I'm sure this has been covered many times in this thread, but here it goes...
It's not that I'm against istuff*, I'm against all touch screens.
Cell phones are dirty enough. Who knows what kind of crap will manifest on these large portable, touchable screens of "required" convenience?
Whether it be an iphone, ipad, ipod, BB Storm2 or any other touch screen device. I'd rather have a keyboard for that manual control, the screens are too flimsy and I'd never let anyone touch it without me carrying around sanitary hand-wipes, LCD screen cleaner and a massive tub of hand sanitizer. lol
It's obvious that I have issues, yes I know that.
Anyone else know what I mean?
Or am I too "old School" to adapt to touch screen technology, I can never type properly or fast enough on those bloody things.
Will the eYe-PaD need to sync with another computer before use? That would really limit any stand alone product claims.
Personally I don't feel this product would be a good stand alone device. I'm not sure apple has made that claim, but if they have I'd have to adamantly disagree. I of course don't own one, but from what I've read it makes a brilliant companion piece, not a standalone.
Sure you could have it as your only unit, but you'll run into several problems. Setup can be done in-store, but if you don't have an apple store on your town you'd need a computer with iTunes. Secondly you can't update the firmware without a computer, nor can you backup your data or purchases without syncing to iTunes. Using it as a standalone can definitely be done, but I sure as hell wouldn't advise it.
I'm buying one for my parents to use as a primary computer, but I'm making sure they keep their desktop upstairs for backup purposes. I'm personally sick and tired of troubleshooting their pc for them. From what I've seen of them playing with my phone the ipad should be MUCH more their speed. I was almost dumbfounded when I saw my dad try it for the first time. This is a man who struggles to create folders, copy and paste. He was flying through apps, found a sudoku game, downloaded it and played through it without a single question (besides what my password was to download it). If you knew my dad your jaw would have dropped by now.
I'm sure this has been covered many times in this thread, but here it goes...
It's not that I'm against istuff*, I'm against all touch screens.
Cell phones are dirty enough. Who knows what kind of crap will manifest on these large portable, touchable screens of "required" convenience?
Whether it be an iphone, ipad, ipod, BB Storm2 or any other touch screen device. I'd rather have a keyboard for that manual control, the screens are too flimsy and I'd never let anyone touch it without me carrying around sanitary hand-wipes, LCD screen cleaner and a massive tub of hand sanitizer. lol
It's obvious that I have issues, yes I know that.
Anyone else know what I mean?
Or am I too "old School" to adapt to touch screen technology, I can never type properly or fast enough on those bloody things.
A keyboard is a lot dirtier than a touch screen. At least with a smooth flat surface, you can actually use your sanitary hand wipes. Just imagine what's festering in between all those keys that you can't even get to!
Unless of course you're one of the people that takes apart their keyboard every morning to clean it.
Anyone arguing that a netbook would be a better solution than an iPad for most users has never owned a netbook.
Have you used an iPad? Obviously you have, care to write your own review on it for those of use who dont own one currently.
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In regards to the terrible suckitude that is a netbook...
I honestly cannot believe that people enjoy working on these things. The screen size frustrates me to no end, and they are buggy and slow.
They may be somewhat productive for someone looking for an ultra-portable that just needs to take notes in class or something, but if you are looking for something to consume content on, netbooks suck.
The only thing I'm not entirely on-board with is the notion that 30 cents on the dollar is too much to pay for the ecosystem you have access to.
I say that, of course, with zero first-hand knowledge of what it takes to get software to market via conventional means. I'm just looking at the fact that, with the mere push of a button, an app developer can have his product literally published and marketed to a potential market of tens of millions of users.
How much would it cost a guy like me to get an application I've developed published with that kind of exposure? Would I realistically expect to get back 70% of every dollar spent on my app if it was sitting on a shelf at Best Buy and I had to go through some kind of software publishing company?
(I'm meaning this to be a real discussion, btw. This is not "fanboyism" or whatever. They are serious questions that I have often wondered about.)
