It strikes you when you first touch an iPad. The form just feels good, not too lightweight or heavy, nor too thin or thick. It's sensual. It's tactile. And that moment is a good way to spot a first-timer, too, as I observed with a few test subjects. The dead giveaway for an iPad n00b is a pause, a few breaths before hitting the "on" switch, just letting it rest against the skin.Etc. I suppose you better read the whole thing before Xenni gets her heart broken and unpublished it
Flick the switch and the novelty hits. Just as the iPhone, Palm Pré and Android phones scratched an itch we didn't know we had—somewhere between cellphone and notebook—the iPad hits a completely new pleasure spot. The display is large enough to make the experience of apps and games on smaller screens stale. Typography is crisp, images gem-like, and the speed brisk thanks to Apple's A4 chip and solid state storage. As I browse early release iPad apps, web pages, and flip through the iBook store and books, the thought hits that this is a greater leap into a new user experience than the sum of its parts suggests.
Remember The Periodic Table of Elements series of books we featured here at Boing Boing? There's an iPad version ($13.99 in the app store, screenshots here), and it's dazzling — it makes science feel like magic in your hands. I called the guy behind The Elements, Theo Gray, and asked him to put into words the UI magic that iPad makes possible for creators of books, games, news, and productivity tools.
Is multitasking really that necessary?If it's not nessisary, why is apple building it into the next version of the OS? Kind of hilarious how apple zealots have been going on and on about how unimportant it is, bla bla bla until it actually comes out. At which point they'll all immediately switch to saying how much more awesome multitasking on the iPad/iPhone then any other system.
I think exactly the opposite for one simple reason: It's too big.I don't think it will replace the phone, but people might start carrying tablets instead of laptops. Basically, it's just a keyboardless netbook, except that it's locked down like a video game machine. But check out Netvertables. Netbooks with touch screens that have keyboards that fold under like a more expensive tablet PC. Basically cheap tablets. Those should be pretty awesome. All the functionality of an iPad, but cheaper and with a physical keyboard whenever you want it, real access to the machine to install whatever OSes you want, etc. Many of them will have multitouch screens.
Imagine being forced to carry a legal pad around all your waking hours. While you are trying to pay for your coffee.
I don't want to spend endless amounts of time endlessly tweaking settings for [foo] or looking for the latest drivers for [bar]That's not what we want to do either. We want the ability to create. Not just consume. We want camera adapters so we can take pictures, tweak them, and publish them. Can you imagine editing a web page without multitasking? No way to quickly switch between an HTML editor, browser, and graphics program? For people who are actually doing things, multitasking is important because people doing things are going need more then one tool at a time.
And, diehard multitasking antifanboyism MeFi critics: Why are you here?Why are you here? Don't post an Apple thread and then complain about how everyone else isn't agreeing with you. People on metafilter are always complaining about things. Your favorite consumer product maker sucks, etc.
See, this is where maybe it helps to read what I say. I wrote, pretty specifically: "I can't help but feel it's not terrible to ask that maybe the Apple haters voice their criticism politely and intelligently"You also said:
"tl;dr don't be a shitcock"posted by delmoi at 8:50 AM on April 1, 2010 [6 favorites]
We want the ability to create. Not just consume.
delmoi, malor, it gets tiring hearing you guys pop into these threads repeating the exact same arguments.You know what else is tiring? Hearing people gush about this over hyped toy.
Was there more to this or did you just trail off? Because you're arguing functionality, not aesthetic.Incorrect.
Aesthetics (also spelled æsthetics or esthetics) is a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of beauty, art, and taste, and with the creation and appreciation of beauty.[1] It is more scientifically defined as the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste.[2] More broadly, scholars in the field define aesthetics as "critical reflection on art, culture and nature."[3][4] Aesthetics is a subdiscipline of axiology, a branch of philosophy, and is closely associated with the philosophy of art.[5] Aesthetics studies new ways of seeing and of perceiving the world.[6]posted by delmoi at 9:40 AM on April 1, 2010 [1 favorite]
...
Aesthetic judgments can often be very fine-grained and internally contradictory. Likewise aesthetic judgments seem often to be at least partly intellectual and interpretative. It is what a thing means or symbolizes for us that is often what we are judging .... Thus aesthetic judgments might be seen to be based on the senses, emotions, intellectual opinions, will, desires, culture, preferences, values, subconscious behavior, conscious decision, training, instinct, sociological institutions, or some complex combination of these, depending on exactly which theory one employs.
