iPad

(starting a new thread for actual experiences vs preship stuff)

I was going to hold off till I could post hands on info, but the experience this morning is worth telling. I decided a while back that the iPad is likely to be a great system for my grandmother to use, and I planned on buying a WiFi only model for her. Before giving it to her though, I'd use it for a bit to get used to it and then if I liked it, I'd buy a 3G model later. So I pre ordered a 32gb unit and selected the in store pickup. Apple confirmed earlier this week that a unit would be waiting for me between 9am and 3pm.

Fast forward to today. I woke up to arrive around 8:45am, figuring I should get there early enough to also have a chance at accessories if they were limited. Attacked at the bottom of the post is the line when I arrived.

Apple ended up paying the local coffee shop next door to provide everyone free coffee or water while waiting, and they also provided umbrellas for shade. Also out in the front area was some people from the Gold Class Cinemas. They had two of their fully reclining movie theater seats out for people to sit in, and they gave away free membership cards and a free movie ticket for use when they open in May. Promptly at 9am, the store opened and the first people went in to buy their units. By around 9:45, I was in the store, and was escorted to the back to make the purchase. At the back, they asked what size unit was preordered, and people who bought the 16 or 64gb units were moved over to the right, while 32gb preorders went to the left. I found the division odd, and quickly found out why. It seems UPS failed to deliver the 32gb shipment overnight as expected. They offered me the choice of changing units, but I decided to stick with the 32, as they expected them to arrive sometime soon. Now comes the part that explains why Apple is constantly rated well for customer service and satisfaction. Without me complaining or saying a word, they handed over a $100 iTunes gift card as an apology for not having the unit on hand, and took down my cell phone number to call when the unit did arrive. They also handed me a ticket to use when I came back to be able to just walk in the store and buy it. They could have just said "Well, it will be here by 3pm, come back later", but they decided to be nice up front and give a consolation away for another companies screwup.

Since they expected the shipment in anytime soon, I decided to eat breakfast next door instead of heading home. After finishing up breakfast, and a bit of wandering, I left around noon to run another errand. The line when I left was still about as long as the photo, with mostly more people coming to pic up their reserved units. Shortly after 1pm they called and let me know the unit was in. Ended up getting back over to the store around 2pm, and by then there was no one in the reserved line, and about 100 people in line waiting to buy the stock they had left over.

Over at Amazon.com Kindle forum there have been heated (to say it politely) discussions on topics such as whether iPad is fish, fowl or neither, its impact on e-book readers, how large should iPad touch actually grow etc. Rather entertaining.

How is iPad's screen visibility in broad daylight?

Though this type of scenario never played out for the iPod, I strongly believe that's the most comparative product when looking at what the iPad is doing and will do to the market. The iPhone has been somewhat of a benchmark and has sold well, but the iPod is has dominated the portable music device like nothing else before (or after) it. I think we'll see the iPad quickly take over from the Kindle and other products in the reader category to start. It's on a path to make iPhone adoption look slow.

What I'm most pleased to see if how well it's been received by developers, with a lot of interesting titles already available prior to the product's release.

Tom, definitely update the thread as soon as and as often a you can with your observations. Since just recently coming to the conclusion this would be a good device for my Mom, it may be prudent to take the same road you are, use it before handing it over.

I am not so sure - it certainly won't replace kindle for me. But then, I tend to use "best of the breed" devices, not "jacks of all trades" - Garmin, iPod Classic (and empeg in its time), rather basic Nokia, Kindle 2 (not DX), two cameras (very compact and (former) "prosumer")...

Don't get me wrong, I still don't think the iPad is the device that will bring eBooks to a level comparative to MP3 consumption today. It's quite high priced when thinking about a dedicated book reader. But that's also where most other products fail. The Kindle (especially the DX) is much too high in price for what it does.

I still think there's room for a dedicated eBook reader product, but IMO, it had better be significantly lower than $100 and offer much better performance than we've seen so far. The Barnes & Noble product would be quite a good contender at $99.

The iPad seems as though it's off to a very good start and I believe once some reviewers and press start making stronger use cases for it, it's going to really bloom. By default, a lot of written material is going to be consumed with them. his will affect the sales of current e-reader products the same way the pretty much every iPod still trounced sales of much lower priced "competitors."

The main reason I'd like to get one for my mom is to simplify her computer use. Everything she does, apart from printing an odd document, can be done with an iPad. Having only a single app open at one time and never getting lost with multiple windows within an app will also help her a great deal I think. The gamble is that if it's not going to work, I'm stuck with it....

First impressions: Holy crap it's fast.

As for the screen brightness in direct sunlight, I'll have to check tomorrow. It was perfectly readable with the 6pm sunlight directly on it, but a better test will be around noon tomorrow.

First annoyance: When the iPad is in the Official Apple iPad Case, it won't fit in the Official Apple iPad dock. Now I have to decide which one I want to ultimately keep. The case is nice as it acts as a stand, or elevates the iPad slightly for better typing. The dock is nice when using the iPad with iDisplay.

It's safe to say the Kindle DX is now toast. Dollar for dollar, you get a whole lot more value from a bottom-of-the-line iPad. The regular Kindle is radically cheaper, so I expect it will continue to have a healthy market. I'm modestly curious how Apple's iBookstore may compete with the Kindle bookstore and app. If I got an iPad, I'd presumably install the Kindle app right away and then have all my existing books. Now, whether I'd buy my next book one way or another...

Were I to get an iPad, it would mostly live at home, near the TV, for "casual" use when I can't be bothered to go up to my office and use my "real" computer. I presently have an HP Mini 1000 running Ubuntu Netbook Remix serving that purpose. The iPad would presumably be nicer in some respects, and more annoying in others.

Anyway, I'm sitting this out for now. Maybe once somebody puts one in my hands and I have a chance to play with it, I'll think differently. Or, maybe if/when the novelty wears off and the Reality Distortion Field is gone, there will be a rash of these things on eBay.

I think the iPad is a nice device. As for the ebook arena, I only think it will add to the market and not take share from the other readers. The Kindle is just a different type of device, and I think it's apples (har har) and oranges to compare the two, particularly with such a price disparity. Bruno, I've come to expect ridiculous statements from you, but there's no chance in hell that the Nook or Kindle would/could/should ever be "significantly lower than $100." Considering the differences in capability and differences in how they're used, I think the Kindle is well priced at half the LOWEST priced iPad.

So anyway, I honestly do hope the new iPad owners enjoy their device. I have no doubt that it will sell well, particularly with the biggest hype going I've ever seen for a gadget. I do, however, maintain that Bruno is insane for saying it will eventually outsell the iPhone.

*edit*
But of course, I can't possibly defend the Kindle DX. That thing is done.

Estimates are that Apple pushed 700K devices in the first day. US-only. You still don't think it's going to outsell the iPhone? My hypothesis/prediction has been brewing for a while and it's not something I said at launch day back in January. But given what's been developing in the past month in terms of pre-prders, reviews, developer adoption, app releases and first-day public reaction, I believe it's a reasonable analysis. Couple it with some pretty strong rumors regarding the next OS update and...

Seems like these guys have some guesses as to how well the iPad will do as well:

http://www.apple.com/ipad/ready-for-ipad/
http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2010/04/google-services-on-ipad-and-tablet.html

Keep in mind that "iPhone" is not "iPod + iPhone" in my prediction - the iPod Touch itself currently outsells the iPhone.

Amazon has moved so few Kindle units that they refuse to publish their numbers. They're already getting pressure from other similarly priced competitors that offer perhaps a little more "wow" such as the Barnes and Noble Nook. The market is not willing to buy in (high volumes) at the price Amazon is asking. Do you think they've sold 700k units total in the past two years? I don't.

The pricing of eBook readers have been holding them back in the market since long before the iPad was announced. e-ink was supposed to be a low cost alternative to other displays, but so far that hasn't happened. Maybe because of poor process, not high enough volumes or simply greed on the part of manufacturers. I don't know. hat I do know is that the number of people that will spend $250+ on a device that only reads books, and proprietary ones at that, is extremely limited.

When a device like the iPad is priced at $499, it makes a device like the Kindle at $250 seem like $250 too high. I'm sorry, the Kindle and similarly priced devices will only go down in sales. Significantly. That's a grounded hypothesis. IMO, to think otherwise is foolish if not crazy-cakes.

You should expect to see radical change in what Amazon comes out with next, both in device capabilities and price point. Or maybe they'll simply abandon the device completely, as they're likely going to be making a decent chunk of change selling their books to iPad/iPod/iPhone owners - they'll also be paying Apple 30% though.

Will Smith on the Tested Podcast was talking about how e-readers need to be 50 to 100 dollars but for different reasons.

He was saying they need to be that price for the mass market to really use them because you won't just throw a 500 dollar device in a bag and not be worried about damage and theft but a 50 dollar one you would.

He also said e-readers are better for reading books. Examples were reading in bed with lights out. With the e-reader you can just use a book light but a back lit screen you get the light blasting out bugging the person with you and causing eye strain. He also was talking about how the e-reader battery lasts for weeks. I haven't used either of these devices but I know how the screens work so I can agree with what he was saying.

The only thing I can think I would want an ipad for would be internet browsing on the couch but I really think the laptop I am using now works better. With a tablet form factor I would have to hold it up all the time of sit in some position that would prop it up. Plus I like a real keyboard I wouldn't want to type this message on an on screen keyboard maybe I would get used to it but I don't see a reason to.

I agree and it's what I've been saying since the first e-readers came out, long before the iPad news. The iPad is just the final nail in the coffin for these products at their current prices. So it may be fantastic news for those who want e-ink at reasonable prices.

BTW, you can adjust the brightness on the LCD products. Not sure a book light would be any less annoying to someone else next to you. e-ink still has a lot of promise, but everything out right now is still a big giant "meh."

Hold on there sparky. You evidently weren't clear enough on your prediction. What's the time period you're talking about? Are you saying the iPad will outsell the iPhone on release day? The first month? This year? In the long term?

Of course I wouldn't balk at a prediction of outselling it this month, but that prediction is meaningless. When you have users as rabid as Apple fanatics like you, they're going to buy the whole stock right off the bat. In this case, that doesn't tell me anything about the long term success of the product.

Why would anyone be surprised if the iPad outsold the iPhone? The 3Gs is almost a year old, and the iPhone has been around forever. People know what it is. It has prepared people for what the iPad is.


Why would I have thought that?


I don't know why you're so eager to bash ebook readers, but I just can't agree with you. I think the Kindle is fantastic. Are you an avid reader? And sure, I'd love to see the Kindle go for $99, but that's meaningless. I'd love to set imaginary, unrealistic prices for lots of things, but that doesn't mean I'll get them. What's the difference between saying that, and saying "gee, I think the iPod Nano shouldn't be $149, it should be more like thirty bucks?"

Analysts have started thinking that Amazon might lower the Kindle to $199, and I think that's more than reasonable for what you get. Personally, I just don't think you can compare the Kindle and the iPad. They're different products, they do different things, they're completely different price categories, and just let the people who own Kindles enjoy them.

Um...you're being contradictory here. You're agreeing with him that ebook readers have been too expensive to throw in a bag, but you think the $500+ iPad is the final nail in the coffin because of it? Or were you combining two thoughts into one there?

And Matt, I don't know what you're speaking to specifically, but the Kindle is not $500, the iPad is (well, it starts there). The Kindle is $259. The only place my wife doesn't want to take it is ON the beach. She'll take it with her when she goes to read it on the boardwalk or on the room's balcony, but you wouldn't want to get sand in it. This would be the same for the iPad.

I am impressed that you can present such reasoned and authoritative information when you have never even held either product in your hands.

"...only reads books"? Did you forget about the FREE 3G wireless capability that lets you instantly and seamlessly download new material anyplace in the world where there is cell phone service? Yes, the iPad can do that too... for an extra $130 for the 3G modem and a $30/month access fee. Hmmm... that $250 Kindle price is starting to look better and better.


Odd... many (if not most) analyses that I come across (after an admittedly cursory Google search) indicate sales are already in the millions.

Do I think the Kindle can compete with the iPad? Of course not. The iPad is twice the price, twice the weight, half again the size, has a tiny fraction of the battery life, is awkward to hold, and above all is not designed to be an e-book reader! It is a computer. It may well be a very nice and capable computer, I wouldn't know. But as an e-book reader, IT SUCKS! You might as well be saying that the iPad is going to put the Schwinn bicycle company out of business because the iPad is smaller, lighter, and lets you browse the internet. It's an Apples and Oranges [thank you, Dignan] comparison.

My wife traveled in Europe with her Kindle last summer, and every time she took it out of her purse (yes, her purse! It is that compact!) she was the center of a mob scene. Everyone who saw it, held it, read from it, wanted it. Particularly older people whose wrists and arms are not up to the task of holding a heavy book (or tablet computer!) for any length of time.

If there is a cost problem with the Kindle, it is not that the reader costs too much, but that the books for it are vastly overpriced. The iPad will have this problem too, until the publishing companies come around and face reality. It is absolutely preposterous to pay more for an electronic download of a book than the paper copy would cost at Costco or Barnes and Noble. Just as the MP3 revolution is changing the face of the music industry, e-books will change the publishing industry.

I won't be at all surprised if Apple sells more iPads than Amazon sells Kindles. There are lots of fanboys around willing to pay exorbitant prices for anything with an Apple logo, and e-book readers is a much smaller niche market than computers. However, iPad sales won't be at the expense of the Kindle. Yes, the iPad and the Kindle share a few capabilities (OK, one capability). The iPad is greatly superior to the Kindle as a computer. The Kindle is greatly superior to the iPad as an e-book reader.

Neither one is going to cause much concern to the folks at Schwinn.

tanstaafl.

Thanks for bringing this up. My aunt and uncle were in town this weekend. They're in their 60's and are simply rabid about reading. Right up until the time we brought out the Kindle to show it to them, my uncle, who's a writer himself, was still balking at the idea of a digital reading experience. Once we showed him the Kindle, he was blown away, and my aunt especially now expects one from him for Christmas. Neither could see spending $500 for the iPad (and this was before I said anything about it, so I didn't poison their minds ).

To be completely fair, I have never held an iPad, so it's not entirely fair for me to criticize it. But I'm not criticizing it for what it IS. I don't really care about the flash stuff, and in the end I don't really care about the multitasking stuff, because my expectations were that it would be a big Touch. What I keep arguing is that it has a place in SOME homes, but not all. It doesn't have a place in ours, so we won't be getting one.

Appeal of e-Ink is not low cost. It is extremely low power consumption and paper-like feel. One charge of Kindle battery is really good for two weeks of reading (if you keep cellular modem mostly off). Reading from the Kindle feels so natural that after several pages it "disappears" as a gadget - you simply read a book.

I mostly carry my Kindle in jacket pocket wherever I go, without the cover (it won't fit with it), so I can read in a cafe, or over the lunch. Nothing happened to it so far (I bought it almost six months ago, the moment it was available in Europe).

I can envision buying an iPad, but the usage profile will be completely different. As a reading platform, I guess I would be using the Zinio platform to read magazines on it (for example Aviation Week & Space Technology to which I subscribe) - Kindle is not a good platform for that. But I think I would mostly use it for light web browsing and perhaps watching a movie now and then - not even for what I am doing now, since I hate soft keyboards.

Actually, Apple contributed to rising e-book prices by, in effect, colluding with five out of six big publishers to push the "agency model" to all former retailers (including Amazon).

Before this, firms like Amazon would buy a stock of books (paper or electronic) from publishers, pay them about 50% of list price, and sell them at the price they set, often at loss. For example, for many NYT bestsellers the list price would be around $25, so the publisher would get $12 or $13, while Amazon would often sell for those magical $9.99.

Publishers (and some tame authors) complained this is "devaluing" the books. After reaching such agreement with Apple, they pushed the "agency model" on other retailers. After that model, books are sold by the publisher, at the price they set (same for all shops - out goes the competition), and the shop is just an agent, getting 30% commission. This was directed squarely against Amazon, where the end-user prices were typically 10-20% lower than at B&N, Sony or others.

It seems that big publishers are desperately clinging to the model where they earn the most during the first few days of sales of first edition hardcovers of their stars, and try to push the e-book genie back into the bottle.

Amazon has responded with changes to its direct to Kindle publishing program for indie authors and small publishers: for books that cost from $3 to $10 (there are some other conditions) the author's cut is now unprecedented 70%.

I was trying to say why I don't think the ipad will replace e-book readers but I also think the e-book readers need to be much cheaper to replace printed books so yeah it was two thoughts. I wasn't talking about any specific e-reader I was at Walmart today and saw a Sony one for 179.00 I think so yeah they are already cheaper than the ipad but they are too much to replace printed books.

The beach example is exactly what Will Smith said 250 or 500 dollars never would take it but 50 you would.

So to summarize I don't think the ipad will replace e-readers but I don't think e-readers will replace printed books until the price drops a lot and maybe not even then .

You're looking at the wrong aspect of the cost. It's like buying a printer. The up-front costs are trivial compared to the operational expense.

What if the price of the e-books came down to a reasonable level -- say one or two dollars? My wife's Kindle is a year and a half old, and she has already spent more than four times the cost of the Kindle on the e-book downloads. If e-books were priced more in relation to what they cost to produce, an e-book reader would be far less expensive than printed books in the [not-so] long run.

tanstaafl.

I get what you are saying but the beach example really sums it up for me. If you go to the beach you won't leave a 250.00 dollar device while you go for a swim but an 8.00 dollar book you would.

The iPad should have already broken all iPhone single day and weekend sales records. It will probably beat the iPhone first month record. But those aren't what I was speculating originally anyway - they're just nice indicators of things to come. I think the iPad line is going to outsell the iPhone long-term. Apple might completely turn everything on its head in the next few years by dramatically changing both products though.

I think some of you guys are getting too personal. I'm not making observations based on what I want nor what I would feel would fit my pocket book. I'm looking at current and historical performance of the market at large. Basically everyone else as a whole, not including me.

We can argue technical merits all day and I will probably agree with most of the points you guys make. Most of them are simple facts and easy to verify. But at the end of the day, the market at large is making their purchasing decisions not only on those merits. It's painfully clear that Amazon has not been able to revolutionize the print industry with the Kindle. Nor has anyone else.

So far, Apple seems to have the best shot of doing this. I'm very (very) confident that we're going to see far more ebook purchases with the iPad than with all other e-reader products combined.

I'd be surprised if Amazon sold as many Kindles as Apple have sold AppleTV. I think that at $99 a brand-name eBook reader would sell very well. I don't think it would sell as well today as it would have one year ago though. Not with the specs of current products that is. Maybe the Nook. At $50, they'd really move. And I strongly believe that's where the price for this type of device needs to go to reach the mainstream.

This pricing doesn't reflect on my opinions of the iPad - that's a completely different type of device with its own set of rules. I'd have preferred to see it start at $399 with fewer model variations to choose from, and a lower priced upgrade to 3G and GPS. However, given the demand, I think Apple is pretty safe with the current pricing.

