iPad usefulness?
in [UK Mac]
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From: Woody on 1 Apr 2010 06:06 Chris Ridd <chrisridd(a)mac.com> wrote: > On 2010-04-01 09:44:35 +0100, Peter Ceresole said: > > > Jim <jim(a)magrathea.plus.com> wrote: > > > >> Note: if anyone thinks that the iPad isn't going to be a tethered device in > >> the same way as the iPod is, or at least a device that works best when > >> tethered then, well, you're going to be disappointed. > > > > Yes. I've been coming to that conclusion, certainly for v.1. > > > > Pity, as it means my sister in law wll have to get something else. > > > > I can feel a netbook coming on. > > I think you should try and live with a netbook (borrow one from a > friend?) for a while before suggesting she gets one. > > None of the people I know with netbooks, apart from Woody, use them. Agreed (other than I know other people who do, but they are all a bit like me!). I really like mine and use it a lot. If you want something cheap that you can carry around and don't care if you break, you are prepared to fix the problems you find yourself, can put up with a less optimal keyboard for portabiltiy, you can run whatever hacks are necessary to get things to fit in a smaller screen etc, then I couldn't recommend them highly enough. I wouldn't recommend one to anyone else in my family. -- Woody
From: R on 1 Apr 2010 06:12 Jochem Huhmann <joh(a)gmx.net> wrote: > You're partly right and partly totally wrong. For many people computers > are nothing less than liberating. They fear and hate them and do *less* > with them than what they could do with a more streamlined and simpler > device (and software). Ok. Let's consider getting photographs out of a camera /yourself/. This is how it used to be done. You would have someone build you a darkroom, or you'd mess around with black tape. Then, once you had snapped your images, you'd spend a lot of time fumbling about in the dark with strange chemicals etc. and all the while hoping not to accidentally expose your negatives or suffer some other calamity. If it went wrong, in the worst case, you'd lose all your photographs. It was costly, too. How it is now. You can connect the camera to your computer, click a few buttons and *bam* you can see your images on screen. Oh, and they're ready to print at another click or two of the button. Yes, I do know there can be complications here, too, but it is usually straightforward enough. Which of the two methods is simpler and more streamlined? That is partly what I mean by computers being liberating. (And before someone mentions it - yes, then, as now, you can pay someone else to develop and print your photographs if you don't mind the loss of control and immediacy). Let me add a little bit more. The computer has allowed ordinary people (i.e., not specialists in a particular field) to spend relatively little money and do what formerly was only within the reach of the hands of professionals. Anyone who has a half decent computer can produce work that will rival almost anything produced by the professionals, if (the important bit) they have the talent to do so. That wasn't always the case, but now it is. Extremely high quality still and moving images, and high quality sound on a par with that produced by the most expensive studios is within reach of the gifted but not particularly wealthy amateur. You no longer need to hire studio time or equipment at great expensive to compete at anything but the highest level. That to me is liberating - making available to the masses what was once the privilege of the few. This is all possible because the computer is the ultimate you can think it you can do it tool. And the iPad is not, by the look of it, such a tool. You will be limited by the device and by Apple, and not so much by your imagination. There are some things I like about the iPad (as we know it now), but I don't want a future dominated by such dumbed down devices. What is missing here - what I had hoped for - is a new innovative class of open ended devices or machines. New ways of interacting, new designs and form factors, and new liberating ways of creating stuff. Whatever these things are, they need to be as simple as they need to be (simplicity achieved through architectural elegance) but not specifically made simple for simpletons (simplicity achieved by crudely chopping off, metaphorically speaking, arms and legs). I hope your eyes aren't as tired as my fingers are now :)
From: R on 1 Apr 2010 06:17 Jaimie Vandenbergh <jaimie(a)sometimes.sessile.org> wrote: > Media (music, videos, books, podcasts etc) - yes. Yes - if you don't mind the poor quality. Poor quality sound, low resolution video and books, etc etc. I would like to think, as Apple customers, we care about quality as much as convenience.
From: R on 1 Apr 2010 06:26 Jim <jim(a)magrathea.plus.com> wrote: > Andy's of the same opinion as me: Apple doesn't want the stability of the > device compromised by large numbers of badly written device drivers. Which will entail using some other device in conjunction with the iPad, and that other device will be compromised by large numbers of badly written device drivers?
From: Jim on 1 Apr 2010 06:32
On 2010-04-01, R <me32(a)privacy.net> wrote: > >> Andy's of the same opinion as me: Apple doesn't want the stability of the >> device compromised by large numbers of badly written device drivers. > > Which will entail using some other device in conjunction with the > iPad, and that other device will be compromised by large numbers > of badly written device drivers? What makes you think that printing from the iPad is any kind of priority for Apple? Jim -- Twitter:@GreyAreaUK "[The MP4-12C] will be fitted with all manner of pointlessly shiny buttons that light up and a switch that says 'sport mode' that isn't connected to anything." The Daily Mash. |