Be Excellent To Each Other

It is a fair point about the batteries, just about excusable in the phone but wouldn't wash on a gadget like that.

My iPhone is nearly 2 years old and still has the original on time as far as I can tell. It's not impossible to replace though, I have opened iPhones up.
And with the value of the things, they never get thrown away, just repaired or sold off to someone who will repair it.

But what are you using that memory for? The chances are that the vast majority of it will be for Music/Video storage. Which SD cards are more than capable of doing.

Multitasking I genuinely don't miss on the iPhone. Apps do their purposes and it takes a negligible time to load any one. Dropping out of twittie and into another app takes neglibly more time than minimising and maximising a window. Of course that argument goes out the window if the instant starts of the iPhone go missing with the iPad.

What I do miss massively is backgrounding processes. I want tiny tasks that can be set in the background. Things like androids 'locate' and so on.

That said, I would rather a quick mono-task device than a sluggish multitasker.

Oooh, just thought, a central app like OS X's 'Growl' that runs in the background. Apps can send requests for context/location/event circumstance to cause something to happen and growl runs to take care of them. That would be the best of both worlds.

Not in my personal use. I have the complete collection of the Pixies and some Podcasts. Everything else is streamed in. The vast majority is for holding apps. That and I've never had much joy running vids off SD cards. Though that probably says more about my aging laptop.

They're still slow and unreliable. Looking at SD benchmarks around the web, there aren't many with read speeds greater than about 8MB/s. I'd be infuriated copying and playing from such a slow card. And they're still unreliable.

BigPod

Should have been something I could use Photoshop and illustrator on and I'd have sold a kidney.

Meh

Ditto. If I could do some real work on it, I'd be sold in an instant, especially seeing as I fully plan to splash out on a Macbook Pro some time this year. I don't see the potential so far, but I'm happy and eager to be proved wrong.

Nice to see the famous impartial Stephen Fry's opinion on it.

Why can't it be? If the iWork is as 'proper' as it looks I don't see why Adobe can't release a good version of PS and illustrator.

Well apart from the fact that Adobe make the most bloated software on Earth.

What does he say about it?

Because of scientific reasons.

After watching the video on the Apple site, and having a think about it, I'm warming to the idea. If I could do some coding and uploading or basic graphic design on there, I'd be instantly sold. I don't doubt there will be such programs available at some point. It looks absolutely ace for just lounging about with, taking on mid-long journeys etc. and wouldn't replace my phone as my true mobile device. Interesting potential.

It's a lot cheaper than I was expecting, too.

Looks like an iPhone for people with fat hands.

It's a wankers dream.

At the risk of more bashing here....

I like reading the internet, but using a desktop is pretty horrible, and a laptop only marginally better. I've been using my iPhone a lot for just browisng, despite the tiny screen, because it's just much more natural.

If it's really 10 hrs with wifi, then to me, this replaces the kindle* as the book reader I want.

Obviously far to expensive to actually buy, but STILL.

* well till now the ecooler thingy looked the leader to me.

It is almost ideal to have around the home. Look up TV guide, booking tickets online, subscribe to the paper and read it in the evening. The sort of thing that is too faffy to do on a phone and too much hassle to fire up a laptop. (Or even a netbook, the ease of the tablet against the clamshell of a netbook case...)

That sort of thing isn't worth $499 though.

Or 20-30 quid a month.

Well, it is, if you're happy to pay 300+ quid for a netbook. Like the one I'm using right now which is a bit of a chore to do much more than basic web browsing on.

I think Plissken has it spot on there pretty much.

What you on with Dimmers? Why would you be spending £20-£30 a month to use your wifi at home?

Tissues

Seems like if they want people to watch videos on it, it would have made more sense to make the resolution 1280x720 instead of 1024x768

The basic iPad is $499 for 16Gb, 10" screen and 10hrs battery (when decoding video, so hopefully more for reading).
The Kindle DX with 4Gb, 10"s e-ink b/w screen and 7 entire days battery is $489.

So $10 in it.

The battery is the deal breaker that prevents it being a whitewash really, but I can't imagine many geeks getting a Kindle with that kind of comparison. (I've assumed open formats, txt files, pdfs etc, can be read on both),

Well, that and the fact that you can actually read eInk for more than ten minutes without eye cancer.