One of the early lauded e-ink features was certainly cheap production. And of course flexible substrate super-thin substrate. None of which are being featured in any commercial product today.

Again: I'm not interested in an iPad for myself. I have owned and continue to own only one iPod model, the second generation touch. I bought it primarily for development purposes. Other than that, I own and have owned a number of Apple computers. I don't think that makes me a rabid fan boy. No one else makes computers even 1/4 as good at any price. Again, simple facts, easy to verify.

And, in case no one remembers from other threads, I do like the idea and promise of e-ink (very VERY much so in fact). I just don't like the pricing on the current reader products (for myself, which is irrelevant to others) nor for their market growth.

But it's not. At least Amazon haven't positioned it as such. If they had, they'd have sold a lot more units. Keep book prices where they are and sell the reader for $50. That's the printer model. Unless Amazon are making these by hand in Bezos' office, they're definitely making a profit on them. When you sell a printer for $100 with a $100 rebate, there's not really any room left for margin... Amazon is far from the printer model.

People (OTHER people) balk at $259. It's above the impulse purchase price for the mainstream. The first barrier is crossing under the $200 mark. Next the $100 mark. Amazon specifically, may also consider supporting ePub. They're starting to look like a Windows media-only playing music device...

That's one thing we can agree on. There's a lot of content out there that I'd love for my wife to be able to get on her Kindle.


Credit where credit is due, that's excellent customer service. I'm still waiting for the FitBit I ordered, they just missed their FOURTH estimated ship date, and when they do this the company is completely unreachable. I don't expect a discount or even have the shipping costs removed. All I want to know is what's going on!


By the way, I must admit that there's one thing that makes me crave an iPad at the moment, and that's the fact that Square for some reason chose it as its launch device. My guess is that it works out well for them, in that they're leaving beta and getting onto the hot new device, but they can still limit the number of devices they're launching on. I so hope that they release an Android app eventually, because I'd LOVE to be able to take credit cards out in the field.

Don't hold your breath, Doug, at least for anything from authors who make their living from writing and use services of professional editors and such. For me, the price close to that of mass market paperback is already good enough. I have recouped the price of Kindle through free classics and an occasional cheap indie I would not be able to read otherwise.


Software is not priced in relation to what costs to press a CD, but what costs to write and test it. The same holds for books. Now, like there is open source and other free software, there are free and almost free books, but, as there is no "support" or "maintenance" for a novel, professional authors have no choice but to charge for their work when the book is sold.

That wouldn't help, until stakeholders agree on interoperable DRM scheme (or get rid of DRM entirely), which I don't think is likely in the short term. DRM-free ePub content is already relatively easy to put on Kindle, using either Amazon's own conversion service or one of several good free conversion utilities.

Are you certain about this? I'm almost positive you can't convert epub using Amazon's service. I believe there's something you can install on the Kindle from a third party developer that converts un-DRM'd epub on the fly, but I wasn't aware of any official means to do so.

I'll post more impressions of the device later, so that way I don't disrupt the eBook conversation :-)

Apple did announce this morning that they sold over 300,000 of them, along with 250,000 books, and 1,000,000 app downloads. Not bad for one day of sales (Saturday). The iPhone 3GS was over a million in the first weekend (Fri-Sun sales), same for the iPhone 3G. Both were available in many more markets.

Great numbers, but I still want to see the long term sales before I hand them the trophy.

And I know you specifically said "app downloads," so I don't think you're confusing the numbers like the media has in the past. It irritates me when Apple releases a press release like "we've had one million apps downloaded from the store!" and the media says "wow! Apple has sold one million apps!" without realizing that a majority of those apps were probably free. This is not Apple's fault at all, it's just something that bothers me.

But, will it blend?

Those are always so tough to watch! Holy cow!

My brother got his on Saturday. According to him, the thing is ridiculously fast, the screen is really bright, some apps are amazing (he really loved one he found that acted like a nav system), and considers it the best 'media consumption device' he ever had.

Of course, it's my brother. What does he really know?

I stand corrected - Amazon conversion service indeed supports only HTML, DOC and PDF. I use Calibre. Still, the main interoperability problem is DRM, not formats by themselves.

Less than a book per device... I am not surprised. Of course, it's just the first day...

I first misread this to imply that your brother had gotten a Blendtec blender. The thing is ridiculously fast...

I liked Scott Kurtz's blog entry about the iPad. In the end, he was right:


That's pretty much the case for any of these gadgets, no matter who makes it, and I guess I'm out of the device hating business. I have a smartphone that I can actually get things done one (I mean as opposed to the one I used to have, not competitors), so I'm happy. Perhaps I was carrying resentment because my G1 was utter crap hardware-wise

And again, I do envy iPad owners for one thing: being able to use Square. I swear to God, that's enough to make me consider an iPad all by its self. If only I had some indication they were working on an Android version.

Hot damn! I could have sworn I'd looked over that page before! Didn't see that! WOOOT! I am unreasonably excited about this This will make things a ton easier for my with my work...

Now they just need to release it. Supposedly the iPhone version is due out at the end of the month.

That Square thing is interesting, but since the UK (and I think most of Europe) is Chip and PIN I wonder if it would be popular over here. We still have a magstripe on the chipped cards.

Hey! You used to couldn't do that! I know; I tried it again and again.

I wouldn't trust my CC details to a Square device. You've no idea what is running on the client device and whether it has been hacked or not.

What information are you going to get off the stripe that isn't also visible on the card itself? In the US, I'm pretty sure the answer is "none". Maybe not so in the UK.

Whilst pretty much the same information is kept on the front of the card as on the stripe, do you not try to keep control of how exposed your details are? You'd be okay with putting your card details into something which has been widely hacked and has had security issues like worms?

Whenever I pay for a meal at a restaurant, the server wanders into the back with my card for several minutes, which is more than enough time to copy down the card number, plus the Card Security Code, and maybe even make a copy of my signature. I generally don't know those people from Adam.

I'm not opposed to additional security, but it's kind of ridiculous to close the barn door when the fourth wall hasn't even been constructed yet.

Because that is considered more and more unpleasant by customers, though, I find interesting that here it Italy it is more and more common to see waiters walk to your table with a wireles card-reader and perform the payment operation there in front of you (I am referring specifically to CC payments, that is not requiring PIN)

Sure, one may argue that some waiters may have excellent visual memory, or that the wireless connection from the mobile device and its base is not secure (enough), and what not.

But security is not a yes-no concept. There are defferent degrees and I too would avoid decreasing it as much as possibe. I guess I would not entrust my CC details to similar systems either.

I'm aware of the European wireless card readers, but those are uncommon, at best, in the US. (In reality, they're virtually unheard-of.) The only place I've ever seen one was at the Apple Store.

Yeah, I'll second Bitt on this one. I recently heard about those remote readers, but I've not seen a single one in any restaurant in the Washington D.C. area.

Get a decent CC company if you're that worried about having the card info stolen. I've had my info stolen by using Amazon in the past. That didn't stop me from becoming a Prime customer later on.

*edit* Looks like I can expect Android support from Square pretty soon. I've signed up for the beta. Fingers crossed! */edit*


To bring this back to the iPad (I'm actually bringing the discussion ON topic? me? wow!): I have a question for the iPad owners. Could someone briefly discuss the Google Reader experience on this thing? This should be the best way to read...Reader, but I can't help but think I'd miss my oft-relied upon keyboard shortcuts. The entire time I'm on reader, my fingers are glued to the J, K, M, and S keys for the way I go through my feeds. It would take some adjusting to just using a finger to scroll.

First off, does it default to the mobile version? That would be annoying, because I can't stand the mobile version on a smartphone, let alone on a screen that size. It would look ridiculous.

In the UK at least, everybody has the wireless card machines or you go to the desk and do it. You generally don't lose sight of your card even before the change to chip & PIN.


I'm just puzzled as to why you'd automatically trust the device to be secure. The security on all the devices that Square supports has been thoroughly broken and absolutely anything could be running on it. It isn't restricted to people with the skill and knowledge needed to do so either. Anybody can do it if they follow some basic tools.

The real card machines are closed systems which have security measures to in theory prevent the leakage of your data and any tampering. I can be fairly certain that the card machine doesn't have any extra software added that may interfere with operation. I know that some of these machines have had proof of concept attacks on them but it is extremely unlikely that these will be widespread in the wild due to the requirement of physical modification.

Dignan argues that you should just get a decent CC company but I'd prefer to not have to deal with the stolen CC ordeal in the first place. It has happened to me once before years ago and it took me quite a bit of work to get it all completely sorted out.

Ok, time for some more impressions.

I'm hooked. I'll definitely be buying the 3G version when it comes out later. Web browsing on it is just really nice, but hard to quantify why. I definitely understand why Michael Arrington was trying to build a CrunchPad. While it does pretty much browse the web the same way any recent smartphone does, the larger screen means far less scrolling and zooming. And the speed is nice and quick. So far, lack of Flash has not been an issue, every embedded video I've come across has worked. I know I'll hit that limitation at some point, but not yet. As long as a site has gone HTML5 for video (like CBS and a few others), or they host their videos on Youtube/Vimeo, it just works. The only big hole here I see currently is Hulu, though currently I'm not watching much off Hulu these days.

Battery life is so good I don't think much about it. I charged it to full Sunday night, then used it heavily on Monday at work. Came home, and kept it on most of the evening, using the drawing program to take some notes while playing a game. Later that night I used it before going to sleep to watch some video, and used it more in the morning when I woke up to browse the web. Then tons more usage at work, including quite a bit of Plants vs Zombies while waiting on OS installs. This evening, the battery still had 25% charge left.

The speaker in this thing is also impressively loud, good enough for me to listen to podcasts in the car while driving down the highway. (something I've now started doing, as my amplifier stopped working Monday morning, need to troubleshoot that one). Screen readability is perfect at any angle, the IPS panel was a great choice for the device. However, my limited sunlight tests weren't so great. It was still readable, but the glare and reflections may get distracting. Sometime this weekend, I'll probably do a side by side test of the nook and iPad for reading outside and comment more.

Some of the native apps are really nice with the larger screen compared to the iPhone, though some don't quite make the best use of the space. BBC for example released a dedicated news app, but I still find it better to go to the web site instead. eBay and Craigslist have apps that make browsing their content way easier.

I haven't gotten into the productivity apps much yet, nor have I used the book reader, so impressions of those will come later.

Oh, and I'm keeping the Apple case. The flexibility of having it prop up the iPad two different ways is handy. Just need to mod the dock so I can use both at the same time.

*edit* As far as Google Reader is concerned, I'll have to try it later. I don't use it normally, so I may not be the best person to comment on how useful it is on the iPad. I know a coworker who does use Reader quite a bit though, and he owns an iPad, so I'll ask him for you Matt.

Considering all the networks seem to be jumping ship on Hulu, I don't think it matters much. Can you get video from the networks' sites? ABC has an app, right? So that one doesn't matter even.


I think one thing that everyone involved in this thread can agree on is that the JooJoo (awful name) will not be a threat to the iPad, and it certainly doesn't seem like it's going to be successful on any level.


Thanks, I'm very interested in that. To be honest, I hadn't thought about using a tablet like this for Reader until I lay down on the couch the other night to try reading it on my netbook. It's just not a good experience.

Again, being honest here, there's a lot I like about the iPad, and if enough uses for it come up for me, I just might have to swallow my pride and consider it. But really, I just can't do it at that price. It'll be interesting to see if Apple reduces the cost in 4-6 months...

I am a gadget freak, so I've stopped by a Best Buy to check the iPad out. I'm typing this on it right now. My first impression is that it's pretty, fast, and surprisingly heavy. I'm guessing that's the battery, right? I think I would find it hard to hold this thing upright on the couch for long.

As far as typing goes. At least the keyboard is 100% responsive. I find I can't really do touch typing, and it hurts my wrists to even try, and at best I can use three fingers on each hand.

Sadly, I've already experienced my personal biggest drawback to the iPad. I'd asked if it did Google Reader. Well, it simply doesn't. I can view it in mobile mode, which is essentially just a long list of stories, but when I choose desktop mode at the bottom of the page, it displays everything fine,and I can click on any links that are displayed, but. The second I try to scroll through a feed, it instead moves the entire window like it were all one image or something. So does mobile Safari not do Ajax or something?

Basically, that's the last nail in the coffin for me. I could live with the weight and the whole Apple thing (and the whole swallowing of my pride thing), but if I have to put down this thing (which is supposedly the "best web browsing experience ever"), and go to my computer so I can sit there for an hour reading all my feeds, then what's the point?

I believe I've also found another defense for the trackball on my Nexus One. I just tried to go back up in my post to change or add something, and I can't. Maybe I'm just not familiar enough with the iPhone OS to know how, but it certainly isn't clear to me.

Lastly, as I suspected this thing is just short of an ergonomic nightmare. I've been typing this I landscape mode, and having to tilt my neck or lower my eyes to look at text directly above the keyboard is starting to hurt. I'd say this is an average amount of writing, and I can't imagine typing more than a couple sentences on this. I haven't tried the dock, though, so that might help.

A few days ago, I was in full iPad bashing mode, but I'd started rethinking that stance and just letting things be. A few nights ago I tried using my net book in a relaxed position on the couch, and I started to think about the iPad much more favorably. The combined whammy of comics, Square, and Google Reader started making me surprisingly receptive to the idea. But now Square is going to be on Android sooner than I expected, and Reader simply does not work on this thing. Combine that with the weight, and I'm MUCH less excited now.

I'm sure there's a better RSS reader for iPhoneOS, and probably one that syncs with Google Reader.

Indeed there is, what you need is NetNewsWire. Syncs with Google Reader, downloads the feeds for reading offline, gives quick easy options for emailing articles, posting to Twitter, sending to Instapaper etc

http://netnewswireapp.com/2010/04/netnewswire-for-ipad-1-0/

Mobile Safari does do AJAX. It however doesn't do mouseovers, or other desktop UI metaphors. The proper interface in this case would be the "mobile" Google Reader, as it's built for touch input. My coworker here said he's been using the mobile site, and is quite pleased with it so far. Google has been adding iPad (or tablet form factor) changes to their apps, so maybe Google Reader just needs a quick update. GMail is apparently quite nice, but I'm not a GMail user either so I can't comment much there.

*edit* Looks like two finger scrolling works when using the desktop version of Google Reader. Seems a bit odd, but I'm so far out of web development these days I can't explain why this is necessary.


Again your trying to apply desktop computing concepts to a touch based device. Just touch where you want to put the cursor. This to me is the big difference between Android and iPhone OS. Android still has some desktop UI design in it, with things like dedicated zoom and scroll areas, cursors movable by other methods then touch, context menus activated by a special button, and so on. iPhone OS on the other hand throws it all out and starts over to try and build a pure touch based interface. Google wanted to make a smartphone, Apple wanted to make an entirely new computing interface and just happened to start with the smartphone.


I'm a big fan of the Apple case now, as it does provide a non flat typing angle with the full landscape keyboard, and that helps quite a bit. If I was going to type out a whole document though, I'd reach for a real keyboard, and conveniently bluetooth ones just work.

I'm not going to argue against your general point — you may be right — but I'm afraid I have some issues with your examples.


I don't know if you accidentally misused the term "context menu", or if I'm being overprecise in my definition, but the dedicated Android menu button is a contextless menu. (Or, I guess, a "current-page-context menu".) Actual context menus, that is, menus that are relevant only to a specific UI element, are accessed by a long press on the element itself.


I've not played with iPhoneOS that much, but precision placement of a cursor in text is a pain. I think I've seen that iPhoneOS provides a transient zoom-in for cursor movement, which is nice, but that's actually somewhat innovative, and I'll bet it's patented. Moreover, probably in a way that Google saw as tortiously defensible.

So I do understand your point here, but I don't really have a problem with an additional interface that (almost certainly) adds virtually nothing to the size of the device. The N1 trackball does do double-duty as a hard button.


I don't really know what you're talking about here at all.

Of course you guys are right about getting an app to use Google Reader. I have to do the same on my Android phones, so I don't know why I didn't think of that. I expect more from the web browsing experience on this form factor, though.

I'd have to see the app you mention in action, Andy. I have my preferred way of reading Reader, and so far I haven't seen any apps that accommodate me.


I'm not sure why this is necessary either. I didn't try that though. I'll give it a shot if I drop by the store again.


Then your coworker and I do not use Google Reader the same way. I view it in expanded mode, and either scroll through the stories or skip through them with J and K. I find this the best way to skim the stories. The mobile won't take any advantage of that larger screen. Hopefully Google will update it like they did GMail, which does look good on the iPad.


Sorry, but you're misunderstanding me. I was typing a long post in a text box. Eventually I typed more than the text box could display at one time. I had no idea how to go back up to the text that had gone off-screen, and I started to feel extremely frustrated as a result. On a computer you would just manipulate the text box's scroll bar. On Android, you still have 4-way directional motion available to you at all times, and I think it's intuitive to use the scroll ball to move around something like that. You might say that I just had to use two-finger scrolling. If so, then I'd say that's not intuitive, it's having a familiarity with the OS and guessing at the interface method they want you to use.


I don't think that would address my concerns. The displays at Best Buy were tilted, and that's how I was using it. It has nothing to do with the angle, anyway. It has to do with the proximity of the keyboard to the text you're typing. I'd wager that ergonomics experts are not fans of computing in this fashion


I wanted to add something else: I keep hearing about how iPhone apps look just fine on this thing in 2x mode. Are these people smoking something? I tried a half dozen apps on the device, and sadly almost no iPad-specific apps were loaded onto it, which I think is a major mistake on Best Buy/Apple's part. I tried basic apps like IMDb and games like some Need For Speed game. All of them were pixelated as all get-out. I had to stop looking at the IMDb app as it bothered me how bad it looked. Then if you put it in 1x mode, it looks ridiculously tiny on that big screen. And am I wrong, but even in 2x, it doesn't actually fill the screen, does it? It looked like there was about a half-inch or more border on all sides...

The iPhone's display is 320x480, so assuming it's really 2x/4x, that makes the display resolution of a "doubled" app be 640x960. The iPad's display is 1024x768. So that's an excess of 32 pixels on each short side and 64 pixels on each long side.

It's a 132ppi display, so 32px is just under ¼" and 64px is just under ½".

Two fingered scroll becomes necessary when a web page uses a iframe or other element to display scrollable content. With just single finger touch gestures Safari can't* know whether you are trying to scroll the page or the content of the scrollable element.

Hence the rather clumsy two finger scroll.

I'm curious to know how Android's browser handles this case ?

* ok, in some cases Safari probably could work out what you were meaning to scroll, but when you factor in the number of times it would guess wrong the two finger scroll is the less of two evils. In practice I rarely come across cases where I need to use the two finger scroll.

I may be misusing the term, but basically I'm talking about a menu option hidden off from the normal user interface. The dedicated button just never made much sense to me over having a button in the app UI when it was needed. Having the dedicated button encourages developers to use it and potentially hide something there that should just be part of the normal UI. I was mostly using it as an example of how a desktop mentality of context/right click menus still being carried over instead of being rethought for touch.


