iPad iPad Enthusiasts - Why is the iPad a no-brainer for you?

[dragonbone]

Originally Posted by deltop

Not quite a no-brainer for me but pretty close. And for just one reason.

Comics on a decent sized screen!

Well big enough anyway. Just. I've done some experimenting on my tablet pc and at the size that the iPad screen will be comics are perfectly readable if "slightly" smaller than I'd like.

If it had another inch on it it would have been perfect but 9.7" is fine. Especially with the ips screen. I don't know how many of you have used an ips screen before but I have one and it's by far the best screen I've ever used for general computing purposes. I can read comics on my tablet pc but if you angle it just slightly it looks terrible. With ips however you can read at pretty much any angle, they're awesome.

Comics (manga) are huge here in Japan - in more ways than one - since they are huge in size and thickness too. I wonder if they will ever become electonic...

I'm hoping that magazines will be available in glossy beautiful color and for very reasonable subscription rates. All kinds of magazines, for eg. Time, National Geographic, House and Home etc. and of course, fashion magazines. Foreign magazine subscriptions are very expensive here and I always feel guilty about throwing them out.
I'm also hoping for gorgeous full color cooking books...

P.S. What is an ips screen?

[deltop]

Hers' wikipedias's explanation:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TFT_LCD...hing_.28IPS.29

But basically you get great colour reproduction and excellant viewing angles. Which is very handy for a mobile device since you won't have to worry about looking straight at like I do with my tablet pc.

[kjk]

Originally Posted by deltop

Hers' wikipedias's explanation:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TFT_LCD...hing_.28IPS.29

But basically you get great colour reproduction and excellant viewing angles. Which is very handy for a mobile device since you won't have to worry about looking straight at like I do with my tablet pc.

The new iMac IPS screens are just stunning-can't wait to see the iPad display.

[Harmon]

If you have to ask, you don't deserve one.

[dragonbone]

Originally Posted by Harmon

If you have to ask, you don't deserve one.

That's not nice - take it back .

[dragonbone]

There are enough of the negative iPad threads here on MobileRead. We need a balance .
Are there no other takers? I've revived this thread hoping that a few more people who will be buying the iPad, would share their thoughts.

[scottjl]

I won't say it's a "no brainer" but I'm certainly interested in buying one. I travel constantly and you can't just whip out and set up the laptop to look at some quick files, surf the web for some information or watch a movie or show. I've been doing a bit of that on my iPhone but it will be nice to have the larger screen. My decision now is to go with 3g or skip it (64G memory is a must). I keep waffling between the two.

If the iPad had a built in camera (for video phone abilities) and/or a SD card slot built in (the dongle is nice, but it's something else to carry, sigh) it would be a "no brainer" for me. Maybe in the next version.

What remains to be seen is if it will replace my Sony Reader Touch but I think it will. My carry-on bag is already crowded.

[ggendel]

Originally Posted by dragonbone

I also feel as though the iPad was designed for ME . I honestly don't understand the iPad haters....

I'm not an IPOD hater, but I'm unhappy about the way things are headed, and companies like Apple in particular.

[rant on]
I cut my teeth on personal computing way before IBM had their first PC. In those days there was a thriving hobby community where everyone was excited to help and share what they had cobbled together. You learned and had fun by doing. I created my own Forth and BASIC interpreters and C compilers so I could grok how they worked. I wrote a screen-based text editor in PL/I. I built my own prom burners, 110/300 baud modems, etc. Without these I wouldn't have the skills that make me so marketable.

Now take Apple as an example. Out came the Apple II and a community really thrived. User's would learn how to get in there and modify just about everything. You didn't want to wake up your parents with the startup "chime", you peeked and poked the loader to prevent it. Come forward to today... The iPhone has gone the other extreme. Hackers are constantly thwarted, if they get in, then they are blocked in the next release. Same with iTunes, blocking access by the Palm WebOS products.

The iPad is a computer, but you no longer own it. If Apple wants to disable it or prevent you from reading a book remotely they can. I fear for the hackers of today since they will be blocked out of playing with the devices they paid for. It's turning the next generation into a bunch of watchers and gotta-havers instead of doers. I fear for our home-grown engineering talent. You wouldn't have a Jobs or Gates if they were part of today's generation, and I blame it specifically on the greed of the Jobs and Gates of previous generations.

I have more respect for Gates after his marriage to Melinda. Her values have really turned him around and form the Foundation, but the damage has already been done to the current generation of technical entrepreneurs.

I base all this on my personal experience. The resumes that cross my desk have changed. There is no passion in most anymore. I used to find something that I could talk about when I give an interview besides direct work experience, but no longer. Where are the audiophiles, or HAM operators that actually build something? Where is the involvement with a community group, athletics, or their DJ business? Something that I can hear real excitement. My hiring interviews have become short and boring, all I can do is press them for their job related experience.
[rant off]

[dragonbone]

Originally Posted by ggendel

Hackers are constantly thwarted, if they get in, then they are blocked in the next release.
I fear for the hackers of today since they will be blocked out of playing with the devices they paid for.

Have you read The Millennium-trilogy consisting of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo etc.? I think you will probably like it.

