gdgt

Listening to the podcast now. What I'm really grabbing onto in your discussion is the lack of any emphasis on periodicals in the announcement. Yes, they introduced an iBooks store but that just wasn't what I wanted because I don't see this as a great device for books. The Kindle wins that fight in my opinion and if there's a Kindle app tailored for the iPad I see it continuing to win that fight. The iPad seems made for periodicals to me and I guess maybe Apple doesn't see it that way or just couldn't get it together to make that point in the announcement for any number of reasons.

Granted, my expectations (and a lot other people's) were really absurd but I at least thought Apple would make it clear what an opportunity this device is for magazine and newspaper publishers to create something amazing. Not that anything they'd create would save print but to not even address it in a meaningful way seemed really weird. The New York Times demo was okay, but I wasn't amazed. Perhaps an iNews store or something like that will come later. Maybe developers will deliver the apps I have in mind by launch. However, in my opinion that's something that should have been there right out of the gate and I think it's an important factor in why some people seem so underwhelmed with the announcement.

One comment about using a MiFI, I agree that using it with multiple devices is a plus, but for us very occasional users, Verizon also offers a daily plan - $15 a day with unlimited data. If you use it 5-10 days a year, it makes sense rather than getting even an inexpensive monthly plan, which generally are suitable only for email.

Also, using an iPhone VNC program (I use Remote Tap, but there are plenty of others) to dial into your Mac and open a browser is a workaround for the lack of Flash (you would need either 3G or a MiFi).

We all knew what was coming (I even called it), but possibly for the first time, there were absolutely no surprises. For such a big launch, I think they had to bring more to the table. There is a lot of Apple to go around, so a little dilution obviously won't make a difference, but that surprised me.


I actually think the size and proportions just look terribly awkward; the aspect ratio seems to be a terrible choice. For videos, widescreen is better and for books, portrait is better. Apple always talks about simple design that lends itself to the content, but huge !back-lit bars around my content does exactly opposite.

There is definitely an appeal for this device for people like us, but we all see the use-case for an iPod Touch as an internet tablet on the couch. I don't know if everyone does, but it's more than a hobby since it's part of their mobile devices collection lol. It'll be interesting to see what they have in store for 4.0 with Win7 and Android looming over; Steve definitely didn't seem to be too happy with Google. I'm gonna be keeping an eye out for access to files and some sort of background usage - it would definitely help sway jailbreakers away from the dark side.

Personally I do not like the iPad, and thought apple really should of put OS X on it, not iPhone OS. But I also realized that I will never buy an eReader or a netbook. And I think at 500 bucks, if I was going to buy an eReader or a netbook, I would be dumb to not buy the iPad. I dont think this takes over the tablet market at all. Its trying to use the tablet to take over the eReader and netbook markets.

That said I still will never own one because I will never put iTunes on my PC. get ready for ApplePadSeverice.exe to run with bonjour, iTunesHelper.exe, iPodService.exe, AppleMobiledeviceSupport.exe, and Appleupdate.exe.

I'm really curious what will happen to the iPhone pricing when the 4th Gen hits. Apple have shown that the 'cost' for a 3g radio is $130. The difference between an iPad with and without 3G is basically the same as that between an iPod Touch and an iPhone. Yet the difference between a similar iPod Touch and iPhone is $400 if I'm right (difference is €420 in Italy). Can Apple maintain that price gap?