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wyneken

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Here's some cool stuff.

InfoSeek reports that "More Apple iPad features have been discovered in iPhone OS 3.2, features that would be crucial to the computing part of the iPad."

Among these are "productivity features" like the ability to connect to file servers, to download and store files locally from the Safari browser, and to print easily. And dig this: OS 3.2 seems to be "hiding a handwriting keyboard prototype. This could mean that we'll see native handwriting recognition in iPhone OS 4.0."

There's a more detailed write-up about this at engadget, citing among other sources "noted iPhone jailbreaker chpwn" and "iPhone jailbreak dev Ryan Petrich," who reports that "there's a spell checker with multiple dictionaries and user-added entries (huzzah!), much richer text support for apps, the ability to selectively draw to external displays (using the VGA or component adapters, we'd imagine), location-aware ads in Maps and possibly other programs that use the Maps API, file upload ability in Safari, a modifiable cut / copy / paste menu, and, most interestingly, prototype support for a 'handwriting keyboard.'"

It would be a neat bit of jujitsu if Steve Jobs, who now stands indicted of having overhyped as "revolutionary" a device that is little more than an iPod touch for the ham-fisted and sight-impaired, turns out to have coyly failed to mention a number of wicked cool capabilities that will make the device much more interesting.
 

Taos

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Mmmm... hidden goodness.

I was a Newton user for a period, I had a 2100 and others. It was a great device and I sold it to fund a Palm Vx, big mistake and I still yearn for my Newton.

I want the iPad to bring back the dream and what you have mentioned seems to go toward that.

If it isn't there to start with I will wait for;
- Handwriting recognition
- Multitasking
- File Server syncing, the Mac Mini Server is making more sense now.
- Give some way to arrange, annotate, bibliograh, reference and populate an essay/thesis plan
 

wyneken

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I still have my Newton (somewhere) and it still works. I waited until the second iteration of the handwriting recognition feature -- the version that was called Rosetta, I think -- and it really worked well for me. It's funny that it's taken Apple so long to revisit this territory.

On a slightly more ominous note, I happened to run into John Sculley shortly after the Newton was introduced (I live in the Maine town where he had a summer house) and he was sounding very much like Steve Jobs in proclaiming that this product was the greatest thing Apple had done under his tenure. This was toward the end of his time at Apple and he was looking very sad and tired, I thought.

You can't say Steve Jobs looks sad and tired. He kinda looks like he wants to smack the schiz out of Google and eat Adobe for lunch. I think this one is going to stay airborne.
 

kornchild2002

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Ah, the good old days of PDAs with green and black screens, an amazing 8MB of memory, running off of AAA batteries, etc. I had a friend who purchased a Newton but I went with a Handspring device simply because it was smaller and about 1/4 the price of the Newton all while running Palm's operating system. That takes me back.

I am sure we will discover more "hidden" features in OS 3.2 as we get closer to the iPad's release. I wonder which features will carry over to the iPhone and iPod touch.
 

Code Monkey

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He kinda looks like he wants to smack the schiz out of Google and eat Adobe for lunch.
Eating Adobe for lunch isn't going to take much. Although I think deliberately not supporting Flash is a mistake, I can't really think of what Adobe does anymore that is actually *good* except Photoshop, and that's just a hugely overpriced, ubiquitously pirated app that shows Adobe's enormous chutzpah. One of these days Google is going to advance Picasa past its barebones photo editing capabilities and Adobe is going to wonder where their inflated install base for Photoshop went. Unless Adobe starts to become more competitive instead of resting on their stack of patents and professional standards, they're going to disappear in the consumer market before long.

Google, though, that's a whole other story and I think Google is going to wind up beating Apple at their own game. Look at their Chrome browser - it has none of Safari's inherent market advantages, i.e. pre-installed on every Mac and mandatory on every iPhone and touch, yet, Chrome still beats Safari for installed market share after a very short life span in the market place (managed to replace Opera as my default after more than 12 years!). When you look at the general acceptance of Google's suite of services, GMail, Maps, Search, Calendar, Picasa, etc., as well as the possibilities with developing services like Wave and Google Docs, they've got a lot more momentum outside the Macintosh crowd to effect a change.