Fair enough, though it seems Google has gotten over fearing Apple patents by implementing their own multitouch now. I'd hope Google isn't hobbling other parts of the OS due to legal fears. Patents can be licensed after all.


Areas was the wrong word, buttons or other things. Google Maps is a perfect example. On the iPhone/iPad, it opens to just a full screen map. On Android, it's got UI zoom buttons, as if they carried over that feature from the web interface. I know it ties into the multitouch situation, but it's one of those situations where Google used an older UI method to get around it instead of coming up with a new touch method.


It's one of those things that does come down to opinion. Minimalist vs flexibility. The iPhone OS definitely went with the minimalist approach, starting from scratch and adding only what is absolutely necessary. Android and the phones built around it come from more of a traditional design model that tries to fit everyones different use cases, adding potential unneeded complexity. Over the years, I've come to appreciate the Apple method quite a bit, and understand their point of view on the iPad. Trying to shoehorn a desktop OS into a tablet failed for the most part, possibly due to bad UI and trying to adapt PC concepts. The iPad starts from near scratch, and builds up to try and make a touch device work well, while sacrificing flexibility of loading a desktop UI designed app on the device. This method forces new apps to be built around the new design, and introduces a new way of interacting with the apps. Is it the right approach? Hard to say, but it does present some interesting new use cases.

He explained his usage as going in, and being able to quickly glance over all the summaries. Then if one interested him, he tapped it. Otherwise, one full swipe on the screen resulted in him skimming past 40 or so entries at a time. He does use it on the desktop with J and K (Why is it J and K for previous/next instead of arrow keys?)


Ahh, ok, that makes more sense. And yes, it seems the answer is two finger scrolling there as well (I actually didn't know either initially). As for whats more intuitive, it all depends on what you already know. Scrollbars are just as alien to computer users coming from text environments as some of these new touch based gestures are to GUI users.


Probably not. Though I'm thinking the on screen stuff is there mostly for quick entry anyhow, and not really great for extended use. I still find the case handy, as it does put the iPad up at enough of an angle to see it. I've been putting it below my main monitor at home, and using it as a second machine to browse while waiting on something in Warcraft to happen. The other stand orientation works well for sitting it on the edge of my nightstand to watch a show.


Yeah, the iPhone apps running on the iPad are a joke for the most part. Some games work ok going up to 2x, but normal apps just look horrible. The iPads at the Apple store all had a ton of native apps loaded for demo purposes. Initially the iPad pulled in all my iPhone apps as well during the first sync. I've since gone back and deleted nearly all of them, only saving a few like Skype and Beejive, both likely to see universal builds soon.

How many iPhone apps do not have some sort of settings button? And how much screen real estate does that button waste?


Other companies had multitouch before Apple did. Microsoft Surface predates the iPhone by a few months. I know Apple got their multitouch technology by acquiring FingerWorks, though. I don't know how old their patents might be. But Apple is/has been sued by another company for itself violating multitouch patents.


Unlikely when you're wanting to use it in an open source application, especially when its license allows for commercial use.


Android doesn't even require a touch interface, much less a multitouch interface. Given, most Android devices these days do have a touch interface, but there is no requirement that they do.


I understand your point, and it may be a good reason why the iPhone does so well. Any idiot can use it. I don't want to be limited to the proverbial lowest common denominator, though.


You may have intended this as part of "the Apple method", but they have control over the entire iPhone/iPodTouch/iPad/iPhoneOS gamut, and that's the way they want it. That's fine, and does provide for tight integration between hardware and software. But Google is explicitly avoiding that. They may have a reference platform of some nature, but their intention is for Android to be able to run everywhere.


And that approach probably makes sense for those people for whom the web, or even just Facebook, is the entirety of the internet. I guess my general problem with it is that it's little more than a web appliance that happens to be extensible. At least Amazon is up front about the fact that the Kindle is an ebook reader, that maybe might be able to do a few other things.

But text UI users still had arrow keys to fall back on.

(Yes, I know that this is in direct opposition to your point about it being a new interface paradigm. But that doesn't make your analogy more apt.)

Quite a few lack a settings button. I'd guess at least half of the 141 apps I have don't have one. Apps with settings tend to go 2 different ways as well. Some have a settings button on the app directly, other have an entry in the system wide settings app. As far as how much screen space it wastes, not much, as most apps also only display it when needed. The main point I was trying to make here is the difference in how Apple approached the button question compared to Google and the various other handset manufacturers. Apple built a touch screen device that put the screen front and center. The one button on the front of the device does the same thing every time, and is the only universal thing people do with it. Outside that, programmers have a nearly full face screen to do whatever fits best with their app. Google added buttons and other control interfaces that not all 100% of the apps have use for. While it may not be wasting much space, it is adding things to the device that aren't always needed. We can go round and round on the little things, but I'm looking at this from a high level, seeing how Apple has a different approach overall compared to Google. Those high level choices often reveal why the two companies are on highly divergent paths. I can't even guess what an official Google tablet will be like, since they have both Android and ChromiumOS. On the Apple side, the iPad didn't really surprise me too much.


I can understand the reason, but why does a device with multitouch still need the on screen UI clutter to zoom in and out? By sticking them there in all cases, it shows their goal quite clearly. Run on as many devices as possible, but never provide an optimal experience on any one of them.


It is possible to make something easy to use, and powerful. It just takes a lot of work to do it. Can the iPhone do everything I want? No. But no device is ever likely to do so, even if it is the most complex thing out there. I buy products based on what they do, not on what they don't do or who they are catered to. The iPhone does many things really well. And I'm slowly coming to see the same on the iPad.


Google's goal sounds very similar to Microsoft's goal. And for the desktop computer market, that goal worked well. For the PDA/phone market, it didn't work for Microsoft. They had a good start with their early Windows powered PDAs, but Palm still won out. Then as the smartphone market evolved, RIM won out over Microsoft on the business side, and now the iPhone is leading the way in the consumer space.

I don't know what the big deal is about those zoom buttons. They're quite small, and the second you move the map around, they disappear, and only come back if you single-tap the screen. I prefer the have the choice, so that if I don't want to pinch-zoom, I don't have to. That way I can use the phone one-handed.

Of course, we're getting into the nitty gritty here, and this doesn't have much to do with the future of the iPad. Basically I liked the device, but I found it quite heavy...

True, and that may be in part due to the fact that Android targeted WinMo phones as their default architecture, in the same way that Linux targeted IBM-compatible PCs as their default architecture. It was initially conceived of as an alternative OS for the platform you already had. Whether this is philosophical, or because Google just didn't (initially) want to design a reference platform, I don't know.


Yeah, but how much of that was due to their software being total crap in a market where they didn't already have a virtual monopoly?

Actually, I don't know how we got off on this track: Android vs. iPhone. I have zero problem with the iPhone platform. It's not even "not for me"; Android is merely "for me" more.

I still think the iPad is stupid, even if I do understand its appeal to those who don't want anything more than what an iPhone can do, except they'd like it bigger. Maybe I underestimate the number of people who are fed up with keeping their underutilized computer running and want something that "just works". I have the suspicion that most of its sales are as a toy, and those people who really want to use it might get frustrated with what it can't do, especially considering its (both one-time and recurring) cost. Time will tell.

I think the origin of this might well be the TVI-920C and other such terminals of the era. See this photo:



Note the arrows printed on the H, J, K, and L keys. The vi editor, among others, adopted this particular mapping, which is probably how it found its way into Google's Reader.

Yes, indeed. For a good example of this, look at TiVo.

tanstaafl.

The Comedy Channel consistently lists Important Things coming on when Sarah Silverman is on. I don't really have a problem with it recording an extra program I may or may not watch, but the TiVo thinks it has recorded Important Things when it hasn't, and will therefore not try to record it again.

I'd like to tell the TiVo that the schedule is wrong, but there's not really any way to do that. I can set up an intentionally conflicting show, but that's hardly "easy to use". I can tell it to record Important Things every damn time it comes on, but that might create a problem with other shows. What I want to be able to do is tell it "this wasn't the right thing; try again", but there's no way to do that.

For another example, my wife and I watch a lot of the same shows, but we aren't always able to watch them together. So we have to externally keep track of which shows each of us has watched so that they can be deleted appropriately. The TiVo should have a flag system that indicates if it's been watched or not. I'm pretty sure that it actually keeps track of that data, as if a program is deleted before anyone watches it, it will record it if it comes on again, whereas if you did watch it, it gets marked as "recorded recently" and won't be rerecorded.

Of course, we could just let them fall off if there was a way to set retention priorities, but the only really usable user option is "keep forever". What I mean is that I have recordings set up to get things like MASH and Malcolm in the Middle and a variety of reruns and other programs that I don't watch regularly, but might like to have on hand if I'm bored. But I might have something that I'm more interested in that I don't have time to watch now, but would like to hang onto as long as there's hard drive space for it. But I don't want to prioritize it above other programs that I am interested in, nor do I want to prioritize it below the random stuff I record for boredom's sake. I could manually go and set expiration dates on every recording, but, again, that's hardly "easy to use".

My point is that while the TiVo does the right thing 95% of the time, and is waaaay better than the existing alternatives, it has significant room for improvement, both in ease of use and in power.

Bad guide info isn't Tivo's fault. Still it is a problem.

Whenever a show is recorded, there is a ~28 day block on rerecording that same show. This is to stop the Season Pass from filling the drive with copies.

To get around the recent recording block. In the Now Playing list select the miss-recorded show and choose More Options & View Upcoming Episodes. You will get a list of all the upcoming episodes. This list indicates which will or not be recorded. Select the future airing that Tivo thinks has already been recorded, and you will be given the option to record that one explicitly.

=====

I kind of wish it would be a little smarter in scheduling. Some shows appear in the guide several times, while others only once.

Depending on priorities, the single show can be skipped in favor of a show that might be available for recording only a few hours later.

No, but failing to deal with a widely known issue is.


Yeah, I know, but it's far from "easy to use" to go into the recording, note the episode it thinks it recorded, select "More Options", select "View Upcoming Episodes", find another time that episode is to be aired, filtering through all the other episodes on all the channels, try to remember which channel is the HD and which is the SD feed (probably backing back out to see the channel number for the incorrect recording and then having to navigate back), select that episode to record manually, be told that it conflicts with an existing scheduled recording, find another instance, etc.

There should be a feature that is "this was recorded improperly; try it again for me". Assuming, that is, that you want it to be "easy to use".

You're right it's no substitute for having a "Try Again" button.

Other way around it seems. Numbers out of the iPhone OS 4 event are 50+ million iPhones sold to date, and 35+ million iPod Touches, for a total of 85+ million iPhone OS based devices.

iPad wise, 450,000+ sold so far, with demand outpacing supply in many areas.

Yeah yeah, but when does Ha! list it?

There's a much easier example of bad design in the Tivo UI, Bitt. Just try searching for...well...anything! Terrible. And the fact that the QWERTY remote isn't standard on the Series 4 means they haven't gotten that it's a necessity. I love how they equated their Series 4 announcement as being just a big a deal as creating the first Tivo, but so poorly backed it up on this front. At least you can use USB keyboards.

Anyway, Comedy Central has been, for the entire span of Tivo's existence, the single worst big channel in the guide. It constantly amazes me how bad they are. In fact, I distinctly remember Jon Stewart of all people making fun of it back when he took over, saying that when he Tivos his own show, he has the privilege of watching it 5 times a day.

Sorry for helping get this topic back off-track.

Dammit! I always get that wrong.


Well, the searching isn't that bad; it's the text entry that's bad. I tend to use this.

That's not Tivo's fault, but I'll give you one that *is*.

I have a Season Pass for "Lost". I have told it to get NEW episodes. This season pass is at the very top of the season pass list. I have told it to do this on our local HD channel for that network on our cable company (comcast).

For the last couple months, we've been wrapping up the new episodes for the final season of Lost. Not a single one of these episodes has been recorded automatically. They're all there in the "Show all episodes" screen, and if I look at their information details, it shows their "original air date"s correctly, i.e., the original air date is the date of the broadcast, so the tivo SHOULD know that it's a new episode and therefore I should want it.

But I've had to manually go in and say "record this episode also" for every single new episode this season. Which is a pain because if I forget to do that every couple weeks, I miss episodes.

I think there's actually a flag in the guide data that says "New Episode" vs. "Rerun" (possibly vs. "Unset"), and that the TiVo uses that flag rather than a comparison between the original date and current date. Otherwise, it wouldn't know that each of the 14 times each week that USA runs the new episode of Psych that it's still a new episode. Of course, it will only record it once, since the "Recently Recorded" filter takes over.

So I think that's also the guide data's fault. Still, the TiVo should be able to work around it.

Bitt is correct. Tribune, the company that provides the data has a data element called "First Airing" which indicates whether or not the episode is "NEW." There is also another data element for "Rerun" however. And of course the "original air date" that Tony mentioned. There's also an episode ID data element which can be compared to existing recordings - as long as it's set correctly.

It's apparent that TiVo doesn't try and make any smart guesses about the validity of the values or lack of values.

TiVo's scheduling is super simple and they don't really do much in the way of advanced conflict resolution or fancy guess work. This has its advantages. KISS after all.

Anyway, my problem is that people say that it is possible to make something both powerful and easy, and they often come up with examples, but few are accurate examples. I think that it's possible in general, but maybe not with every case.

The example I like to use is filtering. (Fortunately, many things can be implemented as filtering, even if they don't look like it on the surface.) While you want to present easy filtering for the average user, it would be nice to provide advanced filtering for the advanced user. This is really very easily accomplished (ignoring the complexity of the advanced filtering implementation) by designing a full featured filtering system, and then prepopulating some initial saved filters. You don't even have to make the advanced filter configuration easy to find, as the advanced user has already thrown out "easy" as a criterion.

And a good real-world example of that is the empeg's shuffling modes.

My point is that it's very possible to make a generic thing specific, but it's totally impossible to make a specific thing generic. The iPad is (relatively) specific, and becoming more so through licensing.

Speaking of UI... I have a cautionary tale... Be careful what you wish for...

I've been hoping for a new UI my PVR software... Now it's finally coming. And it's horrible. So so bad that I can't even begin to describe what's wrong with it. Even my wife thinks it looks like a POS. More than that I can't really say since it's currently in closed beta.

It's a fine example of powerful back of house with horrendous front of house.

Heh.. sounds like MythTV !

I just took a look a moment ago at the state of MythTV UI and it really misses the mark in a lot of areas - and seems to be a jumble of inconsistency, at least in the images I've seen.

There are some decent looking interfaces for other open source projects, notably XBMC and its spawn (including Boxee). I suppose Myth has the same issue as the PVR software I'm using (which is not open source). The people primarily involved with it are number-crunching engineers and don't really have any style/design sense.

What I can't get over are al the compliments the new UI is getting. WTF? This just assures me that it's only going to get worse. Unfortunately it seems most of the customers also lack any design sense, so I suppose they're catering to their market well.

It does amaze me that with so much good looking software out there to take inspiration from that there's such a phenomenal amount of really crappy looking software. I mean, if you don't have the capacity to innovate something new, at least copy something else that looks good.

My sense of design is abysmal.

Well, that's not really true. If you give me a starting point, I can probably tell you what's wrong and how it could be improved, but I cannot design something from the ground up for the life of me. I'm miserable at it. It's probably the one thing that keeps me from being productive at software.

But I know that, and I try to get someone else to help me design a UI. You'd think a company could hire at least one graphic designer.

Yeah, the Myth UI really sucks, especially the *new* "MythUI" that was released recently.

They take a nice 50" 1080p screen, and then pop-up a program guide onto it that consists of five channels by four 30min timeslots, in a massively huge font.

At least the old UI had options to change that to 9 channels by 12 timeslots, but the new-improved one doesn't. It also suffers horribly from arrow-key sandtraps.. right-arrow gets you into a sub-menu, but left-arrow won't get you back out. Doh!

I've already worked out a personal patch to fix the arrow-key stupidity, but (me) fixing the EPG is taking longer than I'd like. Still, gotta do it, cuz the nice under-the-hood stuff really is improved, but requires the b0rked UI on top.

Sorry.. pushed a button there, I guess.

It's a shame that the file sharing announced and included in the SDK from January has been completely pooched and replaced by manual (multi-step) iTunes-based file syncing which also requires multiple import/export steps in the iPad app and doesn't allow sharing of documents between applications:

http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/file_sharing_with_an_ipad_ugh/

Here's a case of Apple both limiting functionality and making the product difficult to use. Shame.

http://gizmodo.com/5513282/ipad-fail-free-macbook-fail-bonus-edition

I know how you feel bitt, I have the exact same problem of being able to point out bad bits of design but unable to design anything myself.

The other developers at a previous job used to take the piss out of me over it, accusing me of only ever designing UIs that consisted of red and black. The funny thing was while they could also design better UIs than me they were't so good at spotting other people's bad design as I am.

This was probably my best bit of UI ever and I still know it sucks



You'd think given that I can see that it sucks that I'd be able to fix it...

Crazy Alice in Wonderland "eBook" for the iPad. The link is to YouTube for a "trailer" for the app/book.

Considering the subject matter, the implementation is rather apt. You can get a less intense (you know, regular text) version for free from Project Guttenberg, but where's the fun in that?

Kids will absolutely love it and it'll probably be one of the standard showoff apps when you want to impress somebody. You don't actually get much of the story though so it'll be back to the real paper version or the Guttenberg version if you want to read it properly. Makes sense though since you'd either have way too many pages to animate or you'd just have massive sections of text between the "fun" bits.

This wonderful book includes 52 pages and 20 amazing animated scenes.

It's like a digital pop-up book. This would make an amazing treatment for a number of Dr. Suess books.

Watching my five year old daughter torture her collection of books, let's just say I'd be hesitant to hand her my $500+ iPad (assuming I had one, which I don't).

Also of note, I tried reading Alice in Wonderland to her from my Kindle with text I got from Project Gutenberg. She said, "that's not a book! It doesn't have any pages or pictures." So there you go.

Tom, do you think that the iPad's weak touch screen performance with cat paws is going to affect its sales? I think the effect may be mitigated by the sheer volume of cat-friendly titles, such as the game shown in that video.

Besides, I hear it works great with sausages.

I just love that video. I have to show it to everybody here. And, I am getting an iPad for my cats.

Thanks for post it

That video is great! Our cat would sit and watch me on the laptop and paw at the screen when she was a kitten. But now she's grown up she doesn't even seem to be interested.

We have a big mirror in our living room and if you hold her up to it, she looks round the edges but seems to refuse to actually look into the mirror, very peculiar.

Too cute.

I think our cats would react similarly. When they sit on my lap while I'm using the computer, they frequently spot the mouse cursor and go a little nuts, probably thinking it's a bug.

Certain things on the TV also get them standing up against the TV and swatting at it.

Playing computer games on my TV provided much amusement for one of my cats.


