[LDBoblo]

Originally Posted by kilron

again, sounds like a very specialized sort of thing. everyone i know has ipods that carry their music or its on their computer at home. i'm always trying to reference things from a mass consumer point of view.

I doubt flash drives are as "specialized" as you want to think.

but this is supposed to be a portable device. who wants to carry around external storage with them? the point is to either be able to stream content or pre-load it on from your main machine. doesn't that render external storage moot? i know lots of folks that use external storage, but for "typical consumer" use, its usually only done for backup, or unless their onbyoard hard drive is old and too small (like under 150 gigs for example).

It's not that portable. There are many, many people who would much rather carry a small external hard drive rather than a laptop or desktop. The reason it's not implemented is because it would reduce profits on Apple's end. It has nothing to do with "nobody needs that". I don't use external hard drives personally, but that's because I'm not much of a movies/music person. If I were, I'd most definitely demand the ability to load from external storage without having to go through another computer, which is exactly what some people are demanding.

its got a built in mic, but you can also use bluetooth for that too. i'm sure they'll have something you can hookup through the doc connector as well. as for a keyboard, you've already got bluetooth keyboard support, so i'm not sure why usb keyboard support is all that necessary.

I had a feeling this would be the response. My laptop has an internal microphone, and I still use an external, better microphone. What if I want to use keyboards at other places, all of which are without bluetooth and without battery? People didn't complain about usb as much with the iPhone as it's not much of a document or media handler, and has little potential for productivity due to its small screen. It's a much bigger deal with the iPad. Luckily for Apple, there are enough apologists out there to help the public dismiss their own interests and needs with phrases like "but who needs that?" If only product marketing were so easy for other companies!

i remember that apple stated with the 3.0 software update, that came out last summer, that they were opening up the dock connection port for complete peripheral access, so i'm sure we'll start to see some people utilize this. so it may only be a matter of time before we see some apple-dock to USB cables for a few bucks from various third party companies, etc..

The camera connection kit for the iPad will be pretty cheap (for an Apple product) and basically gives a USB Host port and an SD card slot that plug in to the dock port. That assuages my concerns on that end a bit, though some people are still going to just see it as a greedy move by Apple. Can't say I disagree with that view. If it allows me to use swappable media (flash drives and SD cards) without going through lots of hoops, I'll be fairly satisfied there. Of course, there's probably a catch to USB or SD functionality on the iPad even with the adapter...I'll just need to wait and see how it works.