Chris Howard's Profile

Thanks, Robo. I ran out of jokes. :) The new guys are doing good though.

@tluvoo, you're certainly right about Apple fanbois buying anything with an Apple logo on it. However, this doesn't guarantee success. Example? Apple TV. I think fanbois are the only ones who've bought it. :) The fanbois do guarantee enough sales though that a product - if reasonably priced (which, for Apple, the iPad is) - won't be a failure.

Undoubtedly! It's been an Apple strategy since year dot. No company seems better at it than Apple. One thing in the iPad's favour, though, is that a first gen will still be usable for years. So you can buy a low end one knowing that it will be a more than adequate device for reading books, magazines, newspapers etc long after it is superseded. I suspect that, like iPods, people will willingly buy the 2G and 3G etc while still using their first gens.

i think i'll buy a 16gb wifi-only just to have lying around the house to read newspapers, tv guides, books and play games, and whatever else. That'll buy me time until they do iron out the kinks - one of those being decent data plans. And hopefully (unlike the iPhone) it will work on all the 3G networks in rural Australia, not just Telstra.

A lot of people got caught up in the pre-announcement hype but if you look at all that, it's still pretty much what we all expected - a bigger iPhone/touch. For some reason, we seemed to think t was going to have some magical quality, or that it would revolutionize the world. (It doesn't help that Apple are beating that drum anyway, using both those adjectives on its website.) In itself, it's not revolutionary, merely evolutionary - or iterative, as Josh says - and, thinking clearly, how could it be any more than that? Even if it had a gesture based interface, that would have still been an iterative step. What's more, as Albert says, it is 1.0. And Apple are annoyingly obsessive about releasing first gen products that are inferior to what they should be. I've never really understood it. It's like they don't want to dive fully in. Though sometimes it's probably to keep prices down. Which is one reason I suspect there's no camera and the screen isn't up to the resolution we'd like. On the camera, where would you install it? Which aspect would you use the camera in most? Landscape or portrait? It's hard isn't it?. So maybe it needs two cameras. Which is maybe why it has none. If you look at the iPad and it's pricing, it actually makes the iPhone look expensive. Really expensive. Compare the 3G iPad to the iPhone, which is a sixth of the size, but costs the same (outright). An 16GB iPhone 3GS costs AU$879. A 16GB iPad will cost US$629. Add about 20% for conversion and other charges, and it brings it up to around AU$750. That's a big, big difference considering you're getting a lot more glass in one and in the other only a camera and a bit extra phone technology. Hopefully, we'll see a significant drop in the price of iPhones… One can dream. :) With it's present software I have no use for the iPad. But if Adobe can come out with Creative Suite for it, so I can do initial design etc on it, before moving to my Mac for more intricate work, then I'm in. Be fantastic sitting down with a client doing quick mockups. Interestingly, even though it is superfluous to me at present, I really want one. Why?? Because I love touch. I love interacting with my computer using touch. And, limitations or not, I think this is why the iPad will be ultimately successful. Think of all the CEOs who only do email, web and some limited document editing. They're gonna love it. The iPad is for the same people who've been buying netbooks. That's the market Apple will make the most inroads in. I never got the netbook market because, between my iPhone and my MacBook Pro, I have all the bases covered. But a LOT of other people do have a netbook need. And for those folks, the iPad will be a serious contender.

Everyone's wondering what the iPad will do, but I'm really curious about what it *won't* do. What will be the missing "essential" features that the doomsayers and cynics will tell us will mean certain death for it?

The whole "Droid" name puts me off. It sounds blah and depressing.

Thanks, Greg. So do we need a worldwide international standard(s)? Or an international body that determines the next standard? Or is this going to become worse than the PAL/NTSC situation?