Final Post

I've come to the conclusion that the iPad is made as an media consumption device. It is a sleek touch device that is capable of many things, but it is NOT a replacement for my PC, netbook, or my iPhone. Even though the iPad does not follow the Owners Manifesto, it is still innovative in a sense that it allows software developers to program for the general consumer. Programmers can develop unique apps to any needs. The iPad is great certain things such as interactive e-books, casual internet browsing, and comes with a general cool factor. I think the future of the iPad depends largely on developers to come up with apps to take advantage of its technology. I will not be buying an iPad anytime soon, although I would love to get one as a present.

iPad for Mom

Agreeing with this article posted by TJ Lauma, I'm thinking an iPad might be great for mom. My mom would be considered a noob when it comes to the PC. The only things she knows how to do is turn it on, launch chrome and surf the web one page at a time. She'll check her email if she remembers to. I'd consider her a very casual internet user. Me -- completely different. I will load multiple pages at once, downloading music, shoot out emails, burning cds, and probably be playing some sort of game all at once. The iPad clearly won't work for me.. but for her, it could be the best invention ever. It has a very simple interface and its small enough to fit in her oversized purse. Theres a built in app to check email, even notifying you how much unread mail you have. Safari is simple enough to navigate, and since she browses one page at a time.. its perfect. Heck, she even has an iPhone.. I bet the transition would be seamless. The iPad is designed for very casual users, and it does it well. For heavy PC users, not so much.

Mother's day is coming up..if i had enough cash I'd get her one.

WoW

World of Warcraft running on the iPad!!! Ok well not really, some users are just streaming the game onto the iPad from a program called Gaikai. But I could imagine playing WoW on the go like that. It would be pretty awesome to be able to go anywhere and still be able to raid.

Apple Fanboy Love

Wow.. there are so many e-dating websites lately. The standard are eharmony and match but now theres alot of unique spin off sites. Recently my friend showed me the site catholicsingles.com, where he met his girlfriend. It sounded dumb to me, I mean why can't you just list you're interests on any of the other sites and sort from there? But it worked out for him so I guess that's all that matters. But now..A dating website for Apple Fanboys (and girls), is this really neccessary??

http://cupidtino.com/

"Cupidtino is a beautiful new dating site created for fans of Apple products by fans of Apple products! Why? Diehard Mac & Apple fans often have a lot in common – personalities, creative professions, a similar sense of style and aesthetics, taste, and of course a love for technology. We believe these are enough reasons for two people to meet and fall in love, and so we created the first Mac-inspired dating site to help you find other Machearts around you.

Cupidtino will launch in June 2010 exclusively on Apple platforms – Safari, iPhone and iPad apps. It’s time to share the love.

"

Perhaps buying an iPad can be a great idea for all the single people out there.

London hotels equiped with iPAD!

Wow this is great. A hotel in London is going to equip their concierges with iPads. What does this mean?

Simon Scoot, vice president, global brand management at the chain, said: "Our concierges are already engaging with our guests with useful information such as pre-stay e-mails, destination specific concierge websites, interactive maps and concierge videos.

This idea is awesome because it lets a somewhat boring concierge able to interactive with customers while "wowing" them. I could imagine myself going to this hotel and asking a concierge for help. The concierges would be able to pinpoint locations to me on the iPad and guide me there at the same time. This also eliminates the need for concierges to be stuck behind a desk, allowing them to be more mobile. I could ask the concierge for suggestions about restaurants and tourists stuff. It'd be amazing if they could just pull it up with a click of an app and show me visually. They should go the next step and equip every room with an iPad. Now that would be an amazing idea.

1 MILLION!

Apple sells 1 million iPads

IPAD 3G

IPAD 3G RELEASED

I was working at the mall today, and the Apple store line was ridiculous. It always extended out from the store with about 20+ people. I got there at about 5pm and the line finally died a little past 7. I wonder if there were people in line when the store opened at 10am...

Get to the choppa!