What really bothers them, I think, is that they're not allowed to play destructively with beautiful things - i.e. they're not engaging with the object as-is, and perhaps feel alienated from others' experience, or resent it, or need to play nerd style games.I know, I know. But I'm sure a second reading will help you get what you haven't gotten yet.
I feel like I'm reading some kind of parody of Apple fanboyism.
Steve Jobs is betting that, in the future, most people won't want to know anything about what's "going on" on their computers...koeselitz, I think you're missing a key point here - this is already the case. Jobs isn't playing a long game, he's just unusually attentive to the needs of human beings who aren't just like him. Most people already don't know how to navigate their PCs' filesystems. Do mechanical pencils suck because you can't sharpen them with knives? No. (They suck, just not for that reason.) What people want from a pencil is to write. What people want from their PCs is to browse pictures, surf the web, read email, play games, write book reports, etc.
The App Store is probably one of the most successful software development and distribution operations in history, one which everyone is currently trying to emulate. It has a kajillion apps on there and the software makers, while having to jump through hoops to get on the market, actually get to sell their wares for money rather than having to beg for donations. They seem quite happy to do so.Android has a store too and they don't block nearly as many apps. And you can develop apps for free and distribute them yourself if you want.
"Okay, our current CMS for our intranet is really focused around FireFox and Internet Explorer, and we issued you a Windows machine," they'll still try to use their Mac and Safari to use it. Some upgrade to Safari? Suddenly, an infinite loop appears and they can never log in.Okay, that's just bad design. Do you have a lot of custom Javascript or something?
I think exactly the opposite for one simple reason: It's too big.It's going to vary by person. I'm fairly used to carrying a purse around with me all my waking hours. While I do often pare down to a wallet on a string, I more often tuck it into a bigger purse that's large enough to carry my netbook. Anything that can hold my netbook could hold an iPad and some foam padding. That compound purse goes with me to coffee shops, out on the street, in the car, etc. I can't see myself using an iPad while walking down the street unless it was just playing music, in which case it would be put away with just the earbuds trailing out.
Imagine being forced to carry a legal pad around all your waking hours. While you are trying to pay for your coffee. While you are trying to open the door. Walking down the street you have to hold it and use it in the air at the same time. You have to put it somewhere when you get in the car and the passenger seat is taken. You can't use a pocket, because it's too big.
Now imagine that legal pad is fragile and cost hundreds if not thousands of dollars.
3.3.2 An Application may not itself install or launch other executable code by any means, including without limitation through the use of a plug-in architecture, calling other frameworks, other APIs or otherwise. No interpreted code may be downloaded or used in an Application except for code that is interpreted and run by Apple's Documented APIs and built-in interpreter(s).This makes it fairly clear that only Apple could provide Hypercard (or a language like it) for the iPhone. Apple seems to adopt a hostile posture with regard to scripting languages on its phone---you can't run Python without jailbreaking, for example. I suppose the risk is that you might develop a cool application that you could distribute or sell outside of the App Store. I wouldn't expect to see Hypercard anytime soon, then.
Because it's not a computer in the way that a netbook is a computer?But do you understand that the people making this claim are not all trying to sell you iPads, Stephen Fry among them? And that this is not a sales pitch but a description of a tool that isn't your PC or laptop or netbook, and so need not duplicate their features or modes of operation? The iPhone isn't a laptop, nor is a Blackberry a netbook. It's possible that the iPad really is a new kind of device. The only question is:
Sigh, yes, I understand the sales pitch.
What possible argument would you have against an open environment?Thanks to the "closed" App Store, the iPhone enjoys the largest and most compelling third-party software library of any mobile device. Developers clamour to get into it, and RIM, Microsoft, Palm, and Google rush to duplicate it.
i_have_a_computer: as I've pointed out more than twice in this thread no one is preventing you from having your Apple store if you want it.Why is it so hard to understand? Are you serious?
By saying I want to be able to run any software I like on a computer that I do actually own, how am I preventing you from shopping at the Apple store?
Why is this so hard to understand?? Go ahead, shop at Apple if you like - just let me run what I like on my own machine. I'm not saying Apple has to sell anyone's software, or even let you know it exists - simply not to prevent me from running my own software on my own machine.