It's a shame my allergy to cats grew to the point I couldn't own one anymore. Same goes for dogs too, something just caused my allergies to shift dramatically over the past few years.

Oh no! That's too bad. I love our cats and we're hoping to get a dog soon.

And I'd forgotten about video games. One of ours loves tracking the hand in the Wii menus

Dreamcast !!!!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPzbtVc9d9Y

I still have that Dreamcast too, works great even after 11 years now. Still looks decent when paired with the VGA adaptor.

Now for the canine iPad review:

My iPad came in on Friday (a 3G 32gb unit), and I went ahead and subscribed to the data service for one month. I did this mostly because I have a trip next weekend to hand off the WiFi iPad to my grandmother, and because we don't have WiFi up and running in the new studio at work yet. Signing up for the data service was pretty easy, with the iPad asking if I wanted to sign up the first time I opened Safari. It pops up a smaller window to pick a plan, and to provide a credit card number. A little over a minute after completing the form, a new popup indicated everything was activated and ready for use.

Now that I have data access at work for email, and can VPN in to access other resources, the usefulness went up quite a bit. Already, it came in handy quite a few times for coordinating some build issues we were working on later on Friday. Our local IT guy tried out a free remote desktop app on it, and was quickly sold on the idea of using one for remote administration. Overall, once 4.0 comes out with multitasking, an iPad with 3G may be a really good tool for on call admins. While similar could be done with a laptop, the benefit to the iPad will tie into a later point.

Overall, my use of the system has been pretty much media consumption. I tend to watch a TV show before bed, or read, with both activities working decently on the device. AirVideo (warning, may launch iTunes) has been great for watching anything my Mac Pro can see, and it will even trigger wake on demand if the system is asleep. GoodReader is an excellent program for opening PDF, Word, and other common documents. The ability for it to access my iDisk or any other webdav server has come in handy a few times, as it allows me to just keep everything important on my iDisk and access it remotely, instead of worrying about syncing files everywhere.

I've commented on battery life before, but it's worth bringing up again, as it's now becoming clear it's one of the main benefits of the device. It's so power efficient, I really haven't worried about it. Even after using it to play podcasts in the car with the volume at full blast (due to my amplifier dying), decent web and e-mail use at work, along with some game time, I haven't dropped the battery below 60% after one day. Today for example, my battery was at 78% when I came home, after the device sat on 3G all day pulling down e-mail and the screen being on a good portion of my work day. This is why I think it would be a good admin tool. Instead of having to haul around a full laptop, or even a netbook and charger while on call, an iPad could work for dealing with a situation remotely, even if it sat in the trunk of the car for a week unused.

Long term, it will be interesting to see how the device evolves, as better wireless internet comes online, and hopefully better cloud solutions also come out. Google will likely be in the same space soon, so even those against Apple will have similar offerings. It really is a new category, separate from the traditional x86 portable computers with battery life measured in single digit hours and boot times of a full blown desktop OS. I always know that in the morning, I'm seconds away from the web and e-mail, without having to boot a system up, or have power cords on the nightstand to keep a battery charged. Overall, I'm quite pleased with the device, and have been a bit surprised at how well it works for many situations.

Oh, and one amusing use of it that happened today, letting 3 people decide what word to play in Words with Friends while walking over to Starbucks for an afternoon snack.

Oh, and stats wise, Apple announced this today:

1 million units sold (with no breakdown between 3G and WiFi models)
12 million app downloads
1.5 million ebook downloads

Someone on a podcast I was listening to wanted to compare this to sales of the Newton, with the best estimate saying 200,000 were sold over the lifetime. Amazing what a bit of time, the internet, and proper marketing can do.

I can't argue with anything you said, and the iPad looks more and more appealing to me all the time. I just can't afford the cost, and for me, there's simply 0% chance that it can replace my netbook in my business, as I so often need an ethernet jack to troubleshoot networking issues. I have no doubt it could replace netbooks for many people, just not me unfortunately. It would be a nice addition, though.

I definitely think that the 3G device is more appealing as well, though I have concerns about what they allow over the networks. The ABC player, for instance, won't work, and I've heard other video is really downgraded. Can you speak to those issues?

*edit*
Just to be clear, I'm not hating anywhere in this post Like I said, I'm always finding the device more appealing, and clearly I'm being proven wrong about the success of it, though I'm still curious to see long term effects.

Yeah, the iPad or other tablets won't replace a netbook/laptop for everyone. For my type of IT work/support, web access is the #1 need, followed possibly by Remote Desktop (Windows) or SSH (Linux). Physically plugging the iPad into anything isn't a requirement here.

As far as video over 3G, it has to meet certain bitrates (64-440kbit). The initial ABC app didn't support downgrading to that level, but as of yesterday with an update, it now works fine, and looks decent enough to be watchable. Youtube videos tend to look worse, as they appear to be downgrading quite a bit.

The ABC player doesn't work because they have failed to provide alternate, lower-bandwidth streams for fall-over to 3G. It's an ATT requirement and part of the SDK for iPhone (and has been all along) that if you want video over 3G you have to provide lower bandwidth streams.

The Newton sold 200k in five years. The world was a very different place back then, so I wouldn't look much into that. One can also look at how quickly the first million iPads have been sold, 28 days, compared to the first iPhone, 74 (or so) days. But, that iPhone was breaking new ground. The iPad has the iPhone's success to ride on. The same situation you find when you look at Android and sales of other iPhone-like products. It's the iPhone that did the trailblazing to allow those products to achieve the sales they're currently enjoying.

I'm still planning to skip the first generation iPad, but I also still see it as distinctly a third category. It's not a phone or pocketable handheld and it's not a notebook. For some people it can replace one or both of those other devices, but for others it's simply a third device. And there's nothing wrong with that.

Now, the more interesting stat that I haven't seen reported yet... What's the greatest number of slate/pad computers that have ever been sold by a single manufacturer? I'd be surprised if anyone else has ever sold 1 million units in any number of years of product availability. I'd be less surprised, but somewhat surprised nonetheless, if anyone else can introduce anything this year that will sell 1 million units.

Sounds like they really have things down, and that's great. Is the 3G version different in that you don't need a computer to activate it? I think things will get extremely interesting when/if Apple can get the iPad to the point where you don't need to have another computer in the house. For example, if grandma only needs the 3G iPad and no computer/home internet connection, that would be really cool.

Would someone explain a usage scenario for the $15 250MB plan? It seems to me that you couldn't really do anything on that. Furthermore, I wonder how accurate the bandwidth monitor they're using actually is. I remember Leo Laporte getting pretty upset when he was overcharged for international data roaming because AT&T said he went over and his iPhone said he didn't.

Once again, I'm not criticizing Apple here. If anyone, I criticize AT&T and all carriers and ISPs who have bandwidth caps and consistently refuse to give their customers reliable ways to monitor them.

I'd be very surprised if the ratio of $30 plans to $15 plans weren't extremely lopsided toward the former. $30 is actually pretty reasonable. In fact, what annoys me about that is how the carriers gouge you for a USB adapter plan for like $60/month, when the iPad is so targeted towards media consumption. I do wonder, though, if 3G can handle these high bandwidth streams like Youtube effectively. Perhaps I'll wait for the 4G iPad?

I use no where near that amount a month on my iPhone and I wouldn't expect to use dramatically more on a 3G iPad.

The trick is having wifi access in places you spend lots of time. I have wifi at home, use wifi at the companies I work at, use wifi in coffee shops and use wifi when stopped in motorway services. So I don't actually download much on 3G at all.

I'm sure there are people who do use more, but for example when Ars Technica polled iPhone users most people said their data usage was under 250MB/month.

With a USB adapter you can sit there downloading torrents all day, not something you can do with your $30 iPad plan without jailbreaking it to enable tethering.

All the 3G equiped iPhoneOS devices really should have a simple little chart in the usage screen that shows you your last six months usage, kind of shocking that they don't [-]

I've just checked, I downloaded 1GB of data over the cell network since 28th September 2009. So less than 150MB a month.

The 3G iPad still has to activate via iTunes first. I'm not sure of everything that happens during activation, but part of the process is related to generating a certificate used for push notifications. Theoretically they could move this process device side only, and require an internet connection for initial setup. If you buy from the Apple Store, they will offer to activate it before you leave. One interesting thing here is how Apple handles this. When you buy the device, they hand the unopened box to you, walk you over to someone at a computer, then let you open and unwrap it. They make sure you are the one to have the box opening and first hands on experience.

The 3G iPad still has the same limits the iPhone does, in that the iTunes Music Store/App Store won't allow downloads above 20MB unless on WiFi. And with the reduced quality video streams, bandwidth usage won't rival a laptop with a USB adaptor.

As for the 250 MB plan, the device will alert you when 20% and 10% is remaining. It will also cut service off when it hits 0, allowing the user to either buy 250mb more or pay $30 for unlimited for 30 more days. I believe these alerts are based on how AT&T shows usage, so they should be accurate.

There you go, ABC player now allows 3G video streaming:

http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/03/abc-player-for-ipad-updated-3g-streaming-is-a-go/

Here's a terrific little iPad hack that occupies a niche that would otherwise be filled by a single-purpose/specialty device...

iPad integrated into kitchen cupboard

It would be nice to have a waterproof bluetooth 5-way navigation device mounted to your kitchen counter as well. That way you could actually operate a specific app (with support for that device) with your hands dirty - and then wash the controller.

A perfect example of using an iPad as a dedicated-task device. Of course even though the application can be considered dedicated (built-in) the iPad's OS itself offers a tremendous amount of content variety should you ever want it.

This is why it would otherwise be so easy to deploy 10 or 20 of these things in your personal and/or professional life.

It's the salmonella-y-est!

MacRumors had an interesting post on the new iPad ad, comparing it to the old Newton ad.

Newton:


iPad:

If they run that ad in the UK I think they'll have the ASA down on them over the "all the worlds websites" line. That simply isn't true thanks to idiots out there with 100% Flash sites.

The iPad also can't download files and a lot of sites have downloadable content. So that part of the web is also not accessible. I didn't check for fine print, but there might be some in the commercial. One could also argue that Flash isn't actually the web site, but content hosted on the site. The iPad will chew through the base HTML without an issue. Maybe all-flash sites are also so great that they're "out of this world."

Whats really bugging me about this whole thing is that apart from YouTube, most other sites serving up content without Flash are doing it specifically for the iDevices. How about my desktop?

I like the new ad and I'm sure the similarities between it and the Newton ad will be lost on everyone but those reading about it in blogs. With any luck, and the iPad leading the revolution, maybe competitors can hope that their devices are as popular as the Newton once was. I doubt many of them will be.

That is a joke, right? If you're going to argue that, you could argue the same thing about JPEGs and, for that matter, HTML.

Ah, I miss my Newton. One of these days I'm sure I'll find it in the attic.

You can argue it, but you'd be wrong.

Flash is a completely separately contained run-time environment that effectively runs inside a box, not respecting anything outside it. Not respecting any of the building blocks of the system it's running on, the browser it's running on and the framework that builds the actual pages. No HTML, no CSS. It's just a completely foreign system set within a box operating under its own rules.

It's like setting a TV into a wall along with brick and mortar and windows and doors. It might be cool sometimes, but it's the odd man out.

How do JPEGs respect anything outside them, or the building blocks of the system, or the browser?

HTML is nothing more than content hosted on a web site. Nothing in the HTTP spec says anything about HTML. Nothing in the HTML spec says anything about JPEGs. (Other than as random examples.) Of course, it's perfectly reasonable to say that a "web site" is the HTML, CSS, JavaScript, JPEGs, PNGs, and GIFs hosted on an HTTP server. It's also perfectly reasonable to say that it also includes any object intended to render inside the browser.

I said I wouldn't get sucked back into this, but your arguments and analogies are becoming increasingly asinine. I no longer care about the Apple/Adobe thing, not that I think I was ever intentionally defending Adobe, at least as a primary concern.

If I go to, for example, http://www.audemarspiguet.com/, which is Flash-only, and I have no Flash capability, nothing renders (other than a background). Your argument would be "that's not a web site", which is prima facie asinine.

Caleb's analogy with the baseball bat was kind of weak, but you counter it with one that is not only weak, but barely relevant at all. How is formula racing even remotely equivalent to the iPad? Are you trying to say that the iPad is merely a competition ground for developers? (For the record, a closer analogy might be that of a DVD player that disallowed playing of animated content.)

*wonders when every tech thread will stop having discussions of flash sprinkled into it*

So far, the lack of flash on the iPad has been an issue only two or three times that I can remember, mostly on Engadget. Everything else has played fine, either via HTML5 video tags, or YouTube/Vimeo embeds that get turned into HTML5 video tags. The days of IE only sites were far worse for me back when I started running Firebird. Even a recent test in Denver of checking restaurant sites for hours and menus was surprising, in that 6 different places I checked in Park Meadows all had working HTML/mobile alternatives.

Bitt, you've partially responded into the incorrect thread. The MLB mention doesn't have anything to do with the comments in here.

I don't think it's unreasonable for Apple to make the claim they've made in their commercial.

More followup in the other thread.

Tom, once all the big menu producers switch over you'll see most restaurant pages compliant. So many are hosted on Menu Palace or similar one-stop-shops.

Recent news has the iPad outselling Macs (not surprising) and out-of-stock situations at 74% of Apple stores. The 3G model is sold out in 100% of stores. We can see why that 2 unit limit is in place.

So what's next for Apple? Here are a few things I think they should do.

1. Forbid Google/AdMob (all other Ad providers) ads in apps in the App Store. If you want to have ads in your app, it's iAds or you advertise your own apps. At the very least take 30% of all ad revenues from ad companies they approve.

2. Buy TomTom. Mostly for TeleNav. That would give them a huge leg up on Google who doesn't currently own any map data I'm aware of. It also means more money coming in from Google and other current licensees of TeleNav data, plus the ability to build-in or offer for a small fee, a nice Nav app (which would need some rework to Apple-ify). If they can get TomTom for under 2 billion it seems like a decent long-term acquisition.

3. Make one or more telephony acquisitions - mostly to update their patent portfolio.

Google owns their own map data for the entire US and Canada, and is quickly getting other areas too. Their streetview cars collected enough data to let them break ties with the other providers.

Easiest way to tell is to go to maps.google.com and look at a location with the map only view. If the copyrights in the bottom right are only for Google, thats an area using all in house data. Only when I get close to Mexico do I see something other then Google pop up down there.

Damn, they've moved pretty fast. Even a month back the data for my area said either NavTeq or TeleAtlas - and was out of date. I suppose they may have stopped updating it specifically because they were building their own.

Still a good reason for Apple to acquire such data. Being tied to Google in this respect is not wise.

Yeah, I have no idea what's taking Apple so long on the navigation front. Having free navigation on Android is absolutely killer. It meant that when I was in Phoenix, and when I go to San Francisco this fall, I don't need to shell out $100 for a stupid TomTom app that I only need when travelling.

To be fair, the TomTom app doesn't require a 3G connection, the Google app for Android does, right?

I can't complain about "Free," but if I'm going to pay, I'd like to have all the data on the device (ala TomTom, Navigon, etc..)

Very true, and it's something that I'm hoping Google might correct in the future.

For example, one of the very cool demos at Google IO was where you could push a plotted route in Google Maps to your phone. It would be great if, in the background, the phone also loaded all map data along that route and at least saved it to the SD card.

Also, the new Garmin phone that runs on Android does load map data, I believe. I'm not clear on the specifics, though.

What do you want it to save? The phone doesn't do anything. It just draws information received from Google. Do you want it to store all map tiles at all zoom levels as you drive? Its GPS capability only goes so far as to report a location. If you want an offline navigation system you'll have to use some other system.

I don't need it to load satellite views, but why couldn't it load all the roads in the general direction you'll be going? Or even pre-load just the roads on your route (it might already do that, I don't know). Why couldn't they do that? Would it be so difficult? It's Google, I think they have some smart people there who could figure an algorithm to decide what data to load before you set out.


I'm not sure what you thought I was saying. Did you think I thought it should load data over GPS? These phones, unlike a nav-only device, have almost-constant data connections, so in fact I'd expect them to be even better at their jobs.

When it comes down to it, these phones have more capabilities than a traditional GPS. And if I have an 8GB card in my phone, or all that space on an iPhone, why shouldn't I be able to preload a simple route, or even an entire city, or region, or country? My GPS in my Honda Odyssey had the streets and addresses for the entire country on a single DVD. Sure, that's at most 4.7GB (though I doubt it took up the whole disc), and Google maps has a lot more data than that Nav did, but I don't see why you couldn't load an entire city on your phone. Like I said in my post, I get the impression that the Garmin phone already does this, so what are you arguing?

Because if your route queries (and, to a lesser extent, map tile downloads) don't go through Google's cloud, they don't get to see what you're doing, and they don't get to monetize it.

Precaching the map tiles for your query (that still goes through Google) would be a useful half-way house, though...

Most people would complain like hell if their all-in-one GPS uploaded their searches and driving patterns to Google, but because Google Maps is _all_ in the "cloud", they don't mind. Go figure.

Yeah, good point. Still, I think that, for safety considerations, they should at least load all the street data along your path. What if you're out driving on some desert or mountain road with no cell towers around, and you take the wrong turn?

The ultimate question is: does the phone itself calculate routes, or is it the Google servers back in Menlo Park?

That's my point. The phone doesn't do any work other than displaying and reporting to Google of changes (ie. You're not on the route anymore). You'd need a different app that did the work client-side in order for Dignan's point to be useful.

Sounds like Garmin et. al. have nothing to worry about Google current nav implementation then. It sounds like it completely sucks ass.

Google seems to be shifting right into Microsoft's role here. They're doing big things, but everything they're doing is only half-baked.

Because that's not how Google Maps works. The client is used for rendering and that's about it.


I'm not sure what you thought I was saying. Did you think I thought it should load data over GPS? These phones, unlike a nav-only device, have almost-constant data connections, so in fact I'd expect them to be even better at their jobs.[/quote]

Sorry, I meant that Google Maps doesn't have navigation built-in like a Garmin or TomTom product would. It simply reads the location from GPS and sends that to Google. A Garmin device reads the location from GPS and then does work internally.

Don't be disingenuous. You know it most definitely does not suck ass. It only fails if you're off the grid. On the grid it's about the only implementation I have any desire to use.

I'm not sure that's entirely true. I feel like it responds too quickly to minor deviations for all of the work to be done on Google's servers. I have a suspicion (though I've not tested it) that the application itself will do some routing on its own, though it may be limited to getting you back on the route already provided by Google's servers.

Yeah, I have no way to prove what I'm saying. I'm just going with Occam's razor.

Google Maps Navigation (not currently available on the iPad or iPhone) will cache the route to prevent issues if the data connection is lost along the way. Text to speech also works fine when offline. The routing part I'm not certain, but it't probably what Bitt said, just good enough to get you back to the master route, and would fall apart if you deviate off course a ways.

Oh, I do. Get a route, then put the phone in Airplane Mode.

