IMO. It currently has "HD" graphics to support the iPad, without buying another app, and one can assume they'll eventually add 2x graphics for the new iPad as well.

They'll have a number of sales throughout the year and their apps can often be picked up for $10 to $20 off.

Thanks for the heads up. As far as I know, they are not saying its a limited time promotion. And I believe Apple does enforce that iPad plans must be month to month (for the US at least). I'll read through the agreement when the iPad comes in, as all the account setup is handled directly on the data enabled iPads. If something does look strange, Apple has a no questions return/exchange policy, so I can always go that route if needed.

The hotspot feature for me will be useful due to the month to month, as it will let me use the higher LTE speeds if I'm traveling. With a much larger battery, it will last longer then my phone acting as the hotspot.



I've been happy with Motion-X. It's one where maps are downloaded vs having them all, so you do need data. However, it can cache the full route ahead of time over Wifi if you want. I think they are down to $10 a year for traffic and voice guided navigation.

I haven’t checked for a couple months but for an Android (sorry really getting off topic now) device I’ve not found anything that is any good without a data connection.

I tried NAVIT, which was free, and it was B.A.D.. Also a couple others that were just as bad.

If I use my Android for navigation I use Google maps. It is getting a little better and you can download small maps. Hopefully they will go al the way and enable full map downloads. My old GPS is dying a slow death so I hope someone gets in gear and develops a decent app. If not I’ll have to shell out money, and continue to lug around another device.

It's not just to do with the RGB depth, because how far that reaches into the available gamut depends on the backlight type and purity, amongst other things. All 24 bit tells you is that it can attenuate the white backlight through red, green and blue filters with 8 bit resolution each.

This page seems to have a good summary:

http://compreviews.about.com/od/monitors/a/LCDColorGamut.htm

70%-ish NTSC is normal for most emissive displays, and some LCDs where power isn't an issue. Portable electronics have tended to lag because you can save a lot of battery by limiting the backlight power.

The more I read about the display, the more confident I am that no one else is going to have anything similar over the next 12-18 months. I see that the highest resolution 10" tablets are currently 1280x800... I don't see them even moving up to 1920x1080 any time soon.

The iPad is unbeatable It's extreme, but I think pretty fair and accurate. The iPad is set to marginalize all other products the same way Microsoft did with Windows.

Slightly off topic, is why Apple continue to beat the poor AppleTV with the hobby hammer instead of doing the same thing there as they've done with the iPod and iPad. The iPod didn't achieve dominance by being first. It didn't do so by limiting its playback support to a single source of music. If Apple tried, even a little bit, to make the AppleTV so much better than everything else out there, I think it could become a legitimate income source.

The content owners in the video space are very different and harder to work with.

That's absolutely true. But the iPod was on its way to domination well before Apple got involved with any content owners. And that's something they didn't do with Apple TV. There's no support for the common formats of the day, AVI, MKV, etc..

Could be, but unless Apple changes a few things, I won't be buying another one. I own an iPad 2, and, while overall I'm reasonably happy with it, there are a few things that annoy me.
1) I want a file browser utility! Finder or something else, I don't care, but I want to be able to manage my files and copy stuff from/to it.
2) Added to that, I want a USB slot. Mini USB or regular, I don't care, but I want to be able to connect a stick to it and browse it without having to buy additional adapters.
3) Flash. I don't care if Apple says Flash has become obsolete. Every day I stumble onto Flash only sites and it's downright annoying not to be able to browse those websites just because Apple made a religeous decision that every webdesigner should use HTML5 from now on. 'Solutions' like eg. Photon browser are not real solutions don't solve the problem at all.
4) I read a lot of news/forums online. I usually do this by clicking on all the articles/posts I want to read, opening them in a separate tab and then read tab by tab. On my iPad, those tabs are NOT rendered in the background like the are on my desktop. That's annoying because instead of having all the articles 'ready to read' I still have to wait on them getting rendered when I jump from tab to tab. Android does this without a problem, so I don't see why this wouldn't be possible on the iPad.
5) I want Apple to open up their App Store so browsers like FireFox and Chrome would be allowed. While Safari isn't bad, I like to have the choice.
6) I want to be able to change the layout of the keyboard to my liking.

These are only a few of my gripes, but the most important ones. I also think the new iPad is overrated. Sure, the new screen will be nice, but if there's one thing I've never complained about with my iPad 2, it's the quality or resolution of the screen. And the CPU is a but faster. Big deal, it's a next generation, it's supposed to be faster. And a higher resolution camera? Whoopee. Just what I was looking for. But not really. I think it's a true shame they didn't put Siri on it. Now that's something innovative!

