Good god the iPad is a steaming pile of disappointment

@dagmaraka,

dagmaraka wrote:

well, sounds like you don't have a need for it.

some of us do. i would love to buy paper books, but they simply ain't here. i can order only some on Amazon (many books don't ship to Slovakia)... and even if I succeed, the wait is 3 weeks.
sure, i could get a kindle.... or iPad...which has more features. Thus i'd go with iPad. very simple for me. no idea how it's advertise, but i know it does what i want it to do for me.

Short battery life compared to the kindle, it's bigger (harder to fit into a pocket) and costs twice as much. No SD card slot on the Ipad though they clearly could have added one.

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i have a young nephew, but i think he'd be bored of iPad real soon, i don't see it as a child toy to be honest.

Really? It plays games and does limited internet stuff. Sounds like a kids toy to me.

My biggest problem with this device is that it's Defective by Design. They took an extremely powerful thing and gimped it so they could make money off of it. Not only that, they will fight anyone who attempts to use it to it's full potential. What a turnoff. I want a device given to me which encourages, not discourages, innovation and creativity.

Cycloptichorn

1 Reply

@Cycloptichorn,

Cycloptichorn wrote:

My biggest problem with this device is that it's Defective by Design. They took an extremely powerful thing and gimped it so they could make money off of it. Not only that, they will fight anyone who attempts to use it to it's full potential. What a turnoff. I want a device given to me which encourages, not discourages, innovation and creativity.

After careful analysis... I don't think you should buy one.

When Google produces it's "Pad" do you think they will base on a Linux Kernel or on MicroSoft?

1 Reply

@rosborne979,

rosborne979 wrote:

Cycloptichorn wrote:
My biggest problem with this device is that it's Defective by Design. They took an extremely powerful thing and gimped it so they could make money off of it. Not only that, they will fight anyone who attempts to use it to it's full potential. What a turnoff. I want a device given to me which encourages, not discourages, innovation and creativity.

After careful analysis... I don't think you should buy one.

When Google produces it's "Pad" do you think they will base on a Linux Kernel or on MicroSoft?

On their Chrome OS.

Cycloptichorn

1 Reply

@Cycloptichorn,

Cycloptichorn wrote:

On their Chrome OS.

I thought Chrome was their browser, I didn't realize it was an entire OS.

Did the write their Chrome OS from scratch or was it based on Linux?

1 Reply

@rosborne979,

rosborne979 wrote:

Cycloptichorn wrote:
On their Chrome OS.

I thought Chrome was their browser, I didn't realize it was an entire OS.

Did the write their Chrome OS from scratch or was it based on Linux?

Never mind. I just looked it up. Chrome is a restricted form of Linux.

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Obviously the iPad will have it's place in consumer electronics. No one should be bothered by this. Apple makes very user friendly products, which pushed competition to do the same. How long would it have taken the Android to come out if the iPhone was never released? If it weren't for iTunes, how long until the recording industry would have moved to digital downloads (and much of the iTunes pricing is set by the recording industry, as well as DRM; only lately has the recording industry let up on this).

A tablet PC is easier to use than a laptop in many instances. How many of you have lugged your 6lb laptop onto a plane, set it up on the table to watch a move, have to excuse yourself as you pop out the DVD tray and knock over your neighbor's soda. Have to fold the thing up when the guy in the middle needs to use the bathroom, replace the battery after 2 hours, etc.

Also, sitting on the couch, watching the TV, this thing would be great for surfing the web and not having to place a hot laptop on my lap, which is usually occupied by a dog.

Laying in bed, being able to hold this a few inches above my lap to make it easier to read and not strain my neck.

There are a lot of upsides to this; and it's much cheaper than any other tablet PC I've seen; however I haven't looked in over a year.