Better yet, try to get a route in Airplane mode.

I was being kind. If it worked the way you describe, it would suck worse than ass. Seriously.

If the app doesn't actually do any navigation then it means it can't reroute if you lose your data connection. It also means it can't reroute quickly when you do have a data connection (at least a non-optimal one). It also means you can't plan a route without a data connection. Which means it's nothing but a toy which means it's no competition for real navigation software. Which means it sucks in my books.

The Google-powered Maps application for iPhone sucks as well. Big time. Completely worthless, I wish I could uninstall it from my iPod since there are other much better apps available. But having the map service as part of the OS is useful and that's the bulk of what that app is exposing anyway.

What Tom said. It does cache the instruction for your route. If you wander off completely however, it won't know how to get you back to your destination without reconnecting since it doesn't store maps locally and therefore can't reroute you.

So, get this... The DOJ is starting up an investigation into iTunes because supposedly Apple used its market power to make the playing field level and promote competition:

http://www.tuaw.com/2010/05/26/us-departmet-of-justice-to-investigate-apple-over-itunes/#comments

The details are that Apple supposedly threatened labels with not "featuring" (ie. special promotional positioning and consideration) specific tracks if the labels continued to engage Amazon in exclusivity deals that gave Amazon preferential pricing and lead time over everyone else for those very tracks.

Umm, right. Maybe the DOJ should be investigating the labels or even Amazon for shady shenanigans. Music labels have balls of steel, seriously. We're going to give this guy special pricing and a one day head start over everyone else, but you need to make sure to promote the same songs on your front page. Maybe the labels should just have asked Apple to put a link to Amazon's site into iTunes.


They must also be selling a lot of fricken iPads... Apple just caught up to (and slightly passed) MSFT in market cap.

Today's the international launch day, anyone on the other side of the ocean picking one up today? They are still in short supply here in the US, with nearly every store having to collect customers information to put them into a queue.

And Apple is definitely putting a lot of effort into localizing things, as the UK gets their own guided tour of the iPad, narrated by a British fellow and featuring the Guardian instead of the Times.

2 Million iPads and counting. I believe that number already eclipses what any other manufacturer will be able to reach with their misc. tablet products.

Having more demand than expected is always good thing. Not having enough supply is not. A lack of supply continues to constrain sales at least in the US. It's just speculation, but Apple may be significantly ramping manufacturing for the next iPhone and running a little thin on assembly lines at the moment.

They're well on their way to selling more than 4 million units for the year and the new iPhone is sure to do some large business and set some new benchmarks in the industry. At this point I'm really interested in what's going to go down at WWDC regarding the iPad and OS 4 (which will be installed on the new iPhone by default).

We went to the Kingston store (London) on Saturday to have a play with one, there was a queue for them outside the store but it wasn't massive, maybe 8 people.

We went past another couple of hours later and the queue had maybe increased by another 5 people, but you were still free to join it, it doesn't look like they had any stock issues at that store.

The stock levels of the iPad in the UK are clearly coping better than all three iPhone launches. For the iPhone launches they maintained a list of which stores had stock for weeks after launch. There is no sign of that being done for the iPad.

8 people lined up outside a store on the second day of product availability is pretty good. I saw photos of a couple of lines on opening day (from the UK) and they were massive, at least a hundred people long.

My brother was able to pick up an iPad here in Canada - I think yesterday. Not sure if he just walked in or had it reserved.

Given all the buzz, I actually expected that Apple would be selling them a little bit quicker, perhaps having just hit their 3 million milestone instead of 2.

I've seen pictures of the queues in London that look like that. But not in Manchester, there was nobody queuing to buy there, but about 20 or so people having a look at them.

My first hands on experience with a iPad was actually a couple of weeks ago when I was in Preston, the local CEX had one in the window for sale so I asked to have a look at it.

Yeah, I'd imagine that the regent street store will have had stupidly long queues, but then again I personally wouldn't go anywhere near that store on release day of a limited stock product.

As an aside, one of the demo apps on the iPad was Starwalk, liked the app so much that we bought it, it's super cool on the iPad and just as cool (but smaller) on the 3GS, uses the accelerometer, gps and compass to make identifying the night sky a very cool experience. Slightly less cool on the 3G because of the lack of a compass.

You get random queues at the Regent Street store sometimes. Not 100% sure why. When it is around the release date of a new product however, it'll be absolutely heaving for days. When the iPod touch was originally released, I went there a week or two after and there was still quite a wait to actually purchase one even with their extra staff with mobile CC terminals.


I've tried the Google equivalent for Android and whilst it is cool, it still doesn't make it any easier for myself to identify those stars! It just still looks like a mass of really faint dots of light to me

The equivalent for Android, Google Sky Map is free. It's a neat application. Lots of wow factor.

I think that many fewer stars than you might expect actually have names. (I expect all the visible ones and more have some sort of code name these days, but there are seemingly no more than several hundred 'Polaris'es and 'Betelgeuse's.)

I think you've got a higher opinion of the patience of the ancients than I have. I was surprised there were as many as a few hundred with individual names.

Most of the visible stars have deterministically-allocated code-names by the Bayer or Flamsteed schemes, both based on the constellation they're in and an order-of-brightness ranking within each constellation.

Peter

Well, less than expected when you look at a small portion of the sky on a smartphone. There are several dozens of stars visible in the viewport, yet, at most, three or four with names. It ends up looking really sparse.

I was at least surprised that the main stars in prominent constellations are not all named. For example, only two of the stars in Orion have traditional names, and neither of them in the belt or sword.

I used that just two nights ago. We were all eating outside on the beach, and there was a very bright object in the sky. My wife guessed Venus, and sure enough Google Sky Map showed that it was. I also suspected I could see the big dipper, and used it to show that too. Very neat.

Oh, did anyone else notice there's a trade show going on right now for failed products? They're calling it Computex. Everyone seems to be showing off slate/tablet products that will never ship or that will fail miserably once they do. It's like everyone is competing in a race to the bottom.

I actually used it to help align a telescope so that I could get these shots of Jupiter and moons. They didn't turn out too bad considering we were missing the attachment to allow us to hook the camera up through the telescope. As a result, we were forced to mount the cameras to the top of the telescope. First was taken with some sort of DSLR and the other was taken with my Sony DSC-T700, which isn't known for good astrophotography.

http://db.tt/etNwhb
http://db.tt/cFnHwI

Apparently Sauron has been reborn on Jupiter.

Yeah, it's a pity we didn't have the Barlow lens handy.

I have an honest question for you iPad owners out there. I tried using one again yesterday by logging into my test Google account I created (I wasn't going to log into my own account on a display unit). I once again tried out Google Reader in desktop mode, this time knowing how to scroll the story area.

My question is: why was it such a jittery experience?

I'm not asking to bash the product (I like the thing, I just can't spend that much money for it right now). I'm asking because I was a bit surprised. While I was scrolling through the stories (in expanded view, to be fair), I found it to be noticeably lagging. It just didn't feel like a smooth scroll.

Sorry, I'm just trying to understand what's going on here. Is it how Reader was written?

I'm assuming the desktop version is optimized for desktops, that now commonly have at least a gig of memory, fastish processor and so on. While Safari on the iPad is decent, it still has far less resources compared to a desktop or even a net book. Out of curiosity, how well does google reader work in desktop mode in the Nexus One?

I haven't dug into the code much, but it feels like google reader is using javascript for scrolling instead of letting the browser handle it, hence the need for two fingers to scroll.

If you do go with an ipad or other tablet, look for a dedicated app. I see 9 ipad specific ones searching the app store for "google reader". I can't really comment on any of them though, since I still don't use reader or orhter RSS services.

Not at all, sir! However, the Nexus One doesn't have "the best browsing experience of all time." Plus, it's a cell phone, and I'd want more screen area to view the stories in.


I thought it might be something like that. I think they do that for two reasons: First, as you scroll it marks things as read, and second, because you might have hundreds of unread news posts, it only loads a certain amount at first, and loads more after you've scrolled past a few stories. Both of these could also contribute to the slower speed. Unfortunately, both of these are reasons why I love that view.


The main problem with this, and the reason why Apple and any non-Google device would be out of the question (if I couldn't use the site), is that I simply do not give any web site or application my Google login. It's simply too valuable to me. There are apps on the Android platform that require the login, but there are some that don't. I believe those apps talk to the OS in a manner which gains them access to the account without knowing the login information. I don't know if that's a worry as well, but it makes me feel a little safer. Ideally Google would release an app for Reader themselves, but I guess they feel the mobile site is enough. It's okay, but nothing, IMO, matches the full experience...


So in the end, I don't really blame the iPad, but I would still say that it's another case where I'm not getting the full web browsing experience, and it's on my second-most used site (after GMail).

Do they actually block it, or does something else fail? I was mostly asking since the Nexus One is pretty comparable to the iPad as far as processing power.

Logging into Google Reader then scrolling the extended story area in a similar way to the iPad was resulting in spikes all the way up to 80% CPU when using Firefox on my Mac. Memory usage also went from 50MB at open to 200MB after scrolling back 10 hours worth of stories. So yeah, it's just not an application optimized for a tablet or phone browser.

iPhone OS 4.0 may bring some improvements to the iPad in terms of javascript performance, but it's hard to say how much. Odds are Google is going to need to tune things on their side if the "Desktop" variant of Reader is going to be the preferred one on the iPad.


Well, there is a difference here. Normal sites that display text and images via pretty standard HTML work fine, as the power needed to render/display them is pretty minimal. Web apps like Google Reader are quite a bit different, running (doing a quick check) ~700k worth of scripts and an additional ~250k worth of style sheet info. Thats the downside to Web apps compared to native apps. The device is now forced to both compile and execute code, instead of just having to worry about execution. Time will sort this issue out though, either with more powerful processors or better optimizations in the javascript compiler.

As for your paranoia, I can somewhat understand if you have so much info tied to that one account. My issues with using Google heavily are more concerns with having all my data out there somewhere, uncontrollable by me both in terms of what is done with it, and also how I access it. As I've voiced elsewhere, the downside to Web apps is losing control of when upgrades happen. I am forced into their new version, complete with new UI tweaks and all, instead of being able to upgrade and learn the new features when I want to.

All valid reasons for rolling your own when it comes to this stuff. I just don't want to bother, so I find Google to be the best product of its kind. Security will always be a concern, but when it comes to the fear of them changing something in a way I don't like, fortunately Google has a very healthy philosophy of "not only is there another option for each of our products, but we let you get your data out of most/all of it." Basically, I like this.


*edit*
As for the Google Reader stuff, that's all true as well, though as I said, I think it tends to reveal more of how that statement of "the best browsing experience ever" has some caveats to it. I can't argue about the way you interact with the device, but the fact remains that there are things I can't do when browsing the web on the iPad (or any tablet, I'd say). I could get around these things, but it seems like I'll need to do it with alternatives.

In Google Reader's case, I'd say that I'll have to wait for Google to release the equivalent to its iPad-optimized GMail app. I've played with that, and it's actually very good!

As for the Nexus One, the page loads, but is completely scrollable and just a static page. I can click on links and open different feeds, but I can't scroll the story area at all (two-finger scrolling doesn't work).

NOOOOOO!!!

Wow, was I bummed last night. Here's the story:

• I cannot pay $500 for an iPad
• When it came out, I figured,"why not enter a couple contests to win one?"
• I entered a contest Dreamhost was putting on, where I just had to tweet something with the word "Dreamhost" in it
• I never heard anything
• Last night I installed the official Twitter client on my Nexus One
• For the first time I checked my "mentions"
• They'd contacted three times over about three weeks
• I'd won an iPad
• They gave it to someone else
• 

Ouch

Dude, that sucks.

They only tried to contact you by one of the worst inventions ever?

Hey, don't knock it, it's the same reason we got to see one of the, umm, worst movies recently... (Transformers 2)

Yup. Really, I blame the hype around Twitter more than anything. The entire idea of Twitter, as I keep hearing the tech press talk about it, is that it's a stream that you jump into and out of at any time. If I were just checking my main Twitter page, I'd have to watch it like a hawk to see that message from Dreamhost float by.

But instead, it was a creation of the users (@ replies), that were used to inform the winners. I believe you can check these replies (or "mentions," as I believe they're calling them now) from the site, but it's mostly something that seems to be done through 3rd party apps.

Grr. That really sucks. It's not the end of the world, and I didn't have an iPad yesterday either, but it sucks knowing that if I'd installed that app two weeks ago, I'd have one now.

Twitter has the following kinds of messages:

1. Normal messages that go into the stream along with everything else
2. @replies, these also go into the stream, but are directed at another user and only show up to others when they have the recipient as a follower. This is a way to have a small reply thread
3. Direct messages. These are private, similar to PMs here.

All of these are visible on the twitter.com page and in every client. Sucks that you missed out on the free iPad, hopefully this will help if you try for other twitter contests.

This just in. Apple to Google: "Suck it."

They haven't outright banned other ad service providers, but they've done something even more clever, good for consumers and good for protecting their IP. They've put in language in the most recent SDK licensing agreement to forbid certain types of data to be collected by third parties without the consent of the end-user/customer and certain other types outright.

This helps protect customer privacy and it also helps prevent competitors like Google from gaining inside knowledge they can use to help their own products and marketing efforts.

EDIT:

Oh, the agreement also excludes ad companies that are owned or affiliated with device or OS companies - as they'd be able to obtain competitive information to use against Apple's own products. This essentially blocks Google's AdMob from being used in apps. So essentially, they've done exactly what I suggested, but only to Google (at this time).

I'm LOVING this because it completely devalues AdMob, which now it appears Google paid far (far) too much for when they stole it from under Apple (who were already in talks with AdMob for a sale). You'd swear there was a group of screenwriters behind the scenes controlling the world.

END EDIT.

I'm sure this is going to be added to the DoJ inquiry. I hope with all my might that it comes around to bite Google in the ass and opens up a bigger inquiry into their own data acquisition/retention practices. They're no Facebook/AOL, but they're down-right scary nonetheless.

I think more than ever, Apple needs to make a play for their own map/nav IP. Let's see if my second suggestion to Apple plays out.

The ban isn't because Apple are especially concerned about their customers though. It is purely for the protecting their IP as you mentioned. They're furious at one of the companies that collected usage metrics for some apps which discovered that several people were using something with the ID of iPhone3,1 all around the Apple campus.

It is a bit sketchy anyway that they used to collect that much data and included your GPS location as well.

Huh? Please, explain how this is specifically good for consumers.

I will agree that it's a great platform for their customers, but their customers are not consumers, they're developers.

I don't necessarily care about this development, I just find it weird to claim this helps consumers. Of course, it doesn't really hurt them either.

I am not an Apple fanboy. In fact, I detest everything Apple, because if it's different from what I'm used to, it can't be any good.

That said, if Apple were to acquire its own map/navigation system that ran full screen on an iPad with maps as good as Google Maps, and if the navigation worked in Mexico (!) and through regular GPS satellites and internal maps, not through some cell network (not a lot of cell phone coverage around here) I would stand all night in the rain in front of the nearest Apple store to buy one. Price would not be a consideration.

My experience here in Mexico with GPS navigation has been... spotty. My Garmin GPS (with aftermarket Mexico maps) has been useful, in that eventually it will get me where I'm going, IF I can give it an acceptable address. That's a lot harder than it sounds, because I can't just put in "1819 Avenida de Las Americas, Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico" because... do I want to get into this? Sure, why not. Guadalajara grew from a bunch of smaller [towns][villages][neighborhoods][suburbs] each with their own street numbers, but the street names are common. These areas are known as Colonias. There might well be half a dozen different "1819 Avenida de Las Americas" in greater Guadalajara. So, with the Garmin I have to first give it the name of the Colonia. This information is not easily come by. The best (and so far only) solution I have found is to feed the address into Google Maps on my computer, and it will flag all six (or however many) matching addresses there are, labeled A B C D E F, and I'll look at the map and make my best guess as to which of the six is the one I want. Then Google will tell me the name of the Colonia, I can put that into the Garmin along with the street address, and the Garmin will get me there. Sort of.

The maps I have for the Garmin are pretty much unaware of such trivialities as one-way streets (about half the streets in Guadalajara are one-way), and with those maps the Garmin is perfectly happy telling me to make a left turn onto Hidalgo from Lopez Mateos Sur when Lopez Mateos is a limited access divided highway and no left turn is possible. At that point, Ms. Garmin tells me in a slightly disgusted tone of voice (I love that, no doubt whoever put that into the voiceware was subsequently fired for having a sense of humor!) "Recalculating..." and tells me to make another impossible turn a quarter mile down the road. When something like this happens, I just exit Lopez Mateos anywhere I can, get off onto side roads, and let Ms. Garmin try and find the way without making impossible demands.

So, on a whim we bought a TomTom GPS unit, on sale at Amazon for something like $89 complete with Mexico, US, and Canada maps. The Mexican mapping is far less complete than the Garmin's. For example, where I live (third-largest town on Lake Chapala with nearly 20,000 people) is mapped only to the extent of showing the Carretera (highway) through town, no other information is given. Roads on the outskirts of Guadalajara are frequently not shown, and even on major roads street address number information is frequently not available so I have to shoot for the nearest intersection. But... I don't have to know the name of the Colonia (the TomTom shows all the matches and I pick the one I think is best) and the GUI of the TomTom puts the Garmin completely to shame with options like avoid toll roads, avoid unpaved roads, select an itinerary that matches the route I want to take instead of the shortest distance.

As much as I dislike Apple, I strongly suspect that I would very much like their idea of navigation software, and if it ran full screen on an iPad, where I could actually see in great detail what was going on, I would be a happy first-time Apple customer.

tanstaafl.

It helps consumers because now developers are prohibited from collecting any data without express permission from the customer using the application. As As developer, you must include a permission request in your app if you want to collect data.

Incidentally, while Apple's WWDC is targeted at developers, as a company, their customers are end-users. Developers come a very distant second to the average joe consumer.

Making data collection more transparent and opt-in is good for the consumer.

Doug... I'm confident that the current Nav vendors will eventually update their apps to take advantage of the iPad's larger screen. I wouldn't expect TomTom to be first, but perhaps one of their competitors like Navigon will have it soon. Unfortunately I don't have any idea what their maps for Mexico are like.

I did use a Garmin Nuvi extensively the last time I was in Portugal and its maps were a little bit out of date, but generally very good for everywhere I went (and I was on some pretty small back roads in places with a population of less than 50). Map detail in other European countries is even better from casual browsing (though I didn't do any nav outside of Portugal). From what I remember, the Nuvi did offer the option of picking from multiple matches when it found them. There were a lot of things to complain about otherwise with the Nuvi though.

Only "issue" with using an iPad as a GPS is that you only get the GPS in the more expensive model that has 3G wireless. Using an external GPS is out of the question without jailbreaking it as well it seems.