Even if turns out to just be the allure of the unknown possibilities versus the known meh of the iPad, I'm a lot more excited to see what a Google tablet has to offer at this point than any other likely product on the horizon.
 

kornchild2002

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Unless said tablet ran Google's Android OS. I think it is fine for cellphones but I don't understand the appeal that some people/companies have with putting Android on netbooks and other tablet (and tablet-like) devices. However, I don't see what potential Chrome OS has over the iPhone OS. They both essentially do the same thing (especially iPhone OS 3.2 on the iPad) and offer the bare basics of what can be done. Google has more potential simply because they are competitive and more open to what developers would like to see (ie multi-tasking and allowing apps to use certain aspects of other apps such as Flash browsing in a web browser).

I have Chrome OS up and running on my netbook and I feel as if it is on par with the iPhone OS. It might have a few more features that I am not aware about or haven't used yet but they are essentially the same. I think it is a great small resource OS (just like iPhone OS) but nothing when compared to Windows XP or 7. We will see. Currently Chrome OS doesn't support touchscreen displays despite the minimum netbook specifications requiring a multitouch display. The Chromium group is expecting a Google tablet between 3 and 5 ft wide though. That may put a damper on a not-yet-named-iPad-killer from Google. The Chrome OS definitely has the potential if Google is not so strict about the rules.

Then again, Apple could open up the restrictions just a little bit more with the iPad. After all, we are no longer talking about a cellphone platform here. The 1GHz processor in the iPad (along with hardware accelerated video decoding) should be able to perform more tasks than what the iPhone OS allows.
 

kornchild2002

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I should have clarified that I don't see the advantage of Chrome OS over iPhone OS in terms of features that each OS offers now. They both offer the same basic functionality. Now, I am not sure what type of control Google is going to have over applications for Chrome. Open source or not, it won't matter if Google maintains tight control over Chrome just as Apple does with the iPhone OS.
 

Code Monkey

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Open source or not, it won't matter if Google maintains tight control over Chrome just as Apple does with the iPhone OS.
Uh, no, just no. Google has done a pretty remarkable thing so far with the whole Chrome thing. Sure, they develop it, and they release the official version, but the code is out there, officially and freely available. If they did attempt to control it like Apple it would be trivial for a dev team to make a "jail broken" version. There will be no Apple like control of the Chrome/Chromium OS products, no sense and no need and no ability to lock it down anyhow.
 

daring niche

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Taos said " If it isn't there to start with I will wait for;
- Handwriting recognition
- Multitasking
- File Server syncing, the Mac Mini Server is making more sense now.
- Give some way to arrange, annotate, bibliograh, reference and populate an essay/thesis plan "

....i totally agree , also like to see some additional ports ( usb 2.0 etc.. ) on this before i purchase it.

http://daring-niche.ecrater.com/
 
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Filter

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thats awesome. the ipad is pretty cool, but i'd personally rather buy a laptop instead.
 

kornchild2002

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Taos said " If it isn't there to start with I will wait for;
- Handwriting recognition
- Multitasking
- File Server syncing, the Mac Mini Server is making more sense now.
- Give some way to arrange, annotate, bibliograh, reference and populate an essay/thesis plan "

....i totally agree , also like to see some additional ports ( usb 2.0 etc.. ) on this before i purchase it.
Yeah, we already have those. They are called notebooks. People wouldn't even "arrange, annotate, bibliograph, reference, and populate an essay/thesis plan" using a netbook. A 9-10" screen just isn't comfortable enough to sit and type out a document for more than an hour. Well, it isn't the screen so much as a keyboard. The iPad will already have a way of making documents. However, on a virtual keyboard, I doubt that would be all too comfortable either. So what, you want a full size physical keyboard? I hate to say it but there are plenty of $400 notebooks with full sized keyboards that would be perfect for this.

I understand that people want a "perfect" device out of Apple but that will never happen. Other people have expectations that are just too high that even a $3000 notebook alone wouldn't suffice.
 

