Weekend Open Forum: Is the iPad for You?

They've striven for simplicity. Now they have it. One giant ipod as a tablet. One good look at easily half of their fanbase, and you'll realize there are enough *****s among them who will quickly buy one of these. The Onion depicted the average Mac user perfectly: "I'll buy anything as long as it's shiny and made by Apple." If you haven't seen it already, check out this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BnLbv6QYcA

The iRack looks unstable..... The iRack looks like something we shouldn't be involved with.

no headphone jack
no SD card slot
no other operating system except crippled ipod touch os
no bigger harddrive i mean seriously 64gb? if there was a sd card slot i wouldnt have much of an issue but bleh...
i'd like to watch some of my videos thru VLC on a screen like this maybe read some ebooks but the prices they are gonna charge are too much and the features too cut down


its too crippled a product and you KNOW the apple fanboys are gonna gobble it up like a golden turd

sorry its not for me... too bad because i was hoping it'd be good


now the HP tablet i am kinda interested in

Hayden Panettiere, now there's a girl who you wouldn't need either a paper bag or have to tape your iPad to her face. You could probably leave the room lights on as well. Paris Hilton, not so much.

The very sad thing there is a "bigger" and "better" waste of money, >>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffy_studies <<<.

But Noooo, nobody would be content with just the stupid course. They'd have to buy an iPad to go with the course, and also p*** the rest of their PELL grant away on either meth or ecstasy.

I don't know if it's a good or bad thing that Steve Jobs hasn't ventured into the sex trade. It is after all, a big business, with no overt participation from M$. Perhaps he could enrich all of our lives with an "iPorn".

I'm going to change my iPad now, as I'm feeling something less than fresh.

I actually thought that wheel thing was a joke I mean...I don't see anyone...ANYONE..scrolling faster than I can type. Those of us who are PC savvy can type pretty damn good and I don't think scrolling is going to be efficient.

Apple is yet again catering towards people who are technically challenged...much like the iPad. It's a netbook! For *****s!

I own an iPhone and I believe that it is the best phone I've every carried. I also own an Asus netbook which I really enjoy as well. What gets me about the iPad is the fact it has no external ports. I use my netbook at school and use a thumb drive to back up all of my work. If the iPad had a usb port it might have been a possibility.... well that and the thought of typing on a screen like that doesn't seem ideal. I'll stick with my iPhone/netbook combo. It seems to be working great for me!

My Windows Mobile phone that came out over 2 years ago can multitask better than the iPad. That's very sad.

That is one very important reason I stuck with my Samsung Omnia i900 instead of drooling on something like iPhone which isn't worth a moment of my time. It is just another shiny toy from apple to lure ***** and have their $s. Mind you when I bought Omnia it was relatively more expensive than iPhone as well but it has never failed me.

Computerworld reports Apple makes $208 on each $499 iPad

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9150045/Apple_makes_208_on_each_499_iPad

LOL

This is a real disappointment in my opinion. Who wants a bigger iTouch? Oh, and I really hate the name 'iPad" - come on!

I really think they are just trying to compete with the likes of Kindle and Sony for their ebooks. If this is the case, why didn't they just come out and say so? It would be a much better improvement to these devices. Speaking of which, I don't understand why those devices are as popular as they are. I'm not into reading THAT much!

Good luck with the iPad Apple - you'll need it!

no flash and no multi-task support is a disappointment. However ppl need to realize that battery life has to be considered when it comes to how long the device can actually be on without a charge. Some of you might already know that flash is a resource intensive application that will drain the battery like no tomorrow. Even if the user avoids flash videos such as youtube its impossible to avoid the outrageous amounts of flash ads that are found on todays webpages. Todays webpages are bombered with flash ads that are integrated into the websites. Sooner or later the user will eventually get into one and by the time you know it, your battery life might be half gone within 2 hrs.

And thats just Flash. Lets also pile up multi-tasking on top of that and you'll get an ipad that will barely last half the day. Obviously this is all speculation on my part and I'm pretty sure there are a lot of things that can be probably done to get around it (like maybe an OPTION to enable or disable flash or multitask support).