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MacRumors:

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After just five days free of Apple tablet rumors, it has begun again. TechCrunch claims that they have heard that Apple is working on a second larger tablet that will be "much more like a Mac than an iPhone."
But the information we're hearing is that Apple is thinking much larger for another version of the product, maybe all the way up to the 15.4″ size that it currently uses for one version of the MacBook Pro. If you think that would be way too big for an iPad, we're also hearing that this other tablet would be quite a bit different from the one revealed last week. Namely, it could run a version of OS X much closer to the traditional version that runs on Macs.

In the wake of the iPad launch, the possibility of Apple also pursuing a Mac OS X-based tablet seems strange. While some iPad detractors have been hoping for a Desktop-OS-on-Tablet experience, variations of these products have existed and simply not gained traction.

TechCrunch claims such a device would be launched within the next year. If true, we'd expect Apple to introduce more multi-touch friendly changes to Mac OS X itself. The rumors of a 22-Inch Touch Screen iMac could well tie in with these rumors.

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@Cycloptichorn,

Cycloptichorn wrote:

Many of us more experienced users see this as ultimately a bad thing. Proliferation of the 'walled garden' model of computing is antithetical to the idea of an open and free net.

All the devices are walled gardens compared to the net and a bunch of the complaints about it are requests for walled gardens like flash and downloads.

A true open non-walled garden would be something like Google's Chrome OS that only boots to the browser. Completely open, nothing proprietary. Thing is, all your complaints will stand. It isn't a swiss army knife.

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Your internet activity differs heavily from mine, then. And no flash? You're telling me that 99% of your internet activity doesn't use flash? I find that hard to believe.

When I'm working no such device is enough for me. For example, I couldn't program on this thing. So in content consumption mode yeah, I don't really use Flash much. It might be used in ads on the pages I am reading but other than that video is really the only use case I have for flash personally and I don't tend to watch video that much on the internet. When I do it's mainly youtube and they redirect those to a local player so it still works.

It's a horrible solution from a theoretical point of view, and yes I absolutely despise what they are doing, but in practice that means that it's very very rare for me to run into something in flash I want to see that I can't. It usually means something like a reddit link to a video that isn't on Youtube.

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A browser that doesn't let you download files and doesn't let you use Flash isn't a damn good browser.

Flash is proprietary, HTML 5 is replacing the need for flash as a plugin at all. You shouldn't need plugins for this kind of thing. On a theoretical level a browser without flash is a very good thing.

On a practical level flash has momentum and it's absence is a bad thing.

As for downloading files I wish the world could do less of that. It would make the internet a better place as well if more of that content was just browser-based.

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How can you support a computer manufacturer that goes out of it's way to **** innovation over?

The same way you can by owning your iPod touch. I have one single device from this manufacturer.

Defending them from bad arguments doesn't mean I have to support their bad behavior. I absolutely despise Apple's proprietary nature and it is why I avoid their products. However sometimes their product has no great alternative (such as the iPhone right now, but I'm cheering hard for the more open Android platform and if it ever gets there I'll switch) and this will be such a case for a while.

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Who is more interested in selling you content (at grossly inflated and unrealistic prices relative to the delivery cost) then they are allowing people to explore and create themselves? It boggles my mind that anyone who is in to high-tech stuff could think this is a good idea.

You are getting hung up on the ideology, which I actually agree with you about. But quit pretending like Apple is the only person doing this. Every company does, just to different extents. Apple is high on my evil chart but this device is the only one in its class right now and I"m defending the concept of the device (which isn't their own, Microsoft has been touting this for a decade but just couldn't get the usability right and the tech just wasn't there).

I am simply not supporting the proprietary nature I despise, I'm countering arguments that don't understand usability and don't understand the concept of this content consumption device. So I'm defending the concept of this device (which doesn't have to be proprietary except in that it's not a computer and isn't supposed to have a kitchen sink on it). Sure, letting it sync with anything (not just itunes) and opening up formats (let flash on etc) would be great but this particular device doesn't

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Re: the screen, I note that the Ipad doesn't support HD resolution. That's ******* lame. Movies would look WORSE on this thing then they did on the smaller Ipod.

This is where a kid will be smarter than a geek, instantly realizing that the bigger size is better than the resolution differences. I never really watch video on my iPhone because of the tiny screen. Thing is, I'd not watch video on the iPad either though.

