Opinions - Apple iPad: a new lease of life for the ill-fated tablet?

[usxhe190]

Eventually the world will move to HTML5 and h.264 and leave Flash behind. It is CPU (and therefore power) hungry and full of security holes.

Eventually, I am dead. Right now, Flash is in a majority of websites.

Multitasking matters for geeks. Not for normal people. Look how many relatives and other non-techies you see with a million windows open on their PCs because they don't know they should close them. Most people do one thing at once. You will be able to listen to music and write an email. That is all most users will want.

Many relatives and non-technies people want skype to be on constantly so that it acts like a phone. Some want MSN/Facebook to be on.

So you can't use Spotify and browse the web? Suits Apple as it makes people use iTunes. The fact is that this device will be easy to use for "normal" people, those who using a PC at the moment is a tremendous trial that they have to learn lots of new skills for.

Yes, it will be for people who never touched a computer in their life.

[dangel]

Arguments over multitasking seem utterly bizarre to me - obviously this will be viewed like a PC by it's users as it's sold a multi use device. I can't believe people are buying into Apple's PR on this one - it's obvious that V2 will add this capability to some degree (and then Apple will declare it mana from heaven all of a sudden). Multitasking is something people take for granted and even novice users (as argued) will notice it lacking when they try and do things they're used to doing on their laptop/pc all day long. Shiny shiny only holds the attention for so long after all

[Astridax93]

Eventually, I am dead. Right now, Flash is in a majority of websites.

Couldn't have put it better myself, who ever thinks flash is dying must be a hermit, or not be technologically aware. It's such a good platform that I'm thinking of learning Actionscript 3 myself. On other languages it is so difficult to make a decent looking graphically based application, with flash and as3 this is native to the language.

Its not a general purpose laptop, just an itunes client.

and what of silverlight? Yes it's new but it's very powerful and we're starting to see some neat stuff there too. Problem is one of a closed eco system - the only framework apple allow is their own: no java, no .net, no flash etc etc which is a huge drawback (speaking as developer) coupled with the mantra of "thou shalt only run the apps which Apple doth approve" which I really hate.

The above quotes pretty much sum up apple's software mentality. Apple want their products to be stable and amazing. To do this they must restrict every loophole or feature which may be used to destabilize the OS. These drawbacks make it a huge NO NO for anyone with a small idea of the concept of customization.

From an aesthetics point of view apple have it right on. Think what their hardware could be without the restrictive albeit very stable and fast, iphone OS.

Hey if they skinned and put all the touch features into OSX and put that onto the tablet so that the underlying OS was customizable, as long as the processing and graphical power was there, I'd buy it any day.

But as I said previously the custom built processor is another way of restricting customization. Any chance of an closed source OS on there has gone, emulation gone due to app store and Linux would have to be compiled for that processor of which there are probably very few if any compilers. To build a compiler you would either need to know which proc architecture is similar, cause I don't believe it is entirely unique to them, surely it's based on another mobile proc cause the r'n'd costs for making your own architecture would be huge, then getting a semiconductor business with the right understanding of lithography and technology to build one adding to the cost.

Sorry for rant

[educatedfool]

It looks like an iPhone for the visually impaired.

[mikerr]

But as I said previously the custom built processor [..] , cause I don't believe it is entirely unique to them, surely it's based on another mobile proc cause the r'n'd costs for making your own architecture would be huge

Actually its an ARM processor and GPU all on one chip, called a System on a Chip (SoC)

http://www.brightsideofnews.com/news...-the-gpu!.aspx

Not really unique to apple either, as this kind of thing is becoming common in smartphones nowadays,
but Apple like to make a PR soundbite out of it.

[baius]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_EcybyLJS8

(Meant as humour only. No flaming please.)

[gz5ztg]

Eventually, I am dead. Right now, Flash is in a majority of websites.



Many relatives and non-technies people want skype to be on constantly so that it acts like a phone. Some want MSN/Facebook to be on.