The way things are looking now, I'll be skipping this next iPad. And if Apple doesn't change a few things, the generations after that as well. (but I'm not so naive to think Apple give a damn about my opinion)
This isn't supposed to be a rant or an anti-Apple post because I do believe they've made a few nice products, some of which I own. It's just that I hate to see the way they cripple their own products because of some sort of 'vision'.

You realise that even Adobe has given up on mobile Flash now, right ?



That would be nice. At least Safari keeps the contents open and live now, it didn't used to even do that.



Chrome isn't even available for 99% of Android devices...

And I do hope that Firefox mobile is better than the user reviews suggest:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.mozilla.firefox&hl=en

The lack of background rendering of tabs drives me nuts. That is probably my biggest complaint about the iPad (other than iTunes).

I think the lack of USB is ridiculous

I think an SD slot would be more useful to more people than USB. A dedicated USB port on this kind of product seems rather pointless to me except in very niche circumstances. A standard USB *HOST* port, because that's what's being asked for, is also thicker than the iPad itself.

But aside from the port - because it can be solved with an adapter, what products are then going to be connected to it? Those will require software and I'm pretty confident that what exists in the OS is rather minimal in that regard.

I could not be happier that Apple had a hand in helping to rid the world of Flash. Their choice was most definitely not philosophical.

Thankfully for Apple, none of the points mentioned above have slowed down their sales and aren't likely to in the future. A few have a chance of being rectified, but some will never be.

Don't get me wrong, there's a lot I would also like to see changed or added to the iPad for personal reasons, but I don't pretend that any of them would help Apple's market position or their sales. Just stuff that I would find useful to satisfy my own needs/desires, including a file browser which was the first point above. Better inter-application file/data sharing well, including the ability for apps to hand out access to a file store, the same way the system prompts for access to system services. Before tackling any of the points above there are also so many changes/fixes needed in Apple's own software, which I find severely lacking in so many ways.

All of this is more general iOS than iPad-specific though. But Android products wouldn't satisfy any of my desires because the experience is so sub-par that I'd toss the device in the bin within minutes. All Android hardware is also sub-par, be it phones or tablets that they'd almost be binned even before turning them on. I suspect Apple sells so many iPads because most consumers out there share, at least partially, my opinion on this matter. I've never seen an Android tablet in the wild outside of a store display. Until Windows 8 products come out, there's really no one else in this game at all and I'd say that analyst-estimated market share figures are quite off the mark in the favor of Google.

The new iPad, curiously, has exactly the same clock speed as iPad 2, 1GHz. Just published today via some benchmarks from Vietnam. It's also got 1GB of memory. And everyone knows about the screen, for which a matching resolution elsewhere will require a 27" display. I can't state how significant a technology milestone the screen is.

I only have one iPad in the house right now and it's pretty much my 2.5 year old daughter's computer. Well suited for that. I still don't need or find terribly useful a tablet for my own personal daily use. Not unless, as I've said before, it's one of many dedicated vertical applications for which I'd need a dozen or so iPads.

The difference is that it was trivial, even back in the day, to convert your audio content into digital form (it just used to take a little longer). The iPod was just the best hardware around for playing that content back.

It's much harder for the average user today to convert their video content into digital form. Even with DVDs, teaching the average user to use the relatively easy to use Handbrake isn't really feasible. It's not like iTunes, where they could just put in their CD and drag the tracks to their music library.

What's worse, in my mind, is how Apple has been moving away from a user's own content. It was difficult to "train" my mother with the idea that she HAD to leave her computer on all the time AND leave iTunes open. I set her Mac Mini to launch iTunes at startup, and I'm pretty sure I found some way to keep it from being closed. All so she wouldn't get all the way downstairs, get all comfy in front of the TV, and realize she couldn't watch any of her stuff. That's especially including home videos.

The Apple TV is a great product, but it's so incredibly limited. It's really just a window into iTunes with a little Netflix thrown in.

Nobody has figured out the video side of this yet.

Oh, and don't get me started on the whole "we at Apple are so awesome for giving you 1080p now." I should be used to this whole "this technology is stupid until we say it isn't" attitude from Apple, but it still gets me every time...

While you said the iPod was "the best hardware", there was the other major aspect of it's success. iTunes. That program helped make it trivial as you said to rip and encode a CD, along with eliminating the need to manage files. Users simply ripped a CD, then plugged in an iPod. Syncing ensured they had their music. This is Apple's approach, try and sell a complete solution, not just pieces of it. The iPod would have never shipped from Apple had they not also had iTunes (or in the case of the initial Windows version, the 3rd party solution they used for a bit).