Code Monkey

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So what, you want a full size physical keyboard? I hate to say it but there are plenty of $400 notebooks with full sized keyboards that would be perfect for this.
Again, though, this raises my main question of the device: price to function coefficient. While I still don't think it's "done", I appreciate that the iPhone & touch put lite computing functions in a pocket with little more footprint than my nano that travels everywhere with me.

Once you need a bag to carry a device around, which you will for the iPad, it becomes a device of pure vanity in my book. You've got 1.5lbs for an iPad, 2-3lbs for a netbook, or 5-6lbs for a full laptop. None of those is exactly heavy and the main reason somebody goes for the netbook isn't the couple of pounds they save, but rather the hundreds of dollars they save to get the core functions they want/need on the go. iPad turns all that on its head and asks you to spend more than a competent laptop and desktop to gain the "gee whiz" factor Apple loves.

I mean, I just ordered a full desktop yesterday for $466 shipped and taxed (my computer is on hospice watch). I know that's a bit of an Oranges to Tangelos comparison, but when I can just about buy both a competent desktop AND competent laptop for less than the 64GB 3G enabled iPad, there's something wrong with the sacrifices it demands for it's cool factor, at least to me.


I understand that people want a "perfect" device out of Apple but that will never happen.
Probably true, but I was making these same type of complaints about Apple's hardware even when I was a Mac user all those years ago. It's a core part of why I'm not a Mac user now. They release less than they could because they get away with it. The catch is that they have to have *something* that keeps you bound to their practices (e.g. smartlists keep me tied to iPods no matter what else is out there, the Mac OS did keep me tied to Macs until Win98); I'm just wondering what the binding glue is here that's going to let them get away with it with the iPad after the novelty adopters get theirs.
 

kornchild2002

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iPad turns all that on its head and asks you to spend more than a competent laptop and desktop to gain the "gee whiz" factor Apple loves.
Of course, this is Apple we are talking about. They charge people $2000 for a 15" notebook with an Nivida 9600M IGP, 4GB of RAM, and 320GB hard drive. $2000 can buy a top-of-the-line Dell, HP, Toshiba, or even a really good Sony that will run circles around that 15" MacBook Pro. Apple continually asks people to pay a higher price for that little logo on the back of their products. The only things that Apple has really been price competitive with are the iPod classic, iPod touch (though not initially), and iPod nano. The rest of their products are more expensive than they need to be while delivering features that aren't really worth that high price (unless you think that Mac OS X is worth a high price). Even look at Apple's displays. There was a time when HP was using the same panel in their LCD displays. Apple was charging over $1000 for a 24" model while HP's was coming in at a little over $500. Same panel just in a different casing.

The iPad falls in line with other Apple products. There are other less expensive solutions out there that actually do more (and/or are more powerful). However, these units will be a lot bigger and bulkier. It seems like Apple devices are almost always more sleek than the competition while offering great battery life (7 hours is actually really good for a notebook as most netbooks get around 6-7 hours with many Windows notebooks coming in at 4-5 hours). However, are the sleek factor and battery lives worth the usual Apple high price? I don't know. I will definitely give the iPad a run at the local Apple store whenever it is released. This is not something that I would buy blindly.

I can see the iPad filling a little void currently filled by my netbook. In my opinion, the iPad is an Apple netbook. It provides the bare basics of surfing the internet, working with documents, playing media, etc. That is what netbooks are made for. Some people may use them for more tasks but they are either uncomfortable, the netbook is being bogged down, or the netbook really wasn't designed for that type of performance. I know many people who are using netbooks as their primary computers. Netbooks just weren't designed for that but it doesn't stop people from using them in that manner. Anyway, as I said, the iPad is an Apple netbook and, in traditional Apple fashion, they just so happen to charge $200-$400 more than the competition. This price will likely decrease over time just as with the iPod touch. That was damned expensive when it was first released and didn't really offer anything over the competition. Even less expensive PDAs could store 32GB (with a proper card) of media. However, despite all of that, the iPod touch has become Apple's flagship iPod.
 

astroman33

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I can't see any of these as deal breakers, even in a version 1!!