I would say that if your entire overhead for software distribution is 30%, that’s pretty insanely good. That covers the entire spectrum, from physical device support, to hosting, to bandwidth, to doing credit card transactions, billing, etc. Those are costs and efforts that a small development shop doesn’t want to focus on because they aren’t your core competency or business.
Handling credit cards alone is a huge hassle - there’s all kinds of requirements and legal liabilities there that you don’t really want to have to be a part of if you can avoid it.
In regards to the terrible suckitude that is a netbook...
I honestly cannot believe that people enjoy working on these things. The screen size frustrates me to no end, and they are buggy and slow.
They may be somewhat productive for someone looking for an ultra-portable that just needs to take notes in class or something, but if you are looking for something to consume content on, netbooks suck.
How are netbooks 'buggy'? O/S problem? You can put any O/S and any patches on it you want so that hopefully is not what you're talking about. Hardware problem? Netbooks come from many companies in many different models and configurations; if this is what you're talking about, it's silly cause you can't make a simple blanket statement like that.
From what I've been able to tell it breaks down like this:
If you want an ultra portable computer so you can do business/take notes/etc - netbooks are a pretty good option.
If you want something shiny that will let you watch movies on - the iPad's a better bet.
Also, while I've never tried it, it seems to me that watching a movie on a netbook would be pretty similar to watching it on one of those portable dvd players - the screen size is about the same. Not an ideal experience but while traveling, that's obviously what some people are looking for.
In regards to the terrible suckitude that is a netbook...
I honestly cannot believe that people enjoy working on these things. The screen size frustrates me to no end, and they are buggy and slow.
They may be somewhat productive for someone looking for an ultra-portable that just needs to take notes in class or something, but if you are looking for something to consume content on, netbooks suck.
I love my Acer Aspire. The Atom in it is plenty fast for me in XP, much faster than an older Celeron laptop I have.
The screen size on an average netbook is the same size as that of the Ipad. I guess you didn't know that. I agree with most complaints about difficulties typing on netbooks though, but I have small fingers so it is agreeable to me.
As far as consuming content on the netbook, true it's not as easy to browse a photo album and the track pad is annoyingly hard to use (as all trackpads on all laptops are), but actually viewing content is a breeze because I can put music and movies of any format on there and get it to work without any conversion needed. I also already have a huge and limitless library of games from the past 3 decades I can play on it.
There isn't a day I didn't wish I could just touch the screen myself and click on links though, like the iPad. Then again, I also have an Asus EEEPc and you can buy DIY touchscreen kits on DealExtreme for $50. The problem is I have to admit the Windows Tablet Edition software is absolutely atrocious. It's a horrible, horrible thing.
The lowest-priced iPad, which includes 16 GB of memory, constitute 52% of its $499 retail price, on par with other Apple products including the iPhone 3GS. A midpriced 32 GB version of the iPad that sells for $599 contains $289.10 worth of materials. A high-end 64 GB version, which retails for $699, contains components that cost $348.10, according to iSuppli.
People keep pointing to this (other sites) as if there is some crazy high markup to go from $259 to $500 dollars. That seems like it is a pretty fair mark up when you consider the R&D costs associated with this type of product.
To address earlier comments on my criticism of netbooks...
I just find that browsing the internet, something that is probably 90% of what I would do on an ultra-portable, is infuriating.
Its not really fair to say that a netbook typically has the same screen size as an iPad, therefore the problems I have with a netbooks screen size will be apparent on an iPad.
If you have seen any of the demo's the iPad kills at browsing, and the pinch to zoom feature looks like the perfect cure for what annoys me in a netbooks small screen.
I would say that if your entire overhead for software distribution is 30%, that’s pretty insanely good. That covers the entire spectrum, from physical device support, to hosting, to bandwidth, to doing credit card transactions, billing, etc. Those are costs and efforts that a small development shop doesn’t want to focus on because they aren’t your core competency or business.