Oh, speaking of news out of WWDC for the iPad thread here, beyond sales numbers it wasn't talked about at all. No demonstration of iOS 4.0 on one, no idea of features for the iPad, and no beta for developers. I was expecting at least something. With iOS 4 going out to iPhones by the end of this month, it's going to complicate things for developers making universal apps for both platforms.

Ouch.

I think if there could be a "lessons learned" here for me it would be:

Only enter more deterministic contests where Ed McMahon comes to your house.

The Financial Times is reporting that "someone" - some US regulator - is "interested" in the mobile advertising provisions in Apple's iOS SDK. Apparently while they know this, they don't seem to know which regulator cares nor which if any is going to do anything about it.

I'm no lawyer, but by all (sane) accounts Apple is pretty much in the clear. They don't have a monopoly position which to abuse. They don't forbid third-party ads nor ad networks. They only block parties with clear conflicts of interest from spying and stealing their IP.

http://i.imgur.com/huWri.jpg

I think someone has 'way' too much time on their hands.....

Really? Seems like if you already have the movie, it would take all of a couple minutes to put that together. Besides, he makes a valid point, though at the most I just consider it to be pretty lame on Apple's part.

Personally, I wouldn't buy an iPad to be a media playback device, so it doesn't bother me too much...

I'm with Andy on this one. This is an issue on any device capable of showing a movie, be it the iPad, an iPhone, every Android phone, every TV ever made and so on. Mixed aspect ratios aren't new, nor is marketing changing images to make it look better in promo material.

I still wonder what it is about Apple that attracts this unequal level of nitpicking. Their marketing team does the same thing the rest of the industry does. But yet some people are only horribly offended when Apple does something, enough to make the image Caleb posted. Seriously, did Jobs personally punch that many people when they were in kindergarden?

It's the fact he/she thinks it's even worth mentioning.

I'd written a small diatribe, but I can condense it to one sentence:

Personally, it's because the company as a whole is so damn smug, and that turns me off.

Tell you what, if I could launch a cutting edge device that basically has age old features like multi-tasking and crappy video calling as it's main selling features, then release it to the world at large with a massive design flaw, be able to convince everyone that it's supposed to be like that, then I would be pretty smug too.

The worst part of it is, I'm right in there with all the other mugs. I've still got my iPhone 4 on order and I've had an iPad for about 10 days now (love it BTW). Let them be smug, they deserve it.

Cheers

Cris

And you might be surprised to hear me say this, but I agree. They do deserve to be smug.

I don't have to like it, though.

Is that true? (I'm asking, I really don't know)

I don't know how to say this without sounding holier-than-thou so please bear with me. But is it really all right for Apple to cheat and lie in their advertising in order to sell their product? What does that say about them as a company?

I am a little taken aback by this. More than a little, actually...

tanstaafl.

Of course it is, he drinks the koolaid, too.

I don't see why you said that first part, Tom. Of course the issue isn't that a 4:3 display can't properly display 16:9 material. The issue is that they blatantly lied about the result you will get by playing that movie on that device.

I'm surprised and not all at the same time. It seems wrong to me to advertise this way, but its also seemed wrong to me from the beginning to market this thing as the best browsing experience and not have it support flash. I realize that many hate flash, but it still seems disingenuous to market it the way they have and not support a ton of content out there on the web. It's the height of arrogance that Apple is going to try and strong arm the industry away from plug-in technology. The worst part is, I think they might succeed, and that's a dangerous amount of power to give a company like Apple.

So back to the original issue- Apple has already show me they are less than honest in there desire to move product. It scares me more than anything M$ has ever done, and yet I'm continuing to drink their Koolaid because the iPhone is one of the far and away best products I've ever owned, and the iPhone/iPod/Apple TV integration is a pretty powerful setup in our household.

Thus far I have resisted getting an iPad even though my wife wants one badly, and this only firms my resolve.

Thanks for answering for me, it saved me time in having to write a reply.

Seriously though. You really think this is the first time ever that a company has doctored an image (ever so slightly, like 20 pixels worth here to make a widescreen movie fit better into a 4:3 advertisement) and it's worth deciding the company can't be trusted. I have a hard time thinking of a company that doesn't "blatantly lie" in the same way with their commercials, product boxes and so on, including the company you work for Caleb. Doctored screenshots and movies (simulated images) are very common in the game industry. And the movie industry, and TV industry, and food industry, and car industry, and, well, I could keep going. But yet again, because Apple did it, stop the presses and burn them at the stake. That punch in kindergarden must have been very memorable, maybe he stole everyones lunch money too.

Again, I just have a hard time understanding why people hold Apple in a different light then everyone else when it comes to their actions. I get the popularity part, fine. It's popular to pick on the company that is doing things well and is successful due to it. But is that really the reason? At least when Microsoft was popular due to illegal actions, I had major reasons to burn them at the stake, and not some simple photoshop in an ad. If anything, my reason for disliking Apple today would be over the antenna design flaw on the iPhone 4, something tangible.



Apple scares me far less then Microsoft did in the 90s, though it's all due to perspective and my position in the PC industry when Microsoft was rampaging. Sure, Apple is doing everything it can to shift people away from plugins, but in a legal way by showing an alternative and sticking with it on their own products in a non monopoly environment. If you don't like the choice, buy something else, it's that simple. Microsoft in the 90s had the power to force every PC company into doing what they wanted, and did so many many times illegally. Gateway did a simple thing of offering consumers choice between Netscape and IE on Gateway computers (not Microsoft computers), and was punished hard for that action. Even worse, Gateway was punished before this choice by simply using Netscape internally. Microsoft forced PC companies to buy Windows illegally. If I wanted a computer preloaded with OS/2 Warp, I was still paying money to the PC maker for a copy of Windows I never got. But yet Apple scares people more? Again, at least with Apple, their actions are confined to their own products in their own segment of the market. Microsoft had control over the entire industry and had many companies dancing to their demands. I'll take a 20 pixel photoshop of a movie on a device over having to pay for something I didn't want and losing choice.

It's true that everyone doctors their screenshots for marketing purposes, and surely a some of the resentment over this particular case is due to the fact that it's Apple doing it. I've been very critical of Apple a lot lately, but I can't get worked up over them having a marketing division that does what marketing divisions do.

That said, all is fair in love and war, so I don't have a problem with someone pointing out the disconnect between the marketing and the actual performance. Maybe it is just because of Apple's market share, or their "smugness" or whatever, but it's a legit criticism, and no matter how nitpicky it is, I'm glad someone out there is pointing this out so people can make an informed decision -- and I hope somewhere there's an Apple fanboy doing the same thing to police the Android marketing materials.



While it's true that Apple isn't engaging in monopolistic tactics to increase its control of the user experience, that doesn't mean that their kinder, gentler form of a closed system is any better for users, or that Apple's endgame doesn't include an option to use monopolistic tactics later once users are confined to a very small universe of options.

Microsoft's early success was probably 5% inspiration, 5% perspiration, and 90% dumb luck. They didn't have the leverage to muscle competitors out until the late 80s, and didn't really start using it in illegal ways until the early-to-mid 90s. In other words, Apple could very well be the next Microsoft, and it's totally legit for people who are concerned about Apple's increasing control over the platform to criticize that trend.

I don't find the "but they have good technical reasons for doing things that make them more money" apologia persuasive at all. (I'm not attributing that position to you in particular, but I've certainly seen a lot of it around.) Not only is Apple doing exactly what Microsoft would be doing in the situation, but they're doing it for the exact same reasons Microsoft would be doing it.

The only tech company that scares me at the moment is Google. Far more so than Microsoft at any point in time.

And if anyone wants to pick nits, Flash content is usually about interaction not about browsing, so Apple's statement can still be taken at face value quite easily. I don't think it would have been as succinct to say "the best web reading and navigating experience."

I agree that Microsoft was (and probably still is) far worse than Apple in its abuse of power. To be blunt, what Microsoft did was almost certainly illegal, whereas what Apple is doing is almost certainly not.

That said, I don't have to like Apple trying to force people to its will. I'll admit that it's potentially a somewhat hypocritical viewpoint, but I feel that there's a big difference between an underdog sticking to its guns and the leader forcing everyone to its will. From the perspective of the underdog that becomes the leader, there's no change, but for everyone else there is.

As far as the image doctoring goes, I'm going to have to side with Caleb. Yes, doctoring images in this nature is commonplace in advertising. However, in most cases, the accompanying text is something of the nature of "Hey, look! It can play movies!" In this case, their accompanying text is "The best way to experience … video. Hands Down." It doesn't even qualify it as the best way to experience video on a mobile/handheld device. (Though I think we can assume that's what they meant.) As such, I think an accurate representation of the experience is not unwarranted.

The weird thing to me is: surely there was another scene in the movie that wouldn't have required any manipulation.

If I too had too much time on my hands (which I don't), I'd check whether it was Apple who shopped the Spock or whether that's actually the film-makers' own publicity shot. It's not like the Ipad is the only 4:3 device people try to watch films on, and I'm sure I've seen that moment (or a very similar one) used elsewhere as a synecdoche for the whole film.

Peter

The reason Apple scares me more than MS is because I have allowed myself to be sucked into committing so many of my spending dollars on products that require an Apple device to use. I never had this problem with MS. Sure I was using their OS and therefor the applications I was using required their product, but you can't escape that- and really most apps I use are either replaceable in functionality (word processor) or fairly temporary (games). With Apple, though, I just feels like with the iPhone/iPod/Apple TV I have some apps and content that are becoming irreplaceable to me (or difficult anyway).

Go too far though in pointing out things about a screen, or responses to 3G issues, and it can push people here over the edge... :-) I guess in a way I'm at the same point Bitt was. It does seem at times the nitpicks go so far into the pointless category on either side. To me, readability of text on a screen or 3G reception are far more important things to discuss, compared to a 20 pixel shift in a screenshot in ads. But I suppose everyone has their different priorities. And I think we can all be thankful Palm is no longer using creepy looking ladies to advertise their phone :-)


They could indeed be the next Microsoft, and if they ever get to that point, I'll likely reconsider what I use at that time. The future is unknown though, and for now I see a clear exit path from their devices and ecosystem. As long as that path exist, I'm not going to be very vocal about any "monopolistic" practices Apple may or may not be doing because I don't see it as a problem yet. And today, their devices suit my needs very well. With Microsofts actions in the 90s, that exit path was very obstructed with a mix of illegal monopoly actions, and proprietary formats built around the lock-in principal. This in a time that I found Windows 95 very flawed compared to the competition of the era that didn't have a chance. With Apple, the only true lock-in I feel is the DRM on their iTunes videos and I respond accordingly by limiting how much I use that service. Their music is portable to other platforms, as is all of my critical data due to their use of standards. And their current OS does well on both their computers and mobile devices.


This is why I don't try to become too attached to any of their services clearly locked down to their environment. Most of it is movable to another platform though. Apps are about the only investment I'd lose if I were to change phones to an Android device. Movie wise, I still buy the stuff I want to keep long term in another format, usually BluRay these days. Most come with digital copies for playback on all the iDevices, so I don't even have to try and rip it myself.


That "almost certainly" part was enough for the Department of Justice and the European Union to go after Microsoft. The US case ended without an absolute guilty verdict, but it was a "you did wrong, and heres the punishment" type of situation. The DOJ even has current updates. I think had the election gone differently in 2000, Microsoft would have been in pieces today. Nothing Apple has done (business wise) has gone beyond an inquiry by various government agencies. They did have their stock grant issue though.

(Been carrying this reply forward for nearly 4 hours now, better post before more appears :-)

To be fair, the image of Star Trek is clearly manipulated, regardless of its import. The nonsense about the Nexus One "only" having an 18-bit screen was all but a lie, since even the LCD on your desk has "only" an 18-bit screen.

Seriously, people at Apple aren't smug. It's a lot of people working their asses off to make the best product - and I do mean that. Yes, it's expensive stuff but if you saw all the thousands of decision points through a design's evolution where there were "do it cheap/well enough or do it right" questions, the only answer is always "do it right".

When I was at Rio I'd often tear apple stuff down and wonder what the hell all this extra circuitry was for that we wouldn't have put in (or been able to afford to put in) at Rio. I've never seen anything in consumer electronics as thoroughly engineered or exhaustively tested as the stuff Apple makes.

If the marketing goes on and on about how good it is, that's no different to, say, BMW's marketing. They are justifiably proud of the premium product they've made.

My personal opinion, obviously.

? The LCDs on the 3GS and 4 are 24 bit native. Not every LCD has to dither to get 24 bit.

There's a difference between how I perceive the technical folks and the marking/PR/decision makers. The iPad looks cool to me and I'll bet the engineering of it is really solid and well done, but it's hard for me to swallow that the decision to not support browser plug ins (on a device for which web browsing is a primary function) was made in an effort to make the best product possible. Even if what Jobs says is true about this decision (to steer people toward HTML 5), this sounds more like strong arm tactics to control the industry than an attempt to make the best product possible. Which is a shame, because I really want to root for Apple.

I love my iPhone, and I even love my Apple TVs (despite the fact the Apple TVs require a factory reset once a month), but I don't love it when companies limit my options. I never wanted to root for MS because I've never really loved anything I've owned by them. With Apple its different because I do really like a lot of what they do.

Um, I know I'm talking to someone far more knowledgeable about this than I am, but I'm pretty sure that the 3GS has an 18-bit display. Not that I think it makes a lick of difference.

Regardless, my point is that the color depth of the N1's display is not sub-par. It's not top-of-the-line as compared to every flat-panel display available, but it's far from bad, and has the same depth as the vast majority of flat-panel displays as a whole. Ultimately, my point is that those goobers at Displaymate, who claim to be display tech experts, are seemingly unaware that 18-bit displays are the norm, mistook an obvious rendering problem for a display problem, and made a mountain out of a molehill a perfectly flat field.

I think that's actually a good point. While there are undoubtedly Apple fanboys out there that will salivate all over the iTurd when it's released, there are also a large number of us that genuinely like Apple products and tend to think that the company has the proper goals. Which makes it that much more frustrating when they make a misstep, and then lie about it.

I can't wait until the day you are free to comment on the current apparent design issue on the iPhone 4...



...unless of course the update fixes/mitigates it, I can but hope.

Like Jeff said, of course I wasn't talking about the technical people who work hard to create a great product. Besides, how would I see that at all?

All I was talking about was their public face. You may perceive that face one way, but I perceive it as portraying a smugness that turns me off of the company. If I ever bought or owned an Apple product, it would be despite their marketing, and not because of it.

I can't say their marketing has ever been solely responsible for my decision to buy one of their products. My purchases have always been based on actually using them first. My early experience of Macs while at school made me want to smash them into little pieces with sheer frustration (partly due to At Ease). My opinion on the matter was largely unchanged until I was given an old iMac with Jaguar on it about 7 years ago. It was just refreshing to find an OS that didn't suck balls (and unlike Linux at the time, was a viable alternative to Windoze as a home desktop for me).

Since that time, I've been very happy to buy Apple. Not because of some smug 'lifestyle choice' but because their products do what I want and Apple provides the support I've needed. My thread on my experience in Las Vegas sums it up for me.

Despite having picked up an iPhone 4 recently, I would've quite happily entertained the option of getting an Android phone, but the ones on sale over here (and available to me) just didn't cut it for me. The Nexus One isn't available on Orange and the Evo isn't available in the UK.

It doesn't make a lot of difference (2G/3G were 18+dither) but I can assure you it's full 24 bit

I think displaymate just get a lot of press because they have very little competition in the "self-proclaimed experts of display tech" field and hence every blog links to them....

You might consider updating the Wikipedia page on the 3GS, then.

Interesting marketshare graph. It shows 2 entries for Q2 2010, with the last one lumping in the iPad under Apple's mobile computing share. Apple goes from being #7 worldwide to #3 world wide, before the iPad was even out everywhere.

The thought behind including the iPad is that it is a capable mobile computing device for many and slots in at a price point below the main Apple notebooks, similar to a netbook slotting in below the normal Acer/HP/Dell laptops.

Even without the iPad, Apple's mobile division is doing well, showing growth even when the iPad came out. Seems it's not really cannibalizing Apple products, but may be eating competitors market share in the mobile space.

The iPad's days are numbered. Dell is now pushing strong with the Streak, and at $550, permanently SIM-locked to AT&T, it's going to crush the competition. This thing is after all, a tablet, even if you can fit it into some baggy jeans pockets.

Ok, that was hard to type. Dell... Why bother? Maybe you're gearing up to compete with the iPhone... You're bringing a jig-saw puzzle to a gun fight. You could have at least showed up with a knife. Or a potato peeler.

BAM! Asus is publicly admitting the hurt. It's only going to get worse (for them).

Having tired of trying to make "an iPad killer" these companies have instead decided to just start making their own iPads...

New Samsung iPad

Viewsonic iPad

Toshiba iPad

LG iPad

The iPad market is sure heating up. And that's not including "knock-off" products, like the "iPed."

Where would these companies (including Google) be without Apple to design their products?

So, Apple put out a keyboard-less, stylus-less tablet PC and now everyone who comes after with such a device is just trend-following?

Look at the designs. This has nothing to do with the stylus-less hand-held concept in general. There are plenty of cars on the road, you don't see GM nor Ford releasing cars that are exact copies of the iconic Porsche body style, do you?

Apple has been designing phones for the likes of Samsung, Motorola, HTC and others since 2007 and now apparently they've been designing all the world's new hand held tablet computers.

There are 1001 ways to design and style a product. These derivative and lazy companies obviously find it much easier simply to pilfer Apple's design prowess than to come up with something on their own. Some of these physical designs are missing only the Apple logo. IMO, it's totally shameful and no better than the out-right knock-offs. These products are nothing more than Fiero-powered Ferrari-skinned kit cars.

It's also what I said would happen all along, that if anyone was going to establish this market it was going to be Apple. Everyone else is just along for the ride. There's no innovation anywhere else, not in software and obviously not in hardware. Apple doesn't need to be the only one innovating here. They don't necessarily need to have the best product. They always leave room for improvement, but no one seems to ever be able to go to the next level. Damn, the industry sucks.

L@@K, another bloody Korean iPad

edit: corrected some typos.

After looking at the links...I gotta agree with Bruno. A couple of them have an extra "killer feature" or two, but for the most part, they seem pretty knock-off.

I think Bruno is right on the money. Physical case design is one thing, but the software design is what makes an apple product (yes, I know, the iPod music playing software sucks, but it accomplished its design objective of making mp3 ripping and playback possible for the idiot masses). You see the phone designers copying some of the software design, too, with all the swiping gestures. But mostly those are gimmicks. It's still like comparing an original Mac to a Windows 3.1 machine. Anyone who used one could instantly feel the difference, even in the tiny things like how the mouse pointer moved.

You can't just put good design on the top of crap like frosting on an ugly cake. It has to be part of every decision made in developing a product. Case shape is one thing, but the important decisions are harder to replicate.

Jim

I don't defend a company like Samsung in this situation, they're pretty poorly ripping off the iPad with some of the additions they've made to Android.

