Attn Ladies: Apple reveals the new iPad

[cavehamster]

So, I guess it is official, Apple is either re-entering the tablet market with a huge iPhone, or is now producing feminine hygiene products.  I don't know which is better for the company from this vantage angle..

[Freeky]

So, I guess it is official, Apple is either re-entering the tablet market with a huge iPhone, or is now producing feminine hygiene products. 

[Richter]

So it's announced.  The bloody hype spaggin up every tech blog I normally love can die off for awhile.  I can now scoop up another snappy, shiny toy courtesy of steve Jobs, cram is into my jockstrap, and let the world flal out of my ass in peace, knowing I am once again shitting out my internal orgas on the cutting edge.

Sophmorism done with, right.

Much like Phil the groundhog though, I have a bad feeling this will make the era of tablet computing crawl back into its hole to die for another five to ten years.  Initial impressions show a scary, fever dream sized Iphone.  Very well.  I rabidly LOVe apple's touch absed OS, and would love it scaled up nd more powered up, but for one simple issue:  it behaves like an Iphone.  One app at a time.  clocking in with a 1 ghz processor, this is shameful.  My 1st gen. Asus netbook does better on .75 ghz. 

SO why the hell not?  If I rEALLY need to I can still write on websites, IRC via websites, and surf websites with multiple tabbed browsing, but can only pray the tab to tab transition will be a clean and easy process.  There's something about it not doing certain itterations of java or flash, but so long as I can watch filthy youtube clones in peace, BIG FRACKING DEAL.

I'd be fine with loving this device, and at $500 for bottom end, I still may.  Must know more, and need to see if apple adds has native PDf support, and an easy way to get my files into / out of it.

[Cain]

Steve Jobs didn't help matters by calling the iTampon iPad "more intimate".  It is also apparently better than a netbook, because you can see the whole page when surfing on the internet.  Not just part of the page, the whole page.  Perhaps even see it intimately.

Also its a nightmare to type on.  Steve Jobs said it was a dream, but its really, really bad.  So now you know.

[Golden Applesauce]

I watched the big Steve Jobs presentation last night with a roommate (he had to write an essay on an ad or speech or something) and I wasn't terribly impressed.  It's... a really big iPhone?  Playing games on it looks interesting - perhaps they should have marketed it as a PSP that comes with net browsing built in and an enormous screen... but with only 1gHz processor you won't be playing much in the way of modern computational monstrosities.  That, and the fact that the buttons are "virtual", means you'd be jamming your thumb on the same place on the computer screen repeatedly and at high velocity.  The keyboard looks like a joke - if it isn't big enough to touch type on, it's not a keyboard - but more than that, how are you supposed to type on it?  Hold the tablet up with one hand and type with the other?  Set the whole thing down and type with the screen horizontal?

I think my favorite moment might have been one of the game people explaining how on the iPad you could just move two fingers across the screen to toss a grenade in-game, like so... and then the guy in the game does nothing but look in the direction of where he was apparently supposed to throw the grenade.  (The presenter does it a second time and it works, but any gaming strategy that says "first, take one hand off the controls, then hope the movement recognition works this time, or you'll be eaten by the swarm of whatever monsters you were trying to grenade" is iffy at best.)

No, scratch that, my favorite moment was Steve Jobs explaining how it made a very nice picture frame as he was explaining some slide-show software.

[Reginald Ret]

also full of DRM

[Richter]

I'd like hands on before I judge the typing.  It can be good bad or ugly, but even ipod touch / iphone typing I'm not inlove with.  (IRC'ing on one is a nigthmare.)  I'd constantly carry one of those nice apple keyboards with it.  

Yeah... "iPad"....   iSlate, iTablet, iTab....just about any other option.

Zappa:(To the tuen of "Let's make the water turn black")

"Listen when I tell you that this song is really true.
I want everyone
to listen and beleive
It's about a computer maker form a long time ago
And all the things the techies wanted to know.
Early every morning stevie jobs he went to work
Selling high tech wares
To san berndino squares
I can still see him with his Ipod and iPad
Amusing all the boys upon his stage

copying and pasting and gizmoing throuhg the day
imac, synched to keybaord synch to msuic playing away
And all the while on the shelf in the shed
the Newton and the imac on display.

iTunes saves the songs on a window grey like gloom
a marvel to be seen
dysentary screen
While stevie and his buddies have a game out in the back
let's watch our market grow back

You'd seem them R+D'ing in a world of their own.
To some it might seem creepy what they do
the blogger left and right woudl spy on them day and night
I'd bet you'd do the same if they was you.

copying and pasting and gizmoing through the day
imac, synched to keybaord synch to msuic playing away
And all the while on the shelf in the shed
the Newton and the imac on display.

They've got ipods in the army now and Stevie's taking pills
Oh how they yearn
to spend the cash they earn
color flashing, music smashing
DRm machine
wait till they send you their green
wait till they send you there green"

[cavehamster]

also full of DRM

True, but I expect it will be jailbroken quickly enough.

I'm disappointed that it does not appear to multitask.  Sheesh.

I also would like to be able to hand write notes on the screen surface with a real stylus, and then have handwriting recognition convert to a txt file and save it for easy filing later.  Looks like I will not be giving up my pencil and pad of green graph paper anytime soon

[Triple Zero]

http://i.gizmodo.com/5458382/8-things-that-suck-about-the-ipad

[Shibboleet The Annihilator]

INCREDIBLE PRICE!


If Apple keeps going this way I see them becoming irrelevant again.

[Cain]

http://www.defectivebydesign.org/blog/apple-ipad-drm-petition

Mr. Jobs,

DRM will give Apple and their corporate partners the power to disable features, block competing products (especially free software) censor news, and even delete books, videos, or news stories from users' computers without notice– using the device's "always on" network connection.

This past year, we have seen how human rights and democracy protestors can have the technology they use turned against them. By making a computer where every application is under total, centralized control, Apple is endangering freedom to increase profits.

Apple can say they will not abuse this power, but their record of App Store rejections and removals gives us no reason to trust them. The iPad's unprecedented use of DRM to control all capabilities of a general purpose computer is a dangerous step backward for computing and for media distribution. We demand that Apple remove all DRM from its devices."

[Triple Zero]

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

OK, I am generally speaking a pretty big fan of the three apple products I own right now. However, I completely fail to see why anyone would buy this totally ridiculous monstrosity and not a $300 Netbook.

As for comparing it to a Kindle or other e-reader, that's ludicrous simply because the whole point of e-readers is the special no-eyestrain screens, right? And no multitasking? What the shit?

[Jasper]

Right.  And I've heard tech bloggers call this the "end of netbooks"?  No.  This device's success will determine whether other (less content-controlled) devices will be made by third parties.  I like the idea of a touchscreen slate computer, because it has the capacity for so much awesome stuff.  Movies, browsing, and that.  Sure.  But more than that, the possibility for ebook reading (you can just turn the brightness down and use high contrast font to read comfortably), as well as the possibility for an art tablet that can send finished art wirelessly.   To me, that is an awesome device in itself, and Apple's myopic stance on content control will not win them best in category for this device, even if they more or less invented it.

[Richter]

I'd like to see Asus, Dell, and MSI's take on this too.  Archos has a FEW possiblities, but nothing with the right hardware / battery life combo for me yet.