I agree @ Jon`C. There is 100% no way you can say onscreen is better than a hardware keyboard. Can you manage? Sure, obviously. But it's never going to be a better experience.

Hell, I think the most annoying part is how the keyboard expands to take up half the freakin' screen when you type!



That's not Apple's view. Apple thinks they've created a new third market between laptops and smartphones, and intends for everyone to buy it in addition to said things.

Also, did you have a point about scrolling? Do I have to mention that you have to scroll on the iPad as well (it's only 1024x768), and that the #1 use case of my phone's browser is a place where I would never take my iPad: when I'm out and about. As mentioned before, I do not have a 10" diagonal pocket to put an iPad.

Do you not consider graphic tablets to be suitable for creating art?

Have you ever used one?

A. Most allow you to place paper on top for feel.
B. The most useful ones include a screen so you can see what you're doing. The disconnectedness is very hard.
C. It's still NOTHING like drawing on paper.

Edit:
D. The reason they're so popular is they directly digitize your art. Keyboards do not have any such distinction; you're entering letters no matter what. Your analogy is like a typewriter compared to a graphic tablet.

I guess the ipad might be good for fingerpainting.

I hope the part about having too much money on their hands was supposed to be a joke...

The core central truth of the whole issue is this:

The iPad has a form factor with a domain of utility almost entirely restricted to students - highly portable, thin, lightweight, long battery life, wifi - which has been hamstrung by Apple's machiavellian policy on content creation and Steve Job's overrated sense of aesthetics.

No keyboard, no stylus, no filesystem. Too bulky for anybody who doesn't carry around a backpack. Second-rate web browsing experience which only usable within 5 feet of a WAP due to incompetent antenna design. Useless piece of ****.

yeah okay, this device with no stylus and no photoshop and no way to save or print images is totally like a graphic tablet

Edit: When you use a graphic tablet YOUR HANDS DO NOT COVER UP THE SCREEN! Even if you touch-type, you're feeling for the surface of the key. Why? Because your hand's in the way. You'd have to be a distressingly poor typist for anything like the iPod Touch/iPhone/iPad to even feel natural

I'm not here to defend Apple's view. I'm here to express what I think about the iPad. Apple is wrong about a great number of things & I think that only the biggest fanboys would disagree w/ that.


Just because you wouldn't take it somewhere doesn't mean others wouldn't. I plan to take mine anywhere that someone w/ a smartphone or a netbook would take their device (e.g. I already carry around a pack just about everywhere I go). However, I would never make the argument that an iPad is more portable than a smartphone but it's just as portable as a netbook or better. I suppose that my point about scrolling was that smartphones have to potentially do much more of it & I would hope to have a device that minimizes or eliminates scrolling.

Yeah, I especially liked how that post earlier mentioned the Brushes app. Uhm, yeah, you COULD create very impressive art with it, but people create impressive art using Paint in Windows using a mouse as well. Doesn't mean you should. In fact, I imagine said artist could have done his art about 5x faster, looked better, and less aggravating had he used a proper system like, oh I don't know, PS + graphic tablet.

Oh, dear spirits, I can't keep up, haha!


No. I've often wanted one but the decent ones are out of my price range.



I wasn't making the argument that it's as good or better than drawing on paper.


I wasn't really making an analogy. I was simply giving an example of a device that features haptic feedback but is still suitable (some would say better) for creative purposes.


I'm not stating that the iPad is like a graphic tablet. I'm stating that just because something utilizes haptic feedback doesn't necessarily mean that it can't be used for creative purposes. I don't disagree that it may not be ideal but I reject the idea that it's unsuitable.


I don't follow you.

I don't necessarily disagree w/ much of what you guys are saying but I think you're mostly speaking in absolutes & I don't think it's fair. I still think you guys are stuck on "what I can't see as being useful to me can't possibly be useful to someone else". I feel like I'm stuck defending the iPad when I don't want to be because I agree that the device wouldn't be ideal for most of you.

Misread what you were saying a bit there. Initially thought you were saying that someone who has a smartphone and laptop has too much money, not someone who has those and is also considering an iPad. Move along.

A desktop, graphic tablet & Photoshop are nice when you're at home. However, when you're not, it's obviously possible to do a nice job on an iPad (e.g. Brushes). However, I'm not really an artist so maybe I'm not the person to respond to this.

By the time he managed to draw that out on his iPad/Phone, he could have driven home, picked up a laptop/tablet, driven back, drawn it, and been back home. >.>

This just in, iPhone OS 4.0 SDK will support regular expression matching... Wait, it didn't before? Wow.

Oh yeah, and something about multitasking...

BTW Regarding the (fake) Multitasking because I know *SOMEONE* will come in here and tear it to shreds

That person will be correct, actually. It's not TRUE multitasking. All apps and such will be able to be backgrounded, but what they can do in the background will be up to the APIs that Apple provides the developer (so in that sense, yes, the apps can't do anything that Apple doesn't allow them to through the APIs).