The problem is, I don't defend any of these companies skinning Android. Why can't they just release a tablet device, throw Android on there, and call it a day? Why tack on their horrible software on top? At the very least, they could tweak it so that it scaled better to the larger screen, but then just leave it alone!

In the cell phone market, these companies seem to be saying "we have to differentiate ourselves from the other Android phones on the market, so we'll add our own software on top." They don't seem to realize that, IMO, their phone already differentiate themselves hardware-wise. They don't need that crapware.

But it drives me more crazy when it comes to tablets. There isn't a viable Android tablet yet, so why not be the first on the market with one? Just put out a 10" display device and call it a day!

For the moment, though, it doesn't matter. The landscape will be clearer as the year ends, and we'll see if there are one or two decent alternatives (for us Android lovers, not Bruno) to the iPad like there are in the phone market.

The manufacturers are copying the iPad design because the iPad is popular and because they don't have a single other bullet point to compete against it. "Android" isn't a marketable advantage for 99% of the population. So along with the iPod physical design, they make mods to Android to offer something more than other Android handsets, and at the same time to give some iPad looks (for some of these guys anyway).

I haven't seen anything to indicate that Android is any good on a tablet device without mods. What kind of native support does Android have for these larger and higher density screens? Have any apps made use of any such features? Is there any style guide for creating apps for a larger screen? What happens to older apps when used on these displays?

So far I believe Apple has the tablet game sewn up tight. Much more so than they have ever had (or ever will have) with the phone market.

True. On the other hand, my prediction is that Android will be very good on a tablet in a year or so.

Similarly to what happened in the phone market, where Android, at least here, is extremely popular and appreciated. I personally found the Samsung Galaxy very good, and, not being admittedly an advanced user of neither the iPhone not Android, I found Android just as pleasant to use as the iPhone G4. Both devices I've tried only for hours and use occasionally, so possibly I am not advanced enough to appreciate the pros and cons of each. On the other hand, I think 99% of the market is not, and only use smat phones at 1% of their potential.

for what it is worth, I can say that I know directly 4 people, 3 of which completely non-tech, who just love Android on their phone for the everyday life: they take pictures, listen to music, play games, and occasionally even make phone calls, and are just happy. Would they be happied with an iPhone? I don't know of course, but the (superficial) impression I get from Android-on-smart-phone is that it got pretty good and does please users a lot. In other words, a real competitor.

So, I can see this happen in the tablet (iPod style) market as well.

I don't know about Android for tablets... Mainly because of that other little unknown, Chrome OS.

What indication did you have that iOS was ready for a tablet? As far as I can see, it was barely changed at all for those purposes, but it works ok.

There are rumors that Gingerbread (Android OS 3.0) will have some stuff in it for tablets in addition to making the OS generally nicer looking.

Android in and of its self may not be marketable, but a less expensive alternative to an iPad will always be marketable, and clearly there's something to the OS given how many phones have been shipping.

No, but they do make a nearly line for line copy of a Honda.

IMO, Apple needs to start filing some motions and getting some injunctions against the better known brands for, at the very least, trade dress infringement. They've done it successfully before.

Hanspree iPad - seriously, does everyone need to put a silver and black bezel on these things? Really?



What? One of the reasons the iPad still isn't running iOS4 is because of all the changes made to its version of 3.x. The OS versions were developed in parallel and even from an end-user perspective, it's notable how many differences there are only by handling the product. Having watched the keynote where it was announced, it was made very clear that the iPad brought a lot of new code to the table, including a whole slew of new APIs.

There aren't really many obvious changes made to the OS itself, all the change is in the built-in apps/settings. An Android tablet would need similar changes of course, unless you wanted all the built-in apps to look very odd and waste the benefit of a much larger screen.

If you're talking about the iPad then you must mean that there aren't many changes to the Spring Board, because there are a ton of changes to the "OS" which are the only way the new apps can do what they do and look the way they look. Yes, you're going to see those changes in apps, but that's mainly because there's not really any OS UI other than the Spring Board to speak of.

Ah yes, good point I guess there were plenty of Cocoa chnages for all the new UI.

Enough that they still haven't unified their OS releases. I think it's going to be sometime this fall for 4.x on the iPad. Maybe we'll hear something about it tomorrow when they announce the new iPods.

Judging by this screenshot from Archos' new tablets, Android needs some work before it will take advantage of the extra screen space like the iPad does:

I'll give it to Archos for not making yet another iPod physical clone.

And at least they'd been in the non-Windows tablet for a long time, trying to make a go of it.

They have. Longer than most companies. Certainly longer than Apple. But all their stuff has been lacking in some area. Either the hardware is underpowered or the software is terrible. Now they have good software, but they still seem to be limiting their devices. Their previous Android tablets haven't been received well.

I don't see much of a problem with the screenshot above, Andy. Also, I'll point out that it isn't the official Android App Market. AFAIK, Archos can't put the official market on their devices, so they have their own.

The interface element I'm least confident will translate to a tablet is one of my favorite UI elements of Android: the shade. It's my favorite aspect of the OS, but I fear it'll look odd on such a large screen.

Both OSs have UI challenges when increasing the screen size. How about we wait to see what Google does to actually deal with the issue? That won't be clear until the next update.

I didn't realise that it wasn't the real marketplace app, but that kind of makes it worse. If it was just Google's app that hadn't been optimised for the tablet yet that is one thing, that it is Archos' own on their own tablet and it makes such poor use of the available space suggests a certain lack of care and attention.

Compare their app to the iPad one showing the same type of screen:



The Archos manages to list the basic details for four apps, the iPad lists 12 in an uncluttered view. Admittedly that appears to be on their 7 inch tablet. But I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that that same screen looks the same on their 10 inch one, except with an extra app showing and even more horizontal space doing nothing

Not that the iPad app store app is perfect, far from it (I really wish you could swipe left and right to page through apps, rather than tapping those somewhat small on screen arrow buttons).

Hmm, interesting that when set to the UK, the released lines are all cut off due to spelling out the full month. On the US Store, it says "Released Aug 31, 2010"

On the actual iPad topic, I'm now entering the 6th month of ownership, and still find the device very handy to have. And it's something I still use daily. It's my mobile TV for watching a show before bed, my morning newspaper for browsing sites and e-mail before I'm fully ready to start the day, and a companion when I'm out and about. At work, it's my tool for monitoring servers when away from my desk, or the device I take notes on in meetings. I'll also grab it for reference to show someone at times, and keep a number of work related documents on hand. I'll admit, I haven't done much reading on it, but I haven't been reading much at all lately. The problem is that due to the multitasking capabilities of the device, I find it just as easy to turn on and go into a game or video, distracting me from going into the books section. I need to be a bit more disciplined about that.

I still have to say one of the biggest features of the device though is the battery. I don't even worry about hitting a low battery warning. It will go days at a time with use here and there between charges. It's nice in that way, compared to my iPhone or full laptop that I have to ensure are charged once a day.

I haven't checked in much to see how my grandmother is using hers, but will be visiting in late October, and will post how she's gotten along with it.

*edit* Oh, and it took Apple a little under 5 full months to finally get stock levels to the point they can guarantee a unit will ship within a day of ordering it online. I'll be interested to hear what sales numbers are like at tomorrows event. Friend of mine visiting VMWorld says the iPad is all over the place. It's definitely got an incredible adoption rate among a lot of crowds.

I never owned an apple production until I bought the ipad.

I love it. It really just hit the sweet spot for the right device at the right time. It was a good choice to go with the Cell Phone style operating system. One of the things I love about it is that it is instantly on and ready to rock and rarely crashes. Its fast - never slows down so far (lets see how it does with multitasking in november)

I got the 16GB 3G version just for the GPS - i dont plan to pay AT&T anything for those outrageous rates.

I also like that the battery last forever - they got that right over most laptops this thing churns for 8 hours. A full day.

Sure there are things I dont like which keep me away from apple (forced itunes install to even use the thing) _ i bet the camera left off was to sell to institutions where a camera would be a no no for corporate or government buyers.

They've got a camera in the iPhone which is marketed to corporate users as well so I don't think they left it out of the iPad for that reason.

Where I work, things are loosing up. Camera usage is still prohibited, but nowadays personally owned cell's (with or without cameras) are prohibited only inside "Specially Limited Areas".

The one surprising exception, very recent, is that gov. owned Blackberrys are permitted just about everywhere, with some exceptions varying from "Must be turned off" to "Not Permitted at all".

I guess that last shouldn't be really so surprising given the scrutiny given to Blackberrys after the Pres. insisted on keeping his.

We were forbidden all cameras which meant no personal phones in the secure rooms at work until mysteriously the rules got relaxed for iPhones. Apparently the remote wipe feature is good enough that you're allowed an iPhone and not that my boss had just got an iPhone around that time. Just a random coincidence I'm sure

We are now allowed cell phones with cameras also. However, iPhones are still not on the approved device list (even though our telephony provider is AT&T) because of the requirement of using iTunes with it.

I doubt any device capable of recording or transmitting will ever be allowed in our closed areas. Pretty much the only things we are allowed to take into our areas are CD players (with only factory stamped CDs) and pagers. MP3 players aren't allowed because of the ability to store information on them.

At last--a policy from upper management that makes sense. It must be a morale thing, figuring the employees will be much happier if they don't have to deal with iTunes.

tanstaafl.

I had no idea having iTunes on one computer in IT was so dangerous to an organization.

There is fear that 'company information' will be accidentally leaked having something like iTunes on each person's machine. It is hard to tell which organization came up with that, IT (which still has us on IE6) or security (who thinks everybody is out to get us).

iTunes though doesn't have to be installed on everyones machine for an iPhone to work in a corporate environment. It just needs to be activated once. Then IT can manage the device in a similar way to Blackberries. Configuration profiles and certificates can be loaded to secure the device, and updates can be pushed over the air.

I know, logic doesn't always work with the IT or security departments at these places, especially when as you said, IE 6, one of the most security vulnerable browsers around is still the standard browser in the organization.

Timely: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/09/consumerization.html

Amazon admits (on video) that the iPad is drastically affecting its ability to sell Kindles.

It's possible to own both, but this sends a strong message that people have been going down the Apple path. I think Amazon really need to get the Kindle down at $99, stat.

Some recent analyst rumblings predict Apple will sell over 20 million units next year and that those sales are going to hurt traditional PC sales from other vendors. I don't put much faith in analyst estimates, but it's interesting to see these guys going bullish on this device when initially everyone was simply dismissing it as a future failure.

Amazon's Kindle business is interesting to me due to their internal team structure. They have the Kindle hardware team responsible for these units, then a second independent team that does all the software versions for the iOS, Android, Windows/Mac and so on. So on the hardware side, you have Amazon going after Apple's iPad. On the software side, they are adding value to the platform the hardware side is targeting by releasing Kindle for iPad. Really interesting way to hedge your bets either way.

By doing it this way, they may pull people into the hardware side based on being on the iPad in software form. $99 (or even cheeper) gets to the point where people justify one alongside the iPad. Reading outside? Kindle time. Reading at night in bed? iPad time.

When these things get down to $50 people will just pick one up instead of a book. That's when we'll see the revolution. Providing of course the device is at least as good as the current Kindle. Hopefully a lot better.

I wouldn't be surprised if we see a sub $100 Kindle eventually. I'd bet we'll see one before a sub-$400 iPad (and no, $399 doesn't count). And yeah, I agree that at that price they could sell like crazy.

Tom, I find that split of the teams interesting too. On the store-team side, they've decided to get on as many devices as possible, and that's been a great tactic. On the hardware side, they're improving the devices while getting the price down, and now they're going to sell them in Best Buy, which I think is huge for them. I can't imagine someone looking at the Kindle 3 next to the Nook and the Sony readers and deciding to go with the latter two, especially considering it's cheaper.

I'm not surprised that the iPad is hurting their sales, but I also think that the current market is going to even out, and as the price drops the market will grow. I think the evening out is coming from many people who bought the iPad instead of a Kindle, but are now getting the inexpensive Kindle for the uses that Tom mentions.

Well, I got an iPad yesterday despite my loathing of iTunes.

So far it is pretty decent. I wanted an easy way to read PDFs around the house, as comfortable as I can be reading a hardcopy manual. The laptop was out as too unwiedly, the iPod Touch was out as being just a pain to try to read full manuals with it. The iPad feels like it will be perfect for that.

It is a lot faster than the Touch. It is able to render the full website of the sites I checked yesterday (NHL, Second City Hockey), and ridiculously quicker, which was an awesome improvement over the iPod Touch.

I ran into a few things that I didn't like yesterday. First was syncing. There is a known issue, to everybody but me apparently. For some reason iTunes thought I synced an iPad in Aug 09. That caught me off guard. However, it seemed to transfer my paid for apps and music (I only tried with a couple CDs worth) without a problem. It will be fun to see if it pukes and tries to delete them off my iPod Touch next time I sync it (I have four new CDs that I need to transfer over).

One was an issue with the WiFi. I don't know if it was a problem with my router or with the iPad. I didn't have any problems when I was originally setting it up and downloading some things I needed (some straight from the App Store). A little while later, the iPad somehow got disconnected while not being moved from the spot where it was happily downloading stuff earlier) and refused to reconnect. My work laptop was the only other wireless connection and it didn't lose connection or even have a hiccup during this time. I ended up having to reboot the router before the iPad would talk to it again. Once I did that, I was able to use the iPad around the house and it did not get disconnected again.

Finally, the browser. I would refresh a forum (Second City Hockey) and inexplicably while scrolling down occasionally (more often than not), Safari would puke and reload the page, sending me to the top again. At first I thought I was killing it by scrolling down past where it loaded (those forums get a lot of traffic during games). However, a few times it happened while I was scrolling through rendered areas and the downloading looked like it was finished. The page doesn't autorefresh, so I don't know what was causing it. One of my friends said she sees that quite a bit, usually on forums. I never saw that before, she uses Macs though, so no telling if it is a Safari issue or what. It was obnoxious having to rescroll through all few hundred replies to get to the bottom every time that happened.

One thing that has me excited is supposedly the NHL is working on getting GameCenter working on the iPad. That would be awesome for watching games when I'm on the road (which looks to be the majority of Jan-Mar of next year) and away from my TV.

Overall, I'm really happy with it so far. I think it would be fun to dork around with the SDK, but I can't really see buying a new machine just for that. That is subject to change, I guess.

I've never seen anything like that happen on any sites I've visited on my iPad.

Any iOS device is seen as a valid restore target from any other iOS backup. iTunes offered to restore my iPhone backup to my iPad, but I chose instead to set the iPad up as a new device. Also, the licensing on apps and DRM content allows unlimited iOS devices, as long as they are bound to the same account. You can also use Home Sharing to transfer DRM content (apps/video) between iTunes accounts. This is how I gave my grandmother some basic apps I had bought. For any DRM free content (like newer iTunes songs or your own ripped collection) iTunes will gladly sync that to any device without restriction.


Some people have reported WiFi problems with the iPad, and Apple has tried to address them a little bit with the minor 3.2.x updates. 3.2.2 is currently the latest release, make sure your iPad is updated. Does your router offer both 2.4 and 5.8 GHz wireless? Thats also sometimes been known to cause issues on the iPad if the router is broadcasting the same SSID on both networks. It's a valid setup, but for some reason causes a few issues.


Never had this happen before myself, but I tend to only browse this forum on the iPad, and definitely never seen it on the desktop Safari. I have heard of low memory related issues in Safari similar to what you are describing, so it's possible the forums there are going over the low limits the iPad browser has. Not really sure of a solution to this one as it's not something I've looked in.


I hope they do this too. I've heard from a few people on podcasts that they really enjoy the MLB app on the iPad, and even found the AirPlay icon when it was running on 4.2 beta, allowing streaming back to an AppleTV. I'm not a huge sports fan, but I do hope more franchises go this route as it's the last hurdle for a lot of people to be able to dump cable.

I wasn't aware it was just linked by account and not number of devices. That is awesome and clears up my fears about resyncing the iPod Touch.


The iPad is the latest version, at least iTunes said it was. I didn't verify the minor version numbers since I had no idea what the latest was My router is 2.4 GHz only, it is an older Hawkings Technology router - I've been thinking about ditching it for something that would play nice with the Wii, but it hasn't concerned me enough to actually pull the trigger yet.

You would have to be really bored to look into the browser thing, but here is the information The site is www.secondcityhockey.com (no sensitive eyes - lots of cursing, especially after goals against). During games the forum has threads set up for each period. The 3rd period thread had over 500 posts during the game (90 between the end of the 2nd and start of the 3rd - 15mins, so pretty active). It was while refreshing those threads during a commercial and scrolling down to the most recent posts that the browser was having issues. The next game is Saturday starting at 8:30pm EST. I imagine the forums will be on fire since it is the first home game (raising the banner) and against Detroit (lovingly refered to as Scum by Hawks' fans everywhere).

Falling right in line with my predictions from early this year, the iPad has taken off and is beating adoption rates of all other gadgets. All-time fastest selling gadget ever if you believe Information Week.

http://www.informationweek.com/news/stor...mp;itc=ref-true

I saw a ton of people with them last week at GDC Online (formally, and more properly named GDC Austin). Heard they were pretty big around VMWorld too.

I had one guy ask me about the iPad when I was sitting in the expo area. 30 seconds later he was sold, simply by me pointing to the battery indicator and explaining "This morning when I got here, it was at 80%, now it's at 50%, after 6 hours of note taking and internet browsing".

Looks like things are going to start moving a little quicker, with a few new stores either just starting or about to start selling the iPad: Walmart, Target, AT&T and Verizon.

I wouldn't hold my breath to see any of the knock-offs so widely available.

Selling iPads through Verizon is a very interesting move. Verizon will only be carrying the WiFi models, but priced at the 3G model level when bundled with a MiFi. If a customer goes for the bundle, they get 1GB a month service for $20, 3GB for $35, or 5GB for $50. All without a contract.

Apple is probably doing this for two reasons. First, they ensure the iPad is sitting next to potential competitor tablets even in AT&T and Verizon stores. It also allows Apple to get the ball rolling with Verizon for a future (and persistently rumored) CDMA iPhone.

That CDMA iPhone rumor has really been heating up as well. If I were a betting man, I'd be ready to put some cash on the line that it's going to happen, barring any last-minute decisions.

Without risking taking this thread too far off topic, here's a question... It's been a long time since I've used anything but a sim-equiped GSM phone... So how does one move a CDMA product from one carrier to another?

Most likely the new carrier just says "We don't do that, pick one of our products, with the attached contract."

It's totally a software thing. There are things called Number Assignment Modules. The NAM is the electronic memory in the cellular phone that stores the telephone number and an electronic serial number. Phones with dual- or multi-NAM features offer users the option of registering the phone with a local number in more than one market.

I have this set up so I can switch to NAM1 for Verizon when in the States and NAM2 for Smart when in Belize. Any cell phone shop here seems to be able to do the programming, so it doesn't seem like CDMA phones are locked.

Many CDMA phones are locked, odds are the local shop just knows how to unlock them. The tools appear to be pretty widespread, much like the tools to unlock most GSM phones.