In particular, the iPad offers no conventional system of files and folders for storing work. On the whole, this works fine. Word processing, spreadsheet and presentation documents can be easily imported to and exported from the iPad's iWork productivity apps (each of the iWork apps is $10). Other types of documents can be viewed, edited, exported, and emailed if the appropriate application in installed.I said this other thread, but I'll say it again: Hierarchical filesystems are a total kludge. Files should be stored in a database and queried out using tags, attributes and other features. (In other words, rather then a tree, you would have a bipartite graph with queryable attributes on one side and files on the other -- You could make it more complicated by adding relationships between files, namespaces for attributes, etc but that would probably be way to complicated for the user). As other people mentioned, Gmail works like this, and it's great. Sooo much better then storing email in a ton of folders.
WE GET IT, DELMOI. YOU HATE APPLE.Maybe you should work on understanding why that bothers you.
jesus FUCKING christ
I'm not getting your point, those technologies never took off, while the iPod and iPhone/iTouch did.What? Sony sold tons of that crap. They did sell a lot of betamax players before VHS won. Minidisc was huge for professional audio recording for years and years, and all their hardware still uses memory sticks instead of SD cards.
I know, but it gets tougher when you think about a lot of the demands placed on an OS, primarily security. I really like gmail's intuitive and frankly brilliant use of a non-hierarchical organizational model, but when you're talking about a filesystem that has to offer protection to various parts of its structure in greater and lesser degreesThe file/folder security model is already broken, because really you don't necessarily want any app to be able to read/delete all of your files. Anyway, you should just be able to apply an ACL to a tag the way you do a folder today. (In case of conflicts, just go with the tighter restrictions).
Does the iPad standalone Youtube thing just leave these as gaping holes in the page, or does it at least turn them into links to open the Youtube app if it can't actually play them in the browser?Yes, of course you can watch embedded YouTube videos on the iPhone and iPad; it's been that way since 2007. Do you really think they'd go to the trouble of developing a separate YouTube application and *not* cover the embedded video use case?
The iPad and iPhone are closed compared to personal computers, yes. But they are remarkably open compared to so many kinds of computing devices. Here’s an email I received today from Sam Kaplan:posted by rtha at 11:03 AM on April 2, 2010 [1 favorite]
I am 13 years old and a big fan of your site. I just made an app called iChalkboard. This is my second app, but my first iPad app. It allows you to simply sketch things out. Check it out: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ichalkboard/id322491414?mt=8. If you need any more info or a promo code, feel free to ask.
I hope you like it as much as I do.
He’s 13 years old and he has created and is selling an iPad app in the same store where companies like EA, Google, and even Apple itself distribute iPad apps. His app is ready to go on the first day the product is available. Not a fake app. Not a junior app. A real honest-to-god iPad app. Imagine a 13-year-old in 1978 who could produce and sell his own Atari 2600 cartridges.
Somehow I don’t think young Mr. Kaplan sees the iPad as hurting his sense of wonder or entrepreneurism.
But 13 year-olds could write their own programs on an Apple II in 1978.
He’s 13 years old and he has created and is selling an iPad app in the same store where companies like EA, Google, and even Apple itself distribute iPad apps. His app is ready to go on the first day the product is available. Not a fake app. Not a junior app. A real honest-to-god iPad app. Imagine a 13-year-old in 1978 who could produce and sell his own Atari 2600 cartridges.As other people pointed out, that wouldn't have happened if he'd ONLY had an iPad.
Somehow I don’t think young Mr. Kaplan sees the iPad as hurting his sense of wonder or entrepreneurism.
Are you imagining Apple getting out of the personal computer market entirely and only selling $10k dev units to would-be iPad developers? Somehow I'm not picturing this since Macs are a profit centerSure, but for most 13 year olds, there's no much difference between $10k and $1k.
There ought to be a law that ... what? Compels computer manufacturers to make their devices compatible with programs for sale anywhere?I don't think this is a crisis that needs legal intervention. It's just annoying. But I'd be fine with a law that says that. Why not? No different then the law that says car manufacturers have to make their engine computers readable using a standard connector, or the law that says all cell phones in China and the EU need to be chargeable with USB. Laws coming down the pipeline to mandate all medical records use a standard format, etc. Laws that mandate openness are entirely practical and happen all the time.
Threat Level had no idea the iPhone was so dangerous. We’re gratified that Apple locked down this potential weapon of mass disruption before hackers could unleash cybarmageddon. This also explains why Apple rejected the official Google Voice App for the iPhone this week. We thought it was because Google Voice posed a threat to AT&T’s exclusivity deal with Apple. Now we know it threatened national security.So the inference is there. Note that "terrorism/ist" is used in the blog comments. Lots of people were inferring that from the language used in Apple's submission.
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posted by Malor at 7:46 AM on April 1, 2010 [36 favorites]