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I think the touch-screen keyboard is also lame. Try typing a long post on A2K with the thing while holding it at the same time - are you going to be hunting and pecking?

I think a2k and email is ok, it really hurts when it goes to stuff like programming where you need non-letters more. But yeah, it certainly isn't much of a content creation device. More of a content consumption device.

Lots of people read books that don't do very well at content generation either. This kind of device is aimed at getting more of them to use digital and the ability to create content can be a distraction to this purpose (e.g. the keyboard protruding would make them less likely to see this as a book replacement).

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I find the keyboard on the Ipod to be cumbersome and extremely slow, I use it on the Ipod because I have to, not because it represents a better input device then a keyboard.

I think it sucks too, but honestly all mobile keyboards suck to different degrees. Before the iPhone I used many phones with physical keyboards and I didn't type on them much either. I used writing recognition (starting with palm etc) and mobile input is always going to be challenge.

Hell, most mobile computing can almost be defined as two problems: battery life and input.

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Also, I have a solution to your 'local files' problem -

Costs about ten bucks and works with no internet access. You ought to look into it.

You clearly don't understand the problem if you are suggesting a USB key as the solution and suggesting it's better than my current use of the internet as my storage device. Let me count the ways:

1) USB sticks don't scale. What happens when I have terabytes of files? Amazon s3 just charges me more as I go, USB won't scale.

2) USB sticks are dumb. They can't do things like send those files to another USB stick to back them up. My online storage will replicate my files to different locations around the world so that a whole city can blow up where my data resides and I still have my files in another city.

3) USB sticks only connect to one computer at a time. The way I store my documents in the "cloud" we can edit it together and see our changes live as we type. Just now someone in San Diego and I were writing a document together and we can watch each other's changes as we type. How would you do that with your USB stick?

And then look at these common scenarios and tell me how you do it with your USB stick:

1) I want my email, including state (whether it is read or not) on all my computers. Should I store email on a USB stick or online?

2) I want my contacts syncronized effortlessly (i.e. not plugging into anything) from my computer to other devices. Right now I do this over the internet, and if a change a number on my phone it's reflected on my online version of my contacts. I don't want to have to backup to a USB drive the connection should always be there.

3) I want my online bookmarks everywhere. Do you think I should backup my bookmarks to a USB drive each time I bookmark a site or just put my bookmarks online so they are always available.

The internet connection is network attached storage, I've used a USB drive a couple of times in my life because it's really silly. Dropbox is an example of a simple, free online replacement to a USB drive that you can do much more with.

I personally use Google apps for much of my business needs in the cloud and all I need is a browser to get to it all, a USB stick just isn't going to cut it man.

1 Reply

@Cycloptichorn,

Cycloptichorn wrote:

There is something wrong with it: it sacrifices Control in the name of Comfort and the end user ultimately ends up losing out due to it.

This is true to a point but you should also understand that it's true to a point that the user experience improvements they can make largely come from the user sacrificing choices for a more controlled (and smooth) experience.

Most of the time that isn't worth it for me (which is why I don't use their computers) but many people find that experience worth the restrictions.

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I wouldn't hold this opinion if Apple supported innovation or allowed people to do whatever they want with the device. If they did that, I'd love the potential that it has. But they won't support anything that doesn't make them money, period. **** that noise, I want nothing of it and it bothers me that people aren't bothered by this.

See how quickly Google released their own tablet mockups? Their iPhone made Google launch android so that this proprietary company wouldn't dominate the mobile web so much. Now they are going to defend against Apple's walled garden with their own tablet (which by the way will do a hell of a lot less than the iPad, it's just a damn browser) and may need to rethink their model a bit (the iPad is more like their android OS than their Chrome OS).

This will raise Google's bar just like the iPhone did. Your initial complaints were not about Apple's proprietary nature so much as the inherent limitations of a middle of laptop/phone device. But this kind of thing will bring that kind of internet appliance mainstream, and non-proprietary versions will follow.