[scottjl]

ggendel, blame the closed system on jobs. woz was always for open systems and sharing. jobs always was for closed systems and making a buck. look where they both are today. my first home system was a cobbled together z80 running cp/m. but i also had knowledge and training to make it useful to me. people these days don't, computers are just black boxes to surf the web on, play games, chat with friends. heck, look at our cars. i am lucky i can change the oil on my newest vehicles.

in any event, i've lost enough interest in writing my own code to care about coding on my ipad. i just want it to work for me and work well.

[sianon]

Originally Posted by dragonbone

Have you read The Millennium-trilogy consisting of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo etc.? I think you will probably like it.

A trulyu fascinating series of novels, I am so sad that Steig Larson died before any of his novels were published and that we do nopt have the opportunity to red anything further form this man.

[sianon]

Originally Posted by ggendel

I'm not an IPOD hater, but I'm unhappy about the way things are headed, and companies like Apple in particular.

[rant on]
I cut my teeth on personal computing way before IBM had their first PC. In those days there was a thriving hobby community where everyone was excited to help and share what they had cobbled together. You learned and had fun by doing. I created my own Forth and BASIC interpreters and C compilers so I could grok how they worked. I wrote a screen-based text editor in PL/I. I built my own prom burners, 110/300 baud modems, etc. Without these I wouldn't have the skills that make me so marketable.


I base all this on my personal experience. The resumes that cross my desk have changed. There is no passion in most anymore. I used to find something that I could talk about when I give an interview besides direct work experience, but no longer. Where are the audiophiles, or HAM operators that actually build something? Where is the involvement with a community group, athletics, or their DJ business? Something that I can hear real excitement. My hiring interviews have become short and boring, all I can do is press them for their job related experience.
[rant off]

MMMMM I suspect that the reason for the change in attitude for those you interview has more to do with societal changes than any thing else. Todays young people seem tolack any element of passion and drive to pursue a career thread. I have heard today's young described as "teacups" absolutely beautifull to behold, but ever so fragile. I see this very much in my own profession (which demands strong resilient workers who can cope under the most extreme pressure) and in society in general.

I too cut my teeth on early computing, I well remember "computer studies: where my intstructor would lead us through sessions where we tiresly pucnhed our prgrams out from punch cards, sent said cards away to the city and waited for them to return to tell us what errors we had made. My first hands on experience cam with the firt computer to arrive in our city in 1977.

My first home computer was an old Amstrad which we painstakingly typed in reams of code and then debugged until we got a working game or useful program.

Do I miss this endless problem solving, HELLL no, I Just want a computer that works...... For a mobile device, I simply want to press a button, have instant access and get on with what I want to do. I will leave the brain processign power to what really matters, day to day life. For me the Ipad seems to offer precisely what I have been waiting for, for many years.

[Trubu]

I'm looking forward to the iPad mainly as a remote administration tool. There are some really amazing Remote Desktop and VNC apps for the iPhone/iPod touch - the iTap apps in particular use some very clever methods to make RDP/VNC useable with such limited screen real estate - but it should be a much better experience on the iPad's larger display. I work from home part-time and it'll be great to have an instant-on device with a large screen that I can use to jump on servers or user's desktops without always having to be tethered to my desk or dragging a laptop around. This is especially attractive considering that I spend part of each day watching a toddler, and will soon be adding a newborn to the mix - I need something easily portable with no wires and a minimum of moving parts to deal with.

On a semi-random sidenote, I love the case that Apple came up with - it allows you to sit the iPad either vertically or reclined in both portrait and landscape modes, so you can adapt it to whatever you're doing at the moment. Really clever design.

I'm also looking forward to using the iPad as a PDF and comics viewer, and an audio/video player, and a recipe book in the kitchen, and a games machine, and a couch-surfing device, and a digital photo frame, and a portable iWork machine, and on and on. Despite the naysayers, I think it's going to be really flexible and capable device, especially once developers have had time to really tune their apps for it.

For reading books, though, I'll probably use the iPad much like I use the iPhone now - reading a few pages here or there and then picking it back up on the Kindle later when I have time to devote more than few minutes to reading. (Sync to Furthest Read Point FTW! God, I love that feature.) There's still something about the resolutely single-purpose devices like the Kindle, with their dull gray screens and lack of distractions, that appeals to me for reading.

[petermillard]

I wouldn't say it's a no-brainer for me, but I'll certainly be getting one at launch.

What I'd like it to do is replace my (paper) notebook for notes & sketches that I base my estimates on, and I'm not sure it'll do that without a bit of work. But I think it'll be plenty useful as a general device (movies, books, music, 'sofa surfing', calendar) to get one anyway, and I expect it to become my main reading device with a far better (for me) overall experience than my current readers; I always disliked the 'clunkiness' of e-ink devices, and have recently re-discovered how much I prefer backlit screens in many situations.

So yeah, I'm in at launch; evaluate it for the rest of the year, and probably upgrade to the 2nd gen. model when it's available.

And as a trivial side note, did you know that the iPad is just 2/3s the weight of the hard cover edition of the last Stig Larsson (Hornets nest)?

[slayda]

I find the IPAD interesting but want to wait a while to see competitors & actual users' reviews. To 3G or not to 3G is a question too. Add the cost of desired assories, memory, etc. & it gets really close to $1000 & it's still just an Apple.