Ok. They didn't have any problems with my Casio G'Zone Boulder or my wife's Moto Droid (original) - both on Verizon. I'd already rooted the droid, so I'm not sure if that helped them out or not. I don't think so.

It looks like the CDMA lock is done with something called a MSL, or Master Subsidy Lock. It's similar to SIM locks where the carrier can provide an unlock code. The MSL is generated by using the ESN (Electronic Serial Number) and an algorithm that varies based on carrier.

I found information on two different ways to unlock the MSL. The first is via a program that knows the algorithm for the original carrier and spits out a proper MSL code to use. The other method involves reprograming the phone somehow to change the MSL code to all zeros.

Since it's so trivial to defeat the locks on both GSM and CDMA, I wonder if LTE introduces anything new to make it harder.

(and yes, I'm a bit bored tonight, trying to take my mind off the interview a bit)

I wasn't actually asking about moving phones with regards to the lock, but simply the method os setting up the device for a different carrier. The sim swap is by far the most intelligent and straight-forward process on the planet, and it's one of the reasons GSM has just always made sense where every other technology seemed like it was created by a caveman.

John's NAM setup probably answered that question. I suppose locks can come into play as well if you can't reset the NAM on a particular phone.

It will be interesting to see how this is handled on the iPhone, especially a potential GSM/CDMA iPhone. IMO, it doesn't make sense to make a CDMA-only iPhone.

Over 4 million iPads shipped this past quarter. And Apple sees the demand increasing dramatically.

Even though Apple doesn't want to be the biggest player, they just want to make the best devices, they're currently the number one computer maker in the US in terms of market share.

Some analysts have been incorrectly reporting Apple as having jumped to number 3, but in fact they've missed counting the iPad which has helped Apple shoot to number one.

Other manufacturers count their netbooks running alternative OSes, and by all accounts the iPad is eroding their market share as well as starting to take a bite out of more traditional notebooks in Enterprise and K12 according to Apple.

I can honestly tell you that 10 years ago I would have never guessed that Apple would be the biggest tech company in the US both in terms of capitalization and computers shipped. They now also have over $50 Billion in cash and their stock is almost at $320 US per share (that puts their market cap at almost $70B more than MSFT). WTF.

"Incorrectly" meaning "not in the way that casts Apple in the best possible light." There are very legitimate problems with lumping the iPad in with PCs for the purpose of making a sales comparison, and the news reports (e.g.) have done a good job making the perils of this comparison clear. You, on the other hand have decided that it's simply "incorrect" to differ with the notion that the iPad might not be comparable to a PC.

You can't rightly say it's a "brand new category" to make a certain argument, then lump it in with Apple's desktops and laptops running traditional OSes with traditional OS features to make a different argument. If you're going to do that, why not count the iPad Mini, er, iPhone?



What "alternative OS" are these other netbooks running? Are you calling Ubunto an "alternative OS" to be compared with IOS? Again, it's either a new paradigm or it's not.

As a huge fan of OS X and Apple hardware, I'm very pleased with Apple's ascendancy to the #3 spot in *computer* sales, and their complete domination of the "tablet type thingies that run a walled garden phone operating system" market is admirable. But, iPads aren't PCs, and they're not "computers" in the conventional sense. That's a good thing for Apple's bottom line, but bad for someone who wants to try to stretch this unambiguously great news into something more than it is.

I think counting iPad sales as part of the PC sales is entirely the right thing to do. You can be sure that if other manufacturers had ever had success with Windows tablets that they would have been counted as PCs, even if they were mainly being used to consume media.

And sure a Windows tablet isn't exactly the same as an iPad, but they potentially fill the same niches for a lot of customers. I know alot of people think that the iPad is just a big iPhone without the phone, but I think history will record that it fits into a PC shaped niche, not a phone shaped niche

However, I think getting excited about Apple's PC market share including the iPads is a little premature. There are plenty of people out there who wont buy Apple or who will just buy a tablet if it is cheap enough and there is enough "buzz" without taking much care to think which tablet it is.

Until there is some competition there is no way of predicting what the Apple share of PCs including tablets will be.

Does a netbook running an Atom processor and Windows count as a PC? Commonly the answer seems to be yes.

Does a netbook running an Atom processor and Linux count as a PC? Seems yes here too.

What about a netbook running an Atom processor and ChromeOS? Starting to get shaky a little, but sure, I bet the market will count these.

Now what about a netbook running an ARM processor and ChromeOS? Yes? Well, then why not count the iPad, that also runs an ARM processor and a specialized OS. No? Then why did the one with an Atom count?

This is where it starts to get confusing. Does a generic general purpose CPU, bundled with an OS capable of browsing the web count as a PC? Or does it have to be an x86 processor? If it's x86 only, when did that become the requirement? PowerPC machines with MacOS used to count as PCs. Or is it the physical keyboard that is the defining PC feature? Does a touchscreen somehow invalidate it being a PC, even though PCs have offered touchscreens as an interface since the 80s?

Counting the iPad as a PC turns into a murky argument either way, and in either case really doesn't change much. At the end of the day, Apple is selling a ton of them, and making a nice bit of profit from their sales. And due to this success, a number of developers have their own success selling software for the iPad platform. PC or not, it's doing well.

The importance of marketshare is generally for investors, whether it be through the stock market or developers investing in the platform. Both these groups should know that Apple is currently dominating the US market overall. To exclude the iPad is disingenuous at best.

I suspect we're also going to see the iPad become more functionally equivalent to a typical portable computer as well. They've already added printing - how many people thought that would be coming to iOS any time soon?

A number of other executive-types are lashing back at Steve Jobs today for his comments last night. The issue seems to be pretty clear. These guys just don't get it.

Andy Rubin is totally out to lunch if he thinks being able to download and compile Android means it's an open OS. Tell that one to consumers who want to simply uninstall some crapware their carrier put on their phone. The TweetDeck CEO says his developers haven't had a hard time at all with Android. Of course not, because if you close your eyes and ignore the inconsistent landscape and fragmentation out there you won't have a problem at all.

But just look at the devices, even from one manufacturer to see all the issues. Different screen resolutions, different aspect ratios, different screen sizes, completely different colour reproduction, different input methods, different OS versions, different set of stock software, different UI skins, different "other" hardware specs, inability of end-users to update OS, it's just inconsistent and fragmented.

If open means being able to download and compile the OS, then "open" will fail every time in the consumer space as history tells us.

The situation is most relevant to consumers and developers and when it all boils down, it is in fact most similar to what Steve mentioned, fragmented versus integrated, than it is to some ideological open/closed argument.

Yes -- the processor means nothing for the purposes of deciding whether a device is a PC or not.


Yes -- the brand of OS also means nothing in this discussion.


No, and it's shaky at all. ChromeOS is not an operating system in the traditional sense that lets users install any application they want, play any media they want, get direct access to the hardware, etc. It's a stripped-down OS; a thin internet client that will run some apps but is not a general-purpose OS.


Still no, see above about processors.



It didn't. Your argument doesn't follow because it relies on the assumption that ChromeOS is also a general-purpose operating system. It's not. If I were king of the world, I wouldn't count any ChromeOS or WebOS device in the computer sales metrics. They're entirely different animals -- computers only in the same way my smartphone is a computer.



Can I build and install any application I want to on this generic OS, getting direct hardware access, having rights to play whatever media I want on it? If so, I think it's a PC, regardless of what processor it has, whether it has a touchscreen, etc.


Agreed. So there's no need for anyone to artificially inflate Apple's brisk sales of PCs with bogus arguments.

I don't know about Chrome OS, since that's vapor at this time (why even bother with this?), but you can absolutely do all the things you just mentioned with an iPad. Both with and without jailbreaking in fact.

It's not as general purpose as a desktop, but then a notebook isn't either and a netbook even less so. Consumers and business are using iPad to replace, or rather use instead of, other computers for many tasks. That's important to financial investors and developers. Leaving that product off the count doesn't tell the whole story.

I think the only metric being used by the research groups and many observers is, does the product run an OS that can also be installed on any desktop. The iPad is the odd man out in this case, because even though iOS finds its core in Mac OS, they're different and you can't buy iOS in a box to install elsewhere.

The argument about developing software that touches hardware, etc. is just a smokescreen and I don't think anyone else considers it. It might be a better definition, but it's not the one being used now. And as mentioned, this one would allow inclusion of the iPad.

In the end, an investor has to be smarter than the research groups and look beyond a single chart. The proof is in the financial results and here Apple is most definitely dominating, no matter how you look at it.

Prior to the iPad, analysts probably lumped "tablet" sales in with generic PCs because, for the most part, they very much were generic PCs, like my old IBM X41 Tablet, which was just a regular subnotebook with a funky swiveling screen and a stylus.

Post iPad, and particularly with the attack of the clones coming soon, I expect analysts will treat "tablets" as a fully distinct category, to perhaps be defined as "too big to fit in your pocket, and lacking a conventional keyboard." On a definition like that, convertible Windows laptop/tablets would be "notebooks" while the rush of new iPad clones (and oddball gadgets like the Modbook) will be "tablets".

Categories aside, you do have to hand it to Apple for selling so many iPads. I'm still in the camp of "it doesn't do anything I can't already do just fine with what I have." Between my smartphone and my Kindle, I've got all of the iPad's bases covered. However, if my 91-year-old grandmother, who has never used a computer before in her life, came to me tomorrow and said "that's it, get me on the Internet", I'd have no hesitation in getting her an iPad.

ChromeOS would satisfy your build and install application piece, as you can build an HTML 5 based application and install it. Can it run any application? No, but neither can any other OS, they run what the OS can support. The other question here is how you define an application. Does a pile of HTML and Javascript code count? Some say it does, others do not. I'm not sure about direct hardware access, but here it also depends on your definition. ChromeOS will support WebGL, so the HTML5 apps will have GPU access, similar to Direct3D apps on Windows. Certain desktop OSes counted in the PC market also deny direct access. Media wise, ChromeOS will also allow local or remote playback of your content, or others. Thats why I said it's shaky, as even the definition on the desktop/laptop side is shifting a bit.

Bruno, I brought ChromeOS up, as it's potentially the one that will blur the PC/not a PC argument even more, since it can be on an x86 system/netbook, an ARM netbook, or even the iPad and other tablet form factor devices. I'm sure in any case, the analysts will be squabbling about this for a while, either when it involves the iPad running iOS, or an ARM netbook offering either Android or ChromeOS.

Agreed, which is why I took issue with your characterization of the idea that it was "incorrect" to not count iPads as PC sales for Apple. There's room for debate, and no matter where that debate goes, Apple is killing.

Is anyone shocked that the iPad is killing it? I had no doubt this thing would be selling faster than they can make it. Now the Wii- that shocked me- but the iPad, no so much.

I think it's fair to describe me as shocked that it's been this successful. Though I did hedge my bet by saying that it'd catch on with newbies and the less computer-savvy, with sales that strong, they're clearly selling to folks who already have and use a laptop on a regular basis, not just grandmas who want to watch some videos and view pictures of the grandkids. I still don't get why, but it is what it is, and I'll grudgingly accept Apple's success with this device as I root against it.

The people I know that use it use it as:

A living room PC, where you don't want a mouse and keyboard.
A travel PC, for convenience in the car/train/plane

I could easily predict Wii would be a success. I find it innovative and just pure and simple fun in a way no other videogame console could be at the time. And, extremely attractive for "casual gamers" or non-hard core, traditional gamers. Nintendo did manage to attract a very new market of (potential) gamers. I know literally tens of people who just didn't play videogames or owned consoles until they used the Wii once and decided to get theirs, and I think this happened to a large part of current Wii market.

I think that to a large part of its market - not all, of course -, the iPad was similar to (even though I don't consider this an exact parallel) the Wii: a new way to access content much more immediate and effective (to them, of course).

Personally, while I got into the Wii concept quite immediately and bought it and still happily use it, I could not get into the iPod idea.
I've used it for few days, I loved the first 20 minutes, I liked if for a day, then I started to find it progressively less and less interesting, to the point I gave it back to the friend who lent it to me without wanting to buy one; now I would just not know what to do with one, other than look at how sleek it looks, and I'm much happier in using a netbook whenever I need something smaller than a laptop (travelling, living room, kitchen, beach, or whatever).

A real multipurpose OS does not rely on a defined, limited set of languages. A real multipurpose OS presents system calls that can be accessed in a generic manner.

Is this a fine line? Yeah. But WebOS (and, I guess, ChromeOS — I haven't really looked at it) really is more of a dedicated application with very advanced configuration files.

If I can ever get a hold of an iPhone (2 week online wait, hard to get at a store), I'm going to be trying an ipad-specific data plan with one. Should be interesting. Will update with results. Conceivably this would also allow anyone with an iPad to swap sims at will to either device.

It's been done before, but I really want to confirm it for Canada - on multiple carriers no less.

I have one on order via the online store now - 2 weeks until it ships.

But I've just called a local store and they said they have stock of both models... So I'm actually just waiting on a neighbor to come with me to see if I get there before they sell out. My car is still in need of repairs, otherwise I wouldn't be writing the tail end of this message right now.

Are you wanting to make calls on it ? The iPad specific SIMs from O2 in the UK are very definitely not enabled for voice calls if you swap them to another device.

VOIP. I can't see the sense in a voice plan in this day and age. I'm doing an iPad sim because none of the carriers here will offer a data-only plan to a customer for use in a phone, even if you bring your own.

I also had to wait in line for about an hour and thirty minutes at Bell store just to get the bloody card. Two employees, each spent over an hour with their respective customers just to sell them one phone and a plan each. WTF! No wonder rates in Canada are among the highest in the world - most consumers just have no clue though. And apparently nowhere else to be.

I do have a separate voice "pay as you go" sim from a different provider I can use in the iPhone any time I want.

My plan is to connect voip.ms, Google Voice and a few other services together into one frankenstein data-based voice service. Which I may need some help with and will likely post about in the voip thread I started a while back.

That will be interesting...

When I run Skype in the background on my iPhone 4 it halves battery life and that is when connected to wifi.

I use very (very) little voice at all, so I don't think that's going to be a concern for me. What I hope to do is more mobile messaging and more importantly, allow online access to the interesting apps that need it. With GV I can also have voice mails transcribed, so if I know I don't wan to "talk" on the phone one afternoon I can just shuttle everything to VM.

Oh, forgot to mention in the last email. I did pick up an iPhone 4, subsequently canceling my online order - it would have only been delivered around November 17

I'm not sure how people are getting great usage out of the battery. AionExchange will drain around 3% of the battery in 5 mins of use. iBooks burns more than 10% per hour. A simple hop from PHX to MRY (less than 1.5 hours above 10k feet) drained more than 20% and that was with WiFi turned off. Netflix isn't too bad though, around 15% of the battery used per movie.

Maybe it is just my iPad, but I need to charge it all the time.

Sounds a bit odd, my iPad easily exceeds Apples battery life claims. Battery life just isn't an issue for me, I charge it about twice a week, sometimes less. I use it every day.

Even streaming video over wifi for an hour uses less than 10%.

Odd. It shouldn't burn through the battery that fast especially not with something like iBooks.

My iPad was charged overnight, took it off charge at 9am. It is now 3:30pm and the charge is down to 92%.

Today I have:

- used the app store to download and install 12 updates
- used Instapaper for 20 minutes to read some stuff
- done 5 minutes of web browsing
- watched 45 minutes of wifi streamed video using Air Player

After doing the first four items and before watching the video the battery was still at 100%.

That is a fairly typical performance for my iPad's battery life.

Edit:

This is a 3G iPad by the way, so it was also connected to a middling-flaky 3G signal at the same time as doing the above.

For reading books, as on an iPhone, I'd expect the pad to burn more juice if...
The backlight is on full.
It's not in airplane mode.
and I don't know what else.

It will burn more power just due to the increased screen size and lighting requirements, but not a larger percentage of overall capacity. This is due to the big difference in batteries. The iPhone 4 has a 1,420mAh battery powering a screen with 614,400 pixels while the iPad has a ~6,613mAh battery and 786,432 pixels. Ignoring backlighting, the iPad has a much better power capacity to pixel ratio then the iPhone 4. Even with backlighting factored in, the iPad comes out ahead due to that massive battery.

OMFG. Sell your Adobe and RIM stock quick if you still have any left. CEOs of both companies completely out to lunch and demonstrate quite vocally how they're not in touch with reality, the market and are already being proven wrong about their visions of the future.

I wonder if anyone at Apple has already been crunching the numbers to see if it makes any sense to acquire Adobe...

Well, regardless of the statements made here, I would hope that nobody here would be buying stock in RIM. They're not on an upward trend, and it's pretty clear that company isn't being run well.

As for Adobe...well...uh...they have Photoshop!

iPad is now at OS 4.2 with multi-tasking. And all (capable) iOS devices now have "FInd my...." service available for free without a MobileMe account - just use your AppleID. Sweet, and about time.

My battery life seems to be doing better. During the flight yesterday (PHX - BWI), I was using iBooks the entire time except for when I watched two TV episodes (like 1.5 hours of video). When I got to the hotel, I noticed the iPad still had 73% battery life left. I can deal with that.

I hate how they changed the rotation switch to a mute button though. To me, it makes no sense. Now the only way to get to the rotation lock is to go to the multitask toolbar, scroll over and hit it. I never use mute on the thing, but rotation lock was used all the time. Now there are two ways to mute the iPad literally right next to each other, but only one ridiculously unintuitive way to lock the screen rotation.

I agree that the lock switch should have been left as it was.

However it is incorrect to say that the mute switch and holding down the volume rocker do the same thing, they don't.

The mute switch mutes notifications and things like that. It will not for example mute music playback. Holding down the volume rocker mutes everything (or at least I think it does, I'm not 100% sure that it mutes notifications).

Of course 99% of users will never realise that or understand the differentiation between the two functions. All a bit of a mess really.

And on the iPhone is a slightly more complex situation, as of course alarms can never be muted (which is actually a good thing from my point of view). I was surprised that Apple didn't implement the rocker hold function on the phone as well, it would be handy.

I was also surprised that they didn't include the Clock app on the iPad, very odd.

Looks like 4.3 may resolve switchgate. The first beta of 4.3 has a setting labeled "Use side switch to" with "Lock rotation" and "Mute" as the two options.

And interestingly, there is a "multitasking gestures" option. Somehow, 4 and 5 finger gestures can be used to switch apps, go back to the home screen, or open the multitasking panel. Rumors are already flying that iPad 2 may go buttonless, like the Android 3.0 tablets shown at CES.

*edit*
Engadget now has a video showing the new gestures. They look pretty reasonable, and should make it even quicker to switch between apps.

Completely buttonless, IMO, would be a hyper-dumb move and very much unlike Apple for this type of device and UI.

No gesture is as intuitive as a button to jump back to the home screen. Anyone can pick up an iPad and without any outside instruction learn that button takes them to the home screen. With only a gesture, they may be there for two days or two years without ever figuring it out.