Like I told you earlier, this will change your life whether you get one or not. It represents a new step in mobile computing that other less draconian companies will strive to compete with and it will introduce more use of digital content.

Sure, right now it may be mainly paid but right now it's not like there is an alternative solution to selling magazines digitally that anyone is really using, digital books are still years behind where they should be and this kind of paradigm shift being led by Apple is a nice little leap forward for mobile technology and digital content and more open imitations will follow.

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@Robert Gentel,

Re: Google Docs- which I do like - am I correct in remembering that your data is not private on them? That is to say, that Google has access to it all the time and can use it for whatever purposes they wish? I seem to recall something like that.

Well, it seems you are far more into having every bit of data synced all the time then I am - I can respect your need for cloud computing while not agreeing that I have the same needs. I generally find such things to be fatuous. How often are you without your cel phone? Do you really require all of your contacts to sync everywhere all the time? These are rhetorical questions, don't bother asking; my point is that it's a neat trick but hardly mission critical.

My frustration using the Ipad gimped browser would be this: the first time you run across something you want to look at, but can't, due to gimping, would be a signal that the browser isn't cutting it.

I counted today and I D/L'd 37 files, today alone, between work and personal activities. The Ipad ain't gonna cut it for me.

Cycloptichorn

1 Reply

@Cycloptichorn,

Cycloptichorn wrote:

Re: Google Docs- which I do like - am I correct in remembering that your data is not private on them? That is to say, that Google has access to it all the time and can use it for whatever purposes they wish? I seem to recall something like that.

They can't use it for whatever purpose you wish, but yes for some companies putting their documents on servers anyone else has access to is unacceptable.

For me it has rendered MS Office largely useless and greatly improved collaboration (much better than emailing around a doc).

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How often are you without your cel phone? Do you really require all of your contacts to sync everywhere all the time?

It's more about backup than needing it without my phone. Most people, if they lose their phone, they lose all their contacts. I don't.

You can back it up through exports and snapshots but that takes diligence and work and if you add contacts on your phone and also add contacts on your desktop (which I prefer if I'm inputting a bunch of business cards for example) you then have dataset collisions.

So for me, what I like is that I can be at my desk and get a phone number in email and put it into my contacts online and walk out the door and it's already on my phone. I don't need to handle the step of keeping the data synced.

Prior to this I'd be connecting my mobile device to sync with outlook every day. It was a wired tethered pain in the ass to do device-to-device sync like USB sticks instead of just device to internet syncs.

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My frustration using the Ipad gimped browser would be this: the first time you run across something you want to look at, but can't, due to gimping, would be a signal that the browser isn't cutting it.

Well you should be cheering against proprietary plugins like flash then. It's exactly everything you rail against and an open solution (HTML 5) is coming to replace it.

This is a funny spot where your desires contradict your ideology, but I totally get it. Flash support is a big downside.

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I counted today and I D/L'd 37 files, today alone, between work and personal activities. The Ipad ain't gonna cut it for me.

What kind of files (out of curiosity) other than office docs (which for me are all taken care of through online apps)?

So far my big thing is multi-media and I haven't moved my music to the cloud for example but I'm curious as to what other things people are still downloading to consume.

1 Reply

@Robert Gentel,

Quote:

What kind of files (out of curiosity) other than office docs (which for me are all taken care of through online apps)?

So far my big thing is multi-media and I haven't moved my music to the cloud for example but I'm curious as to what other things people are still downloading to consume.

PDFs, Office docs which are proprietary and cannot be put on Google Docs, music, movies, small programs and other software. Various files of varying legality.

I love Google wave tho and use it extensively in my private life. I guess I'm not a typical user but I have a hard time having a computer that I don't have root access to. My Ipod is definitely a useful device and one that works great in many ways, but it's limited in this respect so could never be my primary or even secondary box (it's more like my 5th computer). The Ipad, being so new, is in primary box territory tho - 800+ for the 3G version (the only one worth getting - now there's a great feature!).