The other aspect that helped is that iTunes came with the iPod. For our crowd, searching for, finding, and possibly registering shareware is also trivial. It was more difficult for the average consumer though, especially in an era with malware concerns.


This setup with the computer tethered to the AppleTV is the old vision Apple had, where the computer sits at the center of the "digital hub". In a pure Apple setup, with an Apple TV somewhere on the network or a router, Wake on Demand can at least allow some power savings, since the Mini could sit asleep. Not ideal, but better then being on 100% of the time.

Moving forward though, Apple has no way of bringing in users own content if it happens to be a DVD, thanks to the DMCA blocking a potential iTunes ripping like solution. Sure, we all can go grab Handbrake, but Apple can't ship it unless they want to be sued out of existence. (*Edit, relevant Ars story about a vendor bending over backwards to try and meet licensing requirements, and still losing a lawsuit) So their only other solution is to try and sell people on buying the content directly from Apple in a digital form. Music they were able to offer that ripping bridge before people switched to digitally acquiring new music. That digital content is still "yours", but the burden of having to maintain it in random files on your drive is slowly being removed.

Home videos are a little clunky right now, because there is no iCloud syncing of them, yet. iCloud in Apple's mind is what is replacing the older "digital hub" and it's still a work in progress. The current "Apple" way is to share your home videos out somewhere. In the past this was via MobileMe, and they also currently support YouTube and Vimeo. If you sign in to an account, then AppleTV will show your files, including the private ones. I know, it's not the most ideal, and I'm not trying to defend it, simply explain it from the perspective of Apple.


Interesting that a statement of "we think 720p is fine today" said in the past is turned into Apple somehow saying 1080p was stupid. Yes, Apple has engaged in misdirection in the past, but I can't recall them ever insulting higher resolution. Apple is, and has been for a long time a highly conservative company. They aren't going to move onto something until they feel they can offer it in a great way. Sure, the A4 processor in the initial AppleTV could play back a certain file at 1080p. It however couldn't play back a 1080p file at a reasonable bit rate, while also maintaining a reasonable file size that could be downloaded or streamed over a common broadband connection. The newer A5 has a hardware decoder capable of handling more complex H.264 algorithms, thus they can offer 1080p with a reasonable quality without bloating the file size too much. Ars has a great rundown on this.

Cost is also a factor. Sure, they could have shiped an AppleTV earlier capable of 1080p, but the cost would have been higher, when people still whine about current Apple prices. Add in AVI and MKV support with who knows what codec involved, and you now also move towards needing a dedicated general purpose CPU. Something that both increases the cost more, and makes the device consume more power. Apple preferred to go the route where they could offer a small $99 brick that at full tilt, uses less power then some devices in standby mode while still providing content people could be happy with.

To be somewhat blunt, it sounds like you bought the wrong product. Apple does continue to sell laptops that have USB, support Flash, expose the file system, and allow any 3rd party application. Including one that is just slightly larger and heavier then an iPad. I personally don't see Apple ever meeting your demands for the iPad. Neither do I see Ford meeting my demands that a Focus be able to haul a 2 ton trailer

Apple's vision for the tablet is that it is a different device. It's not meant to replace a laptop, it's meant to add a new device into people's lives that they may benefit from. A Kindle also isn't a laptop, and didn't do anything new compared to a laptop. It simply allowed people to read digital books in a nice form factor, along with adding a store to acquire more. And the devices share something similar, they try to approach computing from a task based view first, instead of a general platform upon which computing tasks can be performed. The Kindle hides the filesystem as well, because Kindle users don't care about "BOOKX3284.MOBI", they care about reading the newest best seller. Apple believes that for the tasks on an iPad, an exposed filesystem is also unnecessary. This is born out of the difficulty the mass market continues to have with filesystems in general. Microsoft, Apple, Google and others all see this, and all attempt to mask the complexity in varying ways across their devices and services.


(Sorry for the out of order replies in flat mode, going backwards today it seems)

True, I was just simplifying it. And of course, it didn't initially come with iTunes on Windows and still sold a ton of units IIRC.


How do I do this? I have never seen this mentioned (and I'm pretty sure I've mentioned it on the board before). Not only is it not ideal, it's not at all user friendly if my mother can't figure it out.


I wasn't really thinking of that kind of "own content." I was thinking home movies, photos, and music.


It sure is, and I really can't see putting someone like my mother on iCloud. I don't think that's going to be any simpler to her, especially when it doesn't work that great for now.