A new game titled Chopper 2 is being developed by Magic Jungle Software. It will allow the use of an iPhone as a controller to an iPad. This is awesome for users that have both devices. Check out the video below.

What does this mean for the future of gaming? Well not much, the Ps3/Psp has has the same combo, Gamecube/GBA tried it, and i think the Dreamcast/vmu's originated the idea. This concept has a very cool factor about it, just like the iPad.. but i'm not sure if it have any game changing effects to the gaming industry.

iPad Mags cost more then paper version

http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2010/04/30/why-ipad-mags-cost-4-99-each/

Why are iPad magazines more expensive then the physical version?? Ipad magazines are currently selling for 4.99 a copy. That is the same price as an issue on a newsstand. But, if someone subscribes to the physical magazines, they can pay as little as 35 cents an issue. Journalists are aware of this and are going to allow Apple store subscriptions for about 2.99 an issue. Why is there such a price difference? Shouldn't the digital versions be cheaper since they are easier to produce?

Alisa Bowen, a senior vice president at Thomson Reuters, reminded the audience what magazines and newspapers are for: selling advertisements. What most people are missing, she said, is the significance of the 125 million credit card numbers Apple has collected over the years. "125 million people with their credit cards out, one tap away from spending money — this is huge," she said. "It's a massive opportunity."

This is true, but with the new OS 4.0 coming out in the fall for the iPad, there will be in app interactive ADS. I wonder how this will effect the magazine market. Magazine are also considered to be impulse buys, developers are forgetting how easy it is to purchase an item on the iPad.

Steve Jobs hates flash

There will be no flash on the iPad. Ever. This is a common complaint with current iPad and iPhone users. Adobe flash is universal language that many websites currently use. Safari may be one of the greatest mobile web browsers, but the lack of Flash prevents many websites from operating correctly. Steve Jobs does not agree.

Here is his open letter on his viewpoint.

"First, there’s “Open”.

Adobe’s Flash products are 100% proprietary. They are only available from Adobe, and Adobe has sole authority as to their future enhancement, pricing, etc. While Adobe’s Flash products are widely available, this does not mean they are open, since they are controlled entirely by Adobe and available only from Adobe. By almost any definition, Flash is a closed system.

Apple has many proprietary products too. Though the operating system for the iPhone, iPod and iPad is proprietary, we strongly believe that all standards pertaining to the web should be open. Rather than use Flash, Apple has adopted HTML5, CSS and JavaScript – all open standards. Apple’s mobile devices all ship with high performance, low power implementations of these open standards. HTML5, the new web standard that has been adopted by Apple, Google and many others, lets web developers create advanced graphics, typography, animations and transitions without relying on third party browser plug-ins (like Flash). HTML5 is completely open and controlled by a standards committee, of which Apple is a member.

Apple even creates open standards for the web. For example, Apple began with a small open source project and created WebKit, a complete open-source HTML5 rendering engine that is the heart of the Safari web browser used in all our products. WebKit has been widely adopted. Google uses it for Android’s browser, Palm uses it, Nokia uses it, and RIM (Blackberry) has announced they will use it too. Almost every smartphone web browser other than Microsoft’s uses WebKit. By making its WebKit technology open, Apple has set the standard for mobile web browsers.

Second, there’s the “full web”.

Adobe has repeatedly said that Apple mobile devices cannot access “the full web” because 75% of video on the web is in Flash. What they don’t say is that almost all this video is also available in a more modern format, H.264, and viewable on iPhones, iPods and iPads. YouTube, with an estimated 40% of the web’s video, shines in an app bundled on all Apple mobile devices, with the iPad offering perhaps the best YouTube discovery and viewing experience ever. Add to this video from Vimeo, Netflix, Facebook, ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, ESPN, NPR, Time, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Sports Illustrated, People, National Geographic, and many, many others. iPhone, iPod and iPad users aren’t missing much video.