I guess most of all I was really disappointed, like the title suggest. Apple has had a mixed record over the years when it comes to this stuff but OSX and their recent laptop and desktop stuff has been really fun to work with and open enough to really play with. If stuff like this becomes mainstream, I worry that the market share and importance of the devices I DO like will drop to the point that they just don't make them any longer like they used to.

I heard a lot of these same arguments from auto dealers and techs that I knew back in the 90's when computerization of engines was really turning up. These guys swore up and down that the newer, more 'sealed' engines, and systems which required highly-specialized equipment wouldn't drive home mechanics like myself out of the biz - but they did. Working on a modern car today is so much more difficult then it used to be, it's ridiculous, all the proprietary connectors and tools that you have to buy... and then you still need the proprietary PHYSICAL connectors once the **** is disassembled.

The rise of the fully integrated motherboard/computing device signals the end of the old-school hardware hacking in a lot of ways. It's sort of sad. I wonder if my children will understand the inner workings of a computer the way that I do or my father does. If the paradigm shifts far enough, I bet not, the same way that my Dad built a TV from a Heathkit, and I only know how to do that in theory...

Cycloptichorn

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http://www.savagechickens.com/images/chickenimug.jpg

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@Cycloptichorn,

Cycloptichorn wrote:

I guess I'm not a typical user but I have a hard time having a computer that I don't have root access to.

That's part of the problem right there. The iPad isn't a computer in the traditional sense. It's more of an appliance to which you can add modules.

Cycloptichorn wrote:

My Ipod is definitely a useful device and one that works great in many ways, but it's limited in this respect so could never be my primary or even secondary box (it's more like my 5th computer). The Ipad, being so new, is in primary box territory tho - 800+ for the 3G version (the only one worth getting - now there's a great feature!).

An iPad might be perfect for folks who don't want to mess with Windows Updates, anti-virus, malware, etc. I've helped my mother-in-law clean her lap top three times in the last six months. This would be $50 to $250 a pop if she had to pay for the service.

There is not perfect product that will satisfy the marketplace. Here's a great talk on how Ragu, of all companies, was the one to finally listen:

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@DrewDad,

Thanks for that link, DD.

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@Cycloptichorn,

Cycloptichorn wrote:

PDFs, Office docs which are proprietary and cannot be put on Google Docs, music, movies, small programs and other software. Various files of varying legality.

By the way, you can put any file on Google Docs now, that just changed.

I still download music, but I don't want to do that on any device other than my main music computer anyway and as for software I find myself using less and less desktop software and more and more web software. You should see the paradigm shift Google's trying to push, it's much more harsh for you than this iPad. Their version of an "OS" is to boot into chrome and that's it. All your software and apps must be web apps.

But for the proprietary arguments you have made this kind of model is really good. If all apps are web apps then they are not tied to any platform at all. So avoiding my local system helps keep me more portable. These days it matters a lot less what computer I'm on and what operating system it is running and moving towards less downloads and more on the cloud will make you less dependent on any particular platform.

1 Reply

@Robert Gentel,

Robert Gentel wrote:

Cycloptichorn wrote:
PDFs, Office docs which are proprietary and cannot be put on Google Docs, music, movies, small programs and other software. Various files of varying legality.

By the way, you can put any file on Google Docs now, that just changed.

I can't put it on for reasons having to do with data security, not because of a technical limitation.

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I still download music, but I don't want to do that on any device other than my main music computer anyway and as for software I find myself using less and less desktop software and more and more web software. You should see the paradigm shift Google's trying to push, it's much more harsh for you than this iPad. Their version of an "OS" is to boot into chrome and that's it. All your software and apps must be web apps.

So what? As long as I have root access - and I haven't seen anything which says that you won't be even ALLOWED to access your computer; you just do it through the browser - then I'm happy. As long as I can make or modify programs without getting sued by the creator, I'm happy.