No, that's a good point. I could convert her videos and put them in private or "link only" mode in Youtube. The main problem I have with that is that in my experience, when using Youtube on hardware like the Apple TV or Tivo or anything else, you end up having to sign in a lot, and with that remote it's a serious PITA.


Okay, perhaps I was remembering incorrectly. I admit that. But I don't really see how it's "finer" today than it was a year ago. Admittedly, 1080p is only useful if your TV is larger than, say 37-42", but I really don't think the market for those larger sets is any larger now than it was 18 months ago.


Then SAY that. That's where people get riled up. Instead, the implication is that "you don't need 1080p because we say so." I think that's where people get the idea that this is what they said. I know most companies don't want to admit that their product can't do something, especially Apple, but I don't like that instead of saying they can't do something for some reason, they tell us it's not something we need. That's what "720p is fine" means to me. I guess it doesn't to you.


Yeah, that's more wishful thinking. It's not a big deal because the kinds of people who possess those files are the kind who can run them through Handbrake anyway.

Correct, but it did ship with a commercial 3rd party solution Musicmatch, hence me mentioning this in my post above. The point is that Apple shipped a complete solution for "how do I make my music more portable" instead of just shipping a player.


http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3774 . The key aspect is this:

And I should clarify, only the black AppleTV units will act as a Bonjour Sleep Proxy. (This is undocumented, but verifiable with a bonjour network sniffer). Otherwise, an Apple router has to be in use, as no other router has chosen to adopt the standard. Under the hood it's a layer on top of the existing Wake on Lan technology mixed with Bonjour service discovery. iTunes will still have to be open on the computer to initially advertise over Bonjour. When the Mac goes to sleep, it hands off that Bonjour advertisement to the Apple TV. If a device tries to connect based on that advertisement, the AppleTV receives the request, sends a WoL packet to the computer, and then the Bonjour request is passed on.


Ahh, ok. That distinction is important, created content vs purchased content, and Apple is trying to address both sides. For home created videos, music and photos, Apple will be moving this more and more into iCloud. The next version of OS X is adding more iCloud integration, and odds are the iLife apps (iMovie, iPhoto, and Garageband respectively) will add more and more iCloud centric features. Part of the issue here of course is upload speeds on home users connections. For now, it's starting small, with documents, photo stream (for importing only), and music. The goal for created content is to ensure both the finished product and in progress work is on whatever devices you own, without manual work to do so. Their primary focus is on the finished work, with some bits of their content creation iCloud strategy starting to emerge.


The simpler part comes in from the removal of the file system and classic save dialogs. My grandmother knows that Pages is where to go when she wants to write a document, or open an old one. Gone is the file hierarchy, when she works on the iPad. And soon her laptop. She gains the benefit of being able to work on her stuff, without being a file janitor or needing to understand the behind the scenes pieces.

Do you think Google Docs is simpler today then Word? Why? To me, a major part is a removal of the filesystem piece, and an addition of accessibility to the data from many places. This is also Apple's goal with iCloud. And it's something Jobs was trying to push in some form or fashion for decades. At NeXT, he tended to have his home folder on a server, not his local computer. This included having the home folder accessible at home over a dedicated connection or while he was working at Pixar. This showed him the usefulness of having your data independent of a device or location. It's just taken that long for the rest of the world to catch up to what NeXTStep, and every other Unix was doing back when Windows had no idea what the internet was.


It can't work the way you want. People tend to latch onto negatives more then positives. "The new iPad, it can't do this because of cost, but maybe next year" is a great way to ensure you sell fewer units this year, leading to less revenue to be able to make the next thing. Everything around us an an iterative work, never perfect or loaded with every feature day one. And it's a careful dance to ensure that iterative process can continue. If you say something that harms sales today, you end up with the Osborne effect.

I understand what you are saying, but I don't think I've bought the wrong device. I don't want a Macbook Air. I like the tablet form factor. Don't get me wrong: I think the iPad is a good product. I use it on a daily basis and most of the time it does what I want it to do. it's just that I believe that without those points I've listed up, It'll never be a *great* product, not for me anyway. And I think that's a shame because it's not a matter of technology, because the technology is certainly there, it's just a lack of will. One last important gripe I've got with the iPad that I can't believe I've forgot to add to my initial list, is the fact that it only plays VERY few video and audio file formats, and there's no way of expanding those by adding a codec pack or something. (not to my knowledge anyway).