Another Adobe claim is that Apple devices cannot play Flash games. This is true. Fortunately, there are over 50,000 games and entertainment titles on the App Store, and many of them are free. There are more games and entertainment titles available for iPhone, iPod and iPad than for any other platform in the world.

Third, there’s reliability, security and performance.

Symantec recently highlighted Flash for having one of the worst security records in 2009. We also know first hand that Flash is the number one reason Macs crash. We have been working with Adobe to fix these problems, but they have persisted for several years now. We don’t want to reduce the reliability and security of our iPhones, iPods and iPads by adding Flash.

In addition, Flash has not performed well on mobile devices. We have routinely asked Adobe to show us Flash performing well on a mobile device, any mobile device, for a few years now. We have never seen it. Adobe publicly said that Flash would ship on a smartphone in early 2009, then the second half of 2009, then the first half of 2010, and now they say the second half of 2010. We think it will eventually ship, but we’re glad we didn’t hold our breath. Who knows how it will perform?

Fourth, there’s battery life.

To achieve long battery life when playing video, mobile devices must decode the video in hardware; decoding it in software uses too much power. Many of the chips used in modern mobile devices contain a decoder called H.264 – an industry standard that is used in every Blu-ray DVD player and has been adopted by Apple, Google (YouTube), Vimeo, Netflix and many other companies.

Although Flash has recently added support for H.264, the video on almost all Flash websites currently requires an older generation decoder that is not implemented in mobile chips and must be run in software. The difference is striking: on an iPhone, for example, H.264 videos play for up to 10 hours, while videos decoded in software play for less than 5 hours before the battery is fully drained.

When websites re-encode their videos using H.264, they can offer them without using Flash at all. They play perfectly in browsers like Apple’s Safari and Google’s Chrome without any plugins whatsoever, and look great on iPhones, iPods and iPads.

Fifth, there’s Touch.

Flash was designed for PCs using mice, not for touch screens using fingers. For example, many Flash websites rely on “rollovers”, which pop up menus or other elements when the mouse arrow hovers over a specific spot. Apple’s revolutionary multi-touch interface doesn’t use a mouse, and there is no concept of a rollover. Most Flash websites will need to be rewritten to support touch-based devices. If developers need to rewrite their Flash websites, why not use modern technologies like HTML5, CSS and JavaScript?

Even if iPhones, iPods and iPads ran Flash, it would not solve the problem that most Flash websites need to be rewritten to support touch-based devices.

Sixth, the most important reason.

Besides the fact that Flash is closed and proprietary, has major technical drawbacks, and doesn’t support touch based devices, there is an even more important reason we do not allow Flash on iPhones, iPods and iPads. We have discussed the downsides of using Flash to play video and interactive content from websites, but Adobe also wants developers to adopt Flash to create apps that run on our mobile devices."

I think Steve Jobs is being hard headed for not letting developers try to adapt flash onto the iPad. Adapting it over to a touch screen interface can't be that hard, plus it would be 3rd party developers working on it. There isn't much for Apple to lose except alienating a large population of users that would love Flash. Do you agree with Steve Jobs?

Manifesto

The Owners Manifesto

The Maker's Bill of Rights

• Meaningful and specific parts lists shall be included.

• Cases shall be easy to open.

• Batteries should be replaceable.

• Special tools are allowed only for darn good reasons.

• Profiting by selling expensive special tools is wrong and not making special tools available is even worse.

• Torx is OK; tamperproof is rarely OK.

• Components, not entire sub-assemblies, shall be replaceable.

• Consumables, like fuses and filters, shall be easy to access.

• Circuit boards shall be commented.

• Power from USB is good; power from proprietary power adapters is bad.

• Standard connecters shall have pinouts defined.

• If it snaps shut, it shall snap open.

• Screws better than glues.

• Docs and drivers shall have permalinks and shall reside for all perpetuity at archive.org.

• Ease of repair shall be a design ideal, not an afterthought.

• Metric or standard, not both.

• Schematics shall be included.

