iPad

[Kent Borg]

Ryan Pugatch wrote:
> I am interested to hear what everyone else thinks.
>   

Absolutely no interest to me, but my wife is determined to get one. The
idea that I would pay for the machine but Steve would still own it,
bothers me greatly.

For me, I already have a sub-3-pound notebook, I don't see what an Ipad
gets me that my notebook and a modern phone don't. (Admittedly, I don't
have a modern phone, but I see a T-Mobile band Nexus One in my near future.)

But most people don't have a little notebook, Americans like BIG, they
buy 9-pound monsters with no battery capacity. My wife can grab our
5-pound MacBook if she wants, but that is still too heavy. People have
(and are buying) fancy phones, but they mostly don't have light
computers--netbooks haven't penetrated far--so there maybe is room in
their bags for a bigger device.

> Also, why doesn't it have a front facing camera?  It would be such an 
> awesome video conference device.
>   

I see four reasons:

1. The Iphone has already crushed AT&T's network pretty well. Crushing
it further only to get terrible latencies seems a bad idea. Let AT&T
catch up some.

2. Fewer features take less engineering time and less hardware costs
less to manufacture. Steve was racing the calendar and netbook adoption
rates...

3. Later models can add more features--and pressure people to buy an
upgrade. You might want something that meets your needs, but Steve
doesn't have the same interests.

4. Ichat doesn't work as well as one might like. My wife and I have
tried to connect between our two Macs, each behind a different NAT, and
the software couldn't figure out how to do it. We could each connect to
a friend who has a Mac but not each other... I finally got open source
software to work between our MacBook Pro and my Linux machine. Easier
than between two stock Macs! The Ipad needs to work better than that,
and iffy wireless connections makes it a harder problem.



Did you all her the NPR story on Morning Edition yesterday? The Ipad got
a top-of-the-hour teaser (on the national feed--but not on WBUR, they
"edit' things), and the teaser mentioned the limits Steve imposes. The
story itself was very clear on these problems. (One of the featured
Iphone apps that was rejected: it counted down to George W. Bush leaving
office. How's that for raunchy material sure to offend?)


-kb