Handwriting recognition

It probably will get this (see other threads around here). Still, the keyboard will handle the light duties needed-- and probably better than handwriting! (At the same time, I understand this-- I find it easier to jot down a phone number than type it on my laptop or IPT. OTOH, sometimes I can't read the number later! HR would likely have trouble, too!)

Multitasking

Instead of full-blown mt with all its negatives, it could use an easy slide method of switching between apps (ye old Switcher program would work). Still, exiting a program and moving to another is really not that big a deal. (Yes, it would be good if it opened up background music and podcast playing to non-Apple apps.)

File Server syncing

That's built in AFAIK!

Annotations and references

I'll bet that the annotations will come in iBooks...

Now what does Pages currently have for bibliographies? That will be in the iPad. Does Endnote make anything for the IPT? If so, you'd be all set for citations and references. They did make a version of their program for the Palms.

You've brought up something cool-- the use of the iPad for scholarly work. You could have it with you in the library and enter notes... or use RefWorks, supplied for free by many campuses, at home or the library, to capture reference citations.
 

Code Monkey

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The iPad falls in line with other Apple products.
I almost agree with this, but there's a key distinction in your details you gloss over: Apple is competitive with their iPods because they are not tied to the Macintosh ecoystem. Where the iPad breaks recent tradition is it's not being marketed as a Mac only device, but it's being priced like a Mac only device (case in point, consider your Apple monitor example, how many of those have you seen hooked up to a Dell or HP machine?). Which, for better or worse, I figure, is probably going to result in the majority of the first gen adopters being from the Macintosh using consumer base.

I think this might bite them in the rear. If their pricing for the first gen iPad keeps the Windows crowd away, that's going to give Google and others time to get their own consumer class tablets out there at more reasonable price points. Without anything really compelling about the iPad (I can't see managing my nano without iTunes, but I also can't see managing my computer, even a so-called companion computer, with iTunes), once somebody opts for a different "flavor" of companion device, good luck getting them to switch without a very good reason.

Oh well, however it turns out, it will make for good geekish soap opera. Pass the popcorn...
 

kornchild2002

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I am not sure what thread it was but I acknowledged that Apple was price competitive with the iPod classic, iPod touch, and iPod nano. They weren't initially with the iPod, iPod Mini, or iPod touch but the market forced them to. Apple decreased their prices in order to compete with what other manufacturers were coming out with. The iPod line is still a little more expensive than the competition (unless we count Sony, then iPods would be less) but it isn't as bad as with their computers, accessories (their bluetooth mice and keyboards are almost as much as a netbook), iPhone, and the iPad.

So hopefully the market will force Apple to lower their price points. Competition is almost always good. As seen with the iPod, it forced Apple to change some of their ways of thinking about iPods. Some of their decisions, such as putting a craptacular camera in an iPod nano, were downright stupid and were done just for the "I know you are but what am I?" mentality.

We will see where the iPad takes us and what the competition does. I want to see HP get motivated to improve upon the Slate. Sure, the Slate seems nice and it runs Windows 7 but all of that would be pointless if we are getting a 2-3 hour battery life or if it were running a paltry Atom processor along with Intel integrated graphics (unless this were the X4500 or 4500MHD, they might be old but at least they support hardware acceleration of HD videos).
 

Mochan

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If the iPad can do:

* Some form of handwriting recognition
* Some form of drawing on the screen with a pen-device for capacitative touchscreens
* Some form of not scribbling annotation on screen on documents and books
* download stuff from Safari browser to save in your documents folder
* print wirelessly
* multitask while doing office doc work
* type comfortable on its keyboard without hand or neck strain

Then I can justify it in another niche above the iTouch/beneath the Netbook or even equal the Netbook in some ways for computing. As it is I have a lot of doubts on how well the iPad will serve as a computing device.

Right now it seems to me that it is simply a much better version of the Kindle, aimed to take on book reading and coupled with the capabilities of the iPod Touch/iPhone. Not worth the purchase for current iPhone/Netbook users.
 
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