However, they did not talk about many of the other APIs that were on screen that are new that may alleviate some of the concerns that people have with IRC/IM Clients, one of them being "persistent wifi". I'm guessing the API for persistent WiFi WILL allow IM Clients/IRC clients/other apps (aka apps that weren't part of the 7 kind of "categories" mentioned in the keynote) to stay connected and such.

Bottom line, we won't know quite yet until people get hands on their dev previews. To me that Persistent Wifi is prolly the most important part of the multitasking, and I would think thats what that API is meant to do, but we shall see.

I'm pretty sure stuff like IMs are covered under the "local notification" API, or at the very least, the old school push notification API.

I don't have a problem with their multitasking implementation really. They've covered all of the major points I think. The only problem I see is the fact that apps will need to be updated to support it, instead of it just working automatically once the phone's running OS 4.0.

The problem is, not everything can live off of push notifications, and since apps are suspended in the background unless using: GPS, background downloading of a file, VOIP, or music, they won't be able to maintain the connections, even with wifi remaining open.

I'm pretty sure they've covered all of that in their new APIs. There are new APIs for background audio, background location (GPS and cell location), VOIP, and task completition (background uploads, downloads, etc.).

Like I said CM, they talked about 7 of the more than 1500 new APIs. We don't know yet if those are the ONLY types of operations that will have access to a constant connection. So as of right now, NONE of us can say with any certainty that true multitasking will only be available to those 7 "categories" or operations, as it were.

Those are the only ones concerning multitasking, out of Steve Jobs' mouth, so yeah we know.



Did you even read that post?

Hey, I woke up an hour earlier than normal today. My brain's all ****ed up and I can't read correctly apparently.

But you are assuming then for instance then that you couldn't use two different APIs to achieve the backgrounding and also persistent Wifi. Like I said, all apps can be backgrounded, but what they can do is up to the API's the dev uses. It would be foolish to think "Persistent Wifi" isn't what it says it is. Hell, it could be an API designed SPECIFICALLY for IM clients.

We don't know!

It's premature at this point to assume that IM clients won't be able to take advantage. I hope that even Apple wouldn't overlook that. Maybe someone will read my mind and ask him during the Q+A?

Why do they need a new API for IM clients though? Push notification works fine for them. It's all the stuff that push notification didn't work for that they're trying to address now.

I don't even know where you got persistent wifi in the first place. It wasn't ever even on the slides.

Anyway, I'm willing to wait, but I would bet money on my side.

Edit: Also, push notifications are going to get a lot worse now it seems. Now that more things will be making them, I wonder how long it'll take before people are fed up of constantly tapping that close button to get stuff out of the way?

Edit 2: From Engadget involving multitasking:

"There are seven services: background audio, which allows you to use the standard pop-over iPod controls, Voice over IP, which can receive calls in the background, location services for GPS and social networking (there's an indicator if any service is tracking you), updated push notifications with local notifications, task completion so you can finish things like uploads in the background, and fast app switching, which lets apps sleep and resume instantly. Notably missing? Anything for managing a conversation, like IM or Twitter, which is a big omission. Win some, lose some, we suppose."

Ah there we go! BAH! That is a shame. I wonder if this might get changed with enough outcry, or if there is an API that we aren't sure about yet that might do it.

BTW, this was the slide that had it, on the left. (http://c1291262.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/apple-iphone-os4_064.jpg)

What do they mean by "managing a conversation"? The way I understand it, you can get a push notification with a new message and either close it, or open it, thus switching over to the IM app that's been suspended in the background. Then you can do whatever you want inside the IM app, and when you're done, you can switch out of it. What more is there that you'd want to do outside of the IM app?

A. Not have it spam you with popups when someone spams you with IMs.
B. Maintain connections to services like IRC (where push doesn't work).
C. Stuff like twitter, which doesn't support push notifications unless the app developer rolls their own system and server for it.

He means for IRC apps for instance that where it would somewhat be annoying to jump in, connect, jump out which disconnects it, jump back in which connects it, back and forth etc etc.

Ahh, IRC, ok, I can see where that's an issue. I was thinking solely in terms of IMs, since that's really all I use, don't bother with IRC or Twitter.

What does IRC have to do with Twitter?

.

They have similar restrictions on the iPhone, namely, they need more active connections to the internet.

Also:

"Ryan Block from GDGT: What about running unsigned apps? Steve: You know, there's a porn store for Android. Anyone can download them. You can, your kids can. That's just not a place we want to go."

So all this stuff (multitasking that is) is 3GS and latest iPod Touch only. Why? Because according to Jobs "Some of the earlier hardware can’t support multitasking at all.” Yeah, that's a pretty dumb thing to say.

Especially when Jailbroken versions can, and do it properly.

It's true. People actually still use IRC. I'm in there right now.

You can use a bluetooth keyboard with the ipad (And now the iphone, which seems needlessly awesome)

People should have stuck to drawing and painting on paper.

Awesome.

Oh hey, what if you put like a little clip with a hinge on it? That way your keyboard would double as a screen protector for your iPad when you aren't using it.

But Joncy that would be just like one of those lame ass tablets they make speed school students buy that are ridulously expensive and almost worthless.

Apple has to suck differently

god, what is it with you and speed school?

nobody knows what you're talking about.