  
  

  Hmm.. this should be the case of all our owned electronic devices.. but sadly it is not. The iPad fails every single one of these points, yet people still buy the device. Why? As consumers we need make a stand on what we buy and vote with our money. New devices should be more user friendly to the general public. The one thing the irks me about apple products , like the iPad, are they charge through USB, but you have to have a apple usb adaptor. Why can't it follow the standard like most other devices?

Interactive E-Book

Wow, I've got to admit this is pretty cool. This interactive e-book can visually enhance and animate stories to bring them to real-life. Since the iPad has an accelerometer, touch capablities; The possiblities are endless. This is so much cooler then the old pop-up books of the past.

Check out the Alice demo video below, the guy turns/shakes/tilts to interact.

This could revolutionize E-books and makes me want to buy an iPad right now!

Efficiency

The iPad lacks efficiency for a heavy PC user like me. I use the PC for more reasons then entertainment, which is all the iPad can seem to do. The ability to quickly type in a web address is something I've grown accustomed to. It's easily done on any keyboard. The iPad's virtual touch keyboard makes this quite difficult. Maybe I need practice, but even on my iPhone which I've had for 2 years, I can't always get a complicated URL in one attempt. Next, the lack of multi-tasking hurts a lot more than i thought. By simply clicking a url from my email app it forces the iPad to close it, and open Safari to load the page. This takes a couple of seconds, but it is quite annoying. Now if i want to respond back to the email, i have to close Safari and relaunch Email. I am not the only user frustrated with this.

iPad Purpose?

What is the purpose of Apple's new product, the iPad? When it was first announced, I had to have it.. but i stopped and ask'd myself why. I had no answer. It is a mixture of a netbook,iPhone, and a e-reader. It doesn't excel at anything the latter does. Netbooks are capable of multitasking and come with stronger computing components. The iPhone is smaller, lets you make phone calls and has the same apps. A e-reader is more portable, comfortable in ones hand.. so where does that leave the iPad? Is it just a shiny new toy to show off? Writer Rob Pegoraro seems to be confused for its purpose too. To him it just a flashy toy. I have to agree.

300,000 Ipads sold at launch

Apple has announced that the iPad has sold over 300,000 units on the first day.

That is a lot better then i thought it would do.. I mean its just a giant iTouch isn't it? What purpose does this device serve? I myself have an iPhone and a netbook. Should I even think about purchasing an iPad? I will be reviewing articles about this new phenomenon and seeing if it's worth the hype.

Did you buy an iPad?

Ipad. It has finally arrived April 2010. Apple's tablet has been rumored for a couple of years now.. let's see if it will live up to its hype. Lets take a look at the specs taken from the Apple website;

Display

• 9.7-inch (diagonal) LED-backlit glossy widescreen Multi-Touch display with IPS technology
• 1024-by-768-pixel resolution at 132 pixels per inch (ppi)
• Fingerprint-resistant oleophobic coating
• Support for display of multiple languages and characters simultaneously

• Battery and power⁴

  • Built-in 25-watt-hour rechargeable lithium-polymer battery
  • Up to 10 hours of surfing the web on Wi-Fi, watching video, or listening to music
  • Up to 9 hours of surfing the web using 3G data network
  • Charging via power adapter or USB to computer system

  • Capacity³

    • 16GB, 32GB, or 64GB flash drive

    Processor

    • 1GHz Apple A4 custom-designed, high-performance, low-power system-on-a-chip

    Sensors

    • Accelerometer
    • Ambient light sensor

    Audio playback

    • Frequency response: 20Hz to 20,000Hz
    • Audio formats supported: HE-AAC (V1), AAC (16 to 320 Kbps), Protected AAC (from iTunes Store), MP3 (16 to 320 Kbps), MP3 VBR, Audible (formats 2, 3, and 4), Apple Lossless, AIFF, and WAV
    • User-configurable maximum volume limit

First Post

This blog will be used for my final project for COSC460 regarding the... IPAD! I will be looking at various articles deciding if the iPad is for me, and how this "innovative" product will effect the modern day life.