Handling credit cards alone is a huge hassle - there’s all kinds of requirements and legal liabilities there that you don’t really want to have to be a part of if you can avoid it.
Yeah that's kind of what I was thinking. 30% is a small fee to cough up for everything the App Store (and iTunes) provides. Especially on the billing and transaction side of things.
In regards to the terrible suckitude that is a netbook...
this is so true. I use a netbook for taking notes in class but when I get home I don't really use it so much.
It is an underpowered computer with equivalent computing power (if not less) that I had 5 years ago, but now it is forced to run Vista (ugh), 2010 office, and all our other modern applications. I uninstalled the antivirus because it was such a resource hog. What it does have going for it is its small size.
Battery life is about 3 hours, which drives me crazy. You make a small, underpowered computer for portability...and then you put a smaller battery in it too so that you get the same duration out of it. The damn thing is only 3 cells, put in a laptop battery and it would run all day. Netbook makers need to think more about how they can make the experience better for the consumer. Think about how we use netbooks. They're a good idea, but the implementation is really off right now.
And sure, I could buy a 6 cell battery and get 6 hours of battery life. But it would cost half the price of the damn netbook. Doesn't make a lot of sense.
My netbook doesn't even have the horsepower to play streaming divx videos. It can barely handle youtube, and if I download an avi and watch a movie, I have to be careful that nothing else runs in the background or it all comes to a crashing halt.
They're good for taking notes on the go with Microsoft OneNote. That's it. I'm glad I didn't wait for the iPad because I've gotten a lot of use out of my netbook this semester. Also it only cost $300 on boxing day.
If I were to make the decision right now though? I'd buy an iPad and a bluetooth keyboard.
Unless there's something I'm not aware of, you're not FORCED to run any particular OS on it. You could probably get XP on there without too much hassle. Put linux on it if that's what floats your boat.
Sounds like you didn't do enough research into what you wanted/needed and bought something that you regret but now blame all netbooks for it.
Unless there's something I'm not aware of, you're not FORCED to run any particular OS on it. You could probably get XP on there without too much hassle. Put linux on it if that's what floats your boat.
Sounds like you didn't do enough research into what you wanted/needed and bought something that you regret but now blame all netbooks for it.
Even though 7 is newer than Vista it uses less resources. Might be worth an upgrade if installing XP/Linux is too much for you to handle.
this is so true. I use a netbook for taking notes in class but when I get home I don't really use it so much.
It is an underpowered computer with equivalent computing power (if not less) that I had 5 years ago, but now it is forced to run Vista (ugh), 2010 office, and all our other modern applications. I uninstalled the antivirus because it was such a resource hog. What it does have going for it is its small size.
Battery life is about 3 hours, which drives me crazy. You make a small, underpowered computer for portability...and then you put a smaller battery in it too so that you get the same duration out of it. The damn thing is only 3 cells, put in a laptop battery and it would run all day. Netbook makers need to think more about how they can make the experience better for the consumer. Think about how we use netbooks. They're a good idea, but the implementation is really off right now.
And sure, I could buy a 6 cell battery and get 6 hours of battery life. But it would cost half the price of the damn netbook. Doesn't make a lot of sense.
My netbook doesn't even have the horsepower to play streaming divx videos. It can barely handle youtube, and if I download an avi and watch a movie, I have to be careful that nothing else runs in the background or it all comes to a crashing halt.
They're good for taking notes on the go with Microsoft OneNote. That's it. I'm glad I didn't wait for the iPad because I've gotten a lot of use out of my netbook this semester. Also it only cost $300 on boxing day.
If I were to make the decision right now though? I'd buy an iPad and a bluetooth keyboard.
My Acer Aspire One came with a 6-cell batter (7hrs battery life), booted into Windows 7 in about 15 seconds, ran Aero without a hitch, and played up to 540p mkv files smoothly.
You just had a crappy netbook. Plenty of them are great.