There is one simple reply to all of this and in my view after getting that in, there is no need to spend anymore time talking about this device.

lol! ... awesome dividebyzero! ... wonderful review!

... I'm a PC die-hard who gave the iPhone a chance only last year and have been truely surprised by how great I think that is ... so I guess I'll probably give the iPad a test sometime in the future when it gets to it's 3rd or 4th incarnation and it has more features.

... at the moment it's far too limited it what it can do ... neither tablet mac, nor iPod, as far as I'm concerned the iPad misses the mark completely.

If battery life is more important then function, ok...then they made a great product.
Since you cant use it for anything....dont turn it on and the battery life will be amazing.

..no thanx ..i'd rather have the nokia booklet3g. Great battery life, WITH function as well.

Who would use a tablet to watch a movie??? Your wrists would kill you after like... 10 minutes.

Apple could take a crap, wrap it in white and the fanbase who likes the matching colour with their clothes would buy it anyhow.

Well, I can see where this type of product will appeal to the generic sheep in the population - easy to use, plenty of shiny apps to choose from, some great options for them. The target audience is one that likes the idea of an e-book reader, but wants something more, and won't care about multitasking or that it's not a full computer. I think we'll see lots of them, and Apple will come out smelling like a rose even though the hardware is inferior - they are better marketers than most in the industry.

But, as for me, well I'm not satisfied with the limits of the hardware, just as I wasn't with the iPhone. I wager the majority of people who visit this type of site will be similar to me in these respects - we tend to like cutting edge and/or flexibility, not just simple cookie cutter systems. Quite simply, the readership of a site like TechSpot are probably not representative of the demographic Apple is targeting. And their target demo is much larger than us, unfortunately.

Apple's carry case has a flap that allows the iPad to sit on a surface at alternate viewing angles. You can see pics of it on their site if you scroll down towards the bottom.

http://www.apple.com/ipad/specs/

Of course, I've been using tablet PCs for 5 years, one of the main ones being a slate style PC that we used in semi-industrial applications, and this type of case/stand system has been around for a very long time. Heck, you can get similar types of cases for most portable media players and/or media playing phones.

For e-book experiences, though, I think the iPad is just too heavy. Some of the lighter e-book readers out there are very comfortable to hold for long periods, but the iPad would probably start to hurt your wrist after a while, and a stationary stand on a surface would just make eye-strain harder to deal with (can't easily mitigate reflections and light issues like you can when holding in your hand).

I depend a lot on my 32 GB iPod touch, and I use many different apps on it daily. I always carry it around in my pocket so it is always accessible. It is by far, the best PDA I've ever had.

Now that I have the option of getting a bigger iPod touch (ie. iPad), will I do it? Probably not. I do not see any compelling reason to carry around something bigger. If the iPad had multitasking, SD card reader, USB ports, the ability to play flash videos, and a headphone jack, they may have sold me on it. But since Apple decided to leave out these key features, I will pass on this deal. I will use my netbook computer instead.

There is one reason why I may still consider an iPad, and that is to use it as an eReader. It all depends on what reading content I could get. I still find that the books I want to read (non-fiction) are not available on the Kindle yet. If they were, I probably would have bought a Kindle a while ago. However there is another eReader on the horizon, which I have my eye on. It is the Asus DR-570. It has a bright OLED color screen, an SD card reader, 3G, Wi-Fi and a 122 hour battery life, and weighs only 200 grams. The iPad as an eReader doesn't come even close to these specs. Although ultimately, what will determine my decision for an eReader is what content is available. I think this is key for whoever wants to win the eReader platform battle.

Well I never got an iPod 'cos I wanted to download music from anywhere, I never got an iPhone 'cos although they look nice I could get what I wanted from a phone a lot cheaper, so I guess I wont be getting an iPad 'cos I like reading books without having to charge a battery every few hours and if I accidently left it on the train it's not a bother.