Having this option would be great, because without it, this means I cannot play 90% or more of the attachments that are sent to me by email. My dad has got a Samsung Galaxy tab and this device plays everything. My dad loves it and doesn't even use his laptop anymore now. He uses his Tab for everything. I can't do that with my iPad. (granted, the Tab has other issues, malnly speed, but nothing too bad). Because my iPad only plays H264 and a few other formats, it means I also cannot stream most movies or clips I've got on my desktop. Instead, I'm forced to use some app like VLC streamer which does work (it transcodes the files), but is very slow, brings artefacts to the files (especially with higher reolutions - and it doesn't matter if I'm sitting right next to my router or not) and it's almost impossible to fast forward or rewind the files... In short: a pain. I really wished Apple would address a few of my 'issues'.

VLC was an iOS app in the App Store for a brief period of time, until one of the code contributors asked Apple to pull it down.

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-ios.html still has the binary, or the source to compile yourself. To install on a non Jailbroken device, you will need an Apple Developer Certificate, via their $99 developer program. VLC 2.0 source isn't iOS compatible, but older versions were being kept up to date, and work I believe is still progressing on 2.0. I don't follow it too closely though.

It was pretty harsh on battery life, as it used software decoding, but it worked okay. I still have the App Store version around somewhere.

I'm pleased to say that the screen really is as good as hoped for. Maps look amazing and text is just great.

It really does feel like you're looking at a glowing glossy magazine.

Andy, now imagine if the top layer of glass were fused directly to the display like on the iPhone4 and 4S.

I'm going to risk going by an Apple store later today to pick up my first Apple TV (mainly for testing, Airplay of home video and displaying photos on the TV). I hope the store isn't "insane" with iPad 3 shoppers - it's normally busy enough to be somewhat uncomfortable already.

I'm already not happy about having to pay $110 for the ATV instead of $99 as it's priced in the US, even though Canadian dollar has been at par with US for over a year. Apple used to be pretty god about this, but I also notice that the new iPads start at $520 instead of $499. The percentage varies wildly depending on the product.

Indeed a fused display like my phone would be great. However it seems to be an awful lot closer to the screen than on my iPad 1. I haven't used an iPad 2 much so I don't know how it compares to that.

I would not be surprised to see if that is one way they have managed to fit in more battery.

Are you still using the Boxee Box? At this point mine is now simply my "vudu Box."

This guy has several images of magnified device screens for comparison.

First impression, hrm, the screen doesn't look as good as I had expected. Oh, right iCloud restore just restored my custom lock screen, which is lower resolution. *unlock* Ok, there we go

Mine is still pulling down all my apps, work WiFi is a bit slow. Looking forward to working inside some updated apps/games to see the difference. Already just browsing the same web sites side by side is noticeably better. When these screens start working their way into laptops (possibly this year with the hints showing in 10.7.3), it's going to be a good leap forward.

I have one each in front of me 2 and New. With respect to the mechanicaally driven aspects the are the same. Reading the fine print on this board, it's a big difference. Easily noticed.

It's going to be an insane leap forward if they do it this year. I remember when this resolution needed two DVI connections and a special driver (before dual-link DVI was around).

Matt, I use the Boxee mainly for testing, I can't honestly say I even turn it on once a week. For a while I was using it any time I needed to play a DTS soundtrack movie because my SageTV extender doesn't decode DTS. But now I've got my pre-amp hooked back up and that does all my digital to analog decoding...

I hope they stabilize the firmware and have it all come together. I'd like to keep selling IR receivers to my Boxee customers for some time to come.

Okay, let's try the voice dictation. It work really well. Well almost. Let's try work again.

Worked didn't get dictated correctly.

Yes, though that's partly because DVI was stupidly underspecified even when it was first invented in 1999. In 1998 I had a VGA monitor that did 2048x1536, with a dot pitch to match (though because the graphics card I had could only do that at 56Hz, I usually ran it at 1920x1440x60Hz instead). I've still got it (Sony GDM-F500), but like the best of us, it's lost its focus a bit over the years and now seems somewhat overweight.

Peter

I used that same Sony monitor extensively while at ATI. It was a BEAST. The thing is, even with higher resolution CRTs, their properties often went above current specs of the time, so graphics drivers had to do funky things with the timings to achieve those resolutions. For instance, reduced vertical blank timing which worked to get higher resolution on some models.

The way things are going now, I wouldn't be surprised to see something matching IBM'2 T221 sooner rather than later. 9 Megapixels! 3840x2400. We could run it with two DVI connections but still at a reduced refresh rate, each connection actually driving half the screen. 15Hz with a single connection.

The first I heard about Apple going high res was 2 to 3 years ago when they supposedly worked up a display consisting of 4 1920x1080 panels joined together. Nothing's ever come out of that though.