I'm not 100% up to speed with this - I've been given periodic updates from Riles who was watching the live updates at Gizmondo, and I've taken the piss out of the Apple-humping Craig Gannell a bit.

But - I've wanted a good tablet for ages - netbooks are too small and too underpowered to spend any real money on - I want a PC that lives inside a screen. The iPad is, unfortunatly, not that.

It's too simple. It's too limited. It should be a MacBook wrapped up in a tiny package, but it's not - it's not even close.

The video running on half the screen - what the fuck? No Flash? No real power in the RAM or processor? Screw that. No fucking background applications? Hello?

Raving fanboys are going to grab one, but even they are saying "Durr, techies - this isn't for you - it's for your non-techie friends!".
No it isn't. My non-techie friends a) don't want a tablet PC, and b) don't want a bad one.

Contrary to most appearances, I'm not anti-Apple. I have a MacBook, and a collection of iPods. I think the iPhone is finally getting there (no mention of the iPhone V4 functionality, I see). As such, I know that most stuff that Apple rolls out to the market is good. The iPad though - it just isn't.

I'm sticking with books, myself. No battery woes, easy to read, no expensive gadget required, satisfying looking bookshelf.

Reading something long on a screen just makes me want to weep. eInk might be fine to read, but in terms of price, no contest.

Bearing in mind that eBooks are free if you YARR them, that's not even close to being true.

Unless you go into Waterstones and walk out with a bunch of books hidden in your jacket.

Library = Free. Also: Legal.

Aye, I think that frequently.Seams fine to me.

He's about 20 years too late for his ideal customer;

You can't really read things like technical pdfs, newspapers, anything with colour illustrations in it though. I was asking for a device that could do all this not long ago, *and easily take notes on*, and this does seem to be it.

@Grim... Yes, it's not good when you look at the features and spec. But everyone said that about the original iPhone too. It didn't matter.

Final point, £300 is cheap enough for a lot of gadget fans with disposable income to take a punt on even if they don't think it will suit them especially. Like I said, it's the same price as a crappy plasticy netbook which isn't really much fun to use with a full-size-machine OS on.

Colour E-ink is more than possible. Keep watching the skis... er skies.

http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/27/delt ... y-q2-2010/

Sort of agreed. I think the data is the main issue. You're not going to get rid of your iPhone, because the iPad just isn't quite portable enough, and it isn't a phone. So you're stuck with having two 3G data contracts. That's pricey, in anyone's book.

Or you go down Lave's idea and have a MIFI with an Ipod Touch and a Ipad both using WIFI to connect ?

I'd be surprised if it came out at £300.

Which is fine, if you're near somewhere with wifi. If you're not, you're stuck. And you can't even put your iPhone SIM in it, because it's one of only 3 devices in the universe that uses the stupid MicroSIM.

Well.. I can't really see using something like that on the bus anyway, so I probably wouldn't be using it outside of wifi areas much.

If I did get one with 3G I'd probably just take the SIM out of the phone on the odd occasion I needed it. Or tethering nonsense...

[edit] Microsim, WTF?

It's almost as if they foresaw people doing that with their phone SIMs and deliberately changed the format to force a second contract. They love drinking Thetan milk.

Heh.

Also, can we stop having proprietary eBook stores, please! It's fucking hard enough getting books as it is without having publishers signing up to sell their books only via certain stores, OK?

Hmm - it's got Bluetooth. Allowing it to tether to the iPhone over Bluetooth would be an excellent solution, but I'm not convinced they'll do it.

Would I be able to tooth data to my cell in a coffee shop?

Still no Flash plugin which is a bit of a shitter on a purpose designed web browsing thing. Argue all you like about the relative merits of Flash but it's all over the place.

They are going to have to make it more than just a giant iTouch, even if the first release is just that.

No Flash?!?!?! GTFTF

Also, it will end up being $=£. It always does.

There are approximatly 1.25 Apple$ in the Apple£.

Which means the cheapest one will probably cost about £399 and the most expensive about £663.

I think you're probably right.

I'm guessing £399 for the cheapest, too.

£389

How much is the keyboard dock thing meant to be?

Tenner, final offer.