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But for the proprietary arguments you have made this kind of model is really good. If all apps are web apps then they are not tied to any platform at all. So avoiding my local system helps keep me more portable. These days it matters a lot less what computer I'm on and what operating system it is running and moving towards less downloads and more on the cloud will make you less dependent on any particular platform.

Yup. This is why I don't spend my time bitching about Google.

Cycloptichorn

1 Reply

@Cycloptichorn,

Cycloptichorn wrote:

I can't put it on for reasons having to do with data security, not because of a technical limitation.

Well until last month it was a technical limitation as well.

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So what? As long as I have root access - and I haven't seen anything which says that you won't be even ALLOWED to access your computer; you just do it through the browser - then I'm happy. As long as I can make or modify programs without getting sued by the creator, I'm happy.

Huh? The browser doesn't access the local computer really, it's just a browser. Out of box you can't install anything. On the platform you actually are criticizing you can actually do what claims makes you happy out-of-box and without using their app store (it's just not a convenient way to distribute for others as a special key needs to be generated for each device).

My point isn't whether or not you are allowed root access, the point is that local computing is a paradigm that is giving way to remote computing and for good reason.

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Yup. This is why I don't spend my time bitching about Google.

Yeah, but almost all your complaints and more apply to their vision of the internet appliance as well. You can download even less and do even less with their vision. And your complaints work against each other. For example you raise legitimate concerns about proprietary formats but then complain that they don't add Flash, which is a proprietary format and their exclusion of it is a boon to the open HTML 5 specification.

Anyway, what I was really pointing out with Google is that the thin client looks to be taking on now that the "cloud" (I really hate calling it this, it's just the internet dammit) is. As cloud services become more ubiquitous and especially as data connections do (right now the biggest impediment to online storage is that the online connection isn't always there) it makes more and more sense for mobile devices to essentially handle display and input and let the software run remotely and this kind of thing will become more and more common, leaving more and more people using their computers essentially as a monitor and keyboard that boots a browser.

That is what Marc Andreessen meant when he claimed that Netscape would reduce Windows to "a poorly debugged set of device drivers" back then when the internet started catching on. He meant that eventually the operating system itself would be the internet, and that computers would increasingly just handle the hardware devices to provide input/display. He was way ahead of his time to say so, but that is where we are going, and if you actually care about the ideology you've talked about like lock-in, proprietary formats etc you should recognize that this is a good thing.

All those things you say you are downloading and installing are things that represent a switching cost to you to use something else. They are being used as reasons you can't use this device, for example. If those apps were web apps you could switch seamlessly without losing data or skipping a beat.

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@Robert Gentel,

I'm really skeptical that my computing needs can be ran remotely or that this is even a good idea. Why would it be? It isn't as if modern computers lack the processing power to do it on-site, and I don't want all my data flowing through the 'net every time I need to do something.

I do not need the service that you are describing. It doesn't add value to my life or computer usage. I don't switch devices often enough to necessitate a change to programs or data which follows all my devices.

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leaving more and more people using their computers essentially as a monitor and keyboard that boots a browser.

This will be a sad, sad day. It represents a loss of control which I am personally unwilling to accept. When the programs don't reside on your own box, you don't own them; when the data doesn't reside locally, you can be locked out of it at any time. No thanks.

To me, this is a rather dystopian future of computing you are describing; one in which people will become beholden to subscription models for EVERYTHING they do.

Cycloptichorn

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@Cycloptichorn,

Cycloptichorn wrote:

This will be a sad, sad day. It represents a loss of control which I am personally unwilling to accept. When the programs don't reside on your own box, you don't own them; when the data doesn't reside locally, you can be locked out of it at any time. No thanks.

To me, this is a rather dystopian future of computing you are describing; one in which people will become beholden to subscription models for EVERYTHING they do.

Well you can certainly describe anything negatively if you so desire, I'm sure you can even come up with something negative to say about the current paradigm of local, disconnected data and security issues from your downloads.

There are upsides and there are downsides to each way, but ultimately it doesn't matter whether or not you or I like it. This is where it is going.

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Good god the iPad is a steaming pile of disappointment

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