Yes, it will be for people who never touched a computer in their life.

You over-estimate a lot of people's computing abilities. Most sites may well have Flash now, however most sites also work just fine for the increasing number of people who run browsers without flash whether it be full dekstop browsers with flash blockers or mobile devices like iPhones. It is very rare that I am unable to do my day to day browsing without Flash.

Flash is a bad technology, it isn't accessible, it doesn't describe content semantically for consumption elsewhere. It will disappear simply because it isn't standards based and as more and more devices become connected to the internet it becomes a blocker to integration and content consumption not a boon.

[AGTDenton]

No multi-tasking
As mentioned on the previous page, Apple's iPad - running the iPhone operating system - doesn't facilitate two or more open applications at any one time. So yes, that means you won't be able to check the IMDB website whilst watching a movie.

Anyone owning the iPad is more than likely going to own an iPhone and will therefore be able to show off their apple goodies by watching the video on the iPad and browsing the internet on their iPhone.

[dangel]

Anyone owning the iPad is more than likely going to own an iPhone and will therefore be able to show off their apple goodies by watching the video on the iPad and browsing the internet on their iPhone.

Meh, perhaps Apple customer will just buy two iPads then?

Multitasking, old-skool?

[bsodmike]

I'm holding out till it's jailbroken (i.e. you can install stuff via Cydia) and until rev 2.0 comes out with at least a SD slot.

It would be great if one could connect to shared resources (AFP/Samba) and access files, get access to the cli (terminal). I would definitely find use for one if the above were possible but as it stands, it is far too restricted for my tastes.

P.S. I'm running a jailbroken iPhone 3G @ 3.1.2

[Astridax93]

That was an epic vid!

The new question of the 21st century, to test internet capable devices will now be; But will it play Bloons?

I'm glad they are using an ARM Soc, that means linux might be a hope yet, but getting access to the bootloader and flashing the kernel onto the eeprom will be a challenge.

On an off note, nobody knows of a custom eeprom flasher or a way to make a nokia 5800 work with the JTAG protocol, I'm trying to adapt android to work on the nokia 5800.

[usxhe190]

You over-estimate a lot of people's computing abilities. Most sites may well have Flash now, however most sites also work just fine for the increasing number of people who run browsers without flash whether it be full dekstop browsers with flash blockers or mobile devices like iPhones. It is very rare that I am unable to do my day to day browsing without Flash.

Like I said, iPad will be great for the people who has never heard of a computer.

It is also for people who has too much money to burn and thinks paying $400 to $800 to do less things than a laptop is great because it has an apple at the back (although I agree it looks good).

Flash is a bad technology, it isn't accessible, it doesn't describe content semantically for consumption elsewhere. It will disappear simply because it isn't standards based and as more and more devices become connected to the internet it becomes a blocker to integration and content consumption not a boon.

Like I said, it might disappear but at the moment, it is here and now. If you think it is such a bad technology, I hope you aren't using it on your Macbook or Windows computer.

I think it's funny that everyone moans about Flash now once Apple moaned about it.

[TheAnimus]

hey i've been moaning for flash long before it became 'cool' to do so.

You can even find my thread about battery life in my laptop about it.

I've called it a security risk, a pain in the arse that it circumvents certain types of isolation (there is a VERY good reason for running it in IE rather than FF et al)

However, it is still installed on all my PCs, and flash light on my mobile phone.

[usxhe190]

hey i've been moaning for flash long before it became 'cool' to do so.

You can even find my thread about battery life in my laptop about it.

I've called it a security risk, a pain in the arse that it circumvents certain types of isolation (there is a VERY good reason for running it in IE rather than FF et al)

However, it is still installed on all my PCs, and flash light on my mobile phone.

Just to clarify, I am not saying there hasn't been moans about Flash before iPad. But now with Apple talking about it, everyone now is jumping on the bandwagon to say how crap it is.

You didn't hear this in the netbook revolution. I just think it's funny.