talkmagic.co.uk

IAIN wrote:i'd imagine in a year or so, a mass market of "old" ipads being hacked and altered...think i'd rather buy one of those...

then there's the whole "flash" problem too...

if lee or chris buy one, gimme a shout in nine months time when you're selling yours and i may be interested..

(remember to remove all porn too please)

If I get one I can almost be certain that it will be broke by then.

Did anyone else listen to the launch interviews on Radio 5 Live?

They were interviewing mainly students in the queue and one said "it's got everything that it needs"

I couldn't stop laughing at the gullible twit for taking in all of the marketing hype.

It's certainly not a laptop replacement, it's not perfect, but it's good at doing what it's meant to do

Proper review coming when I can be arsed writing it - probably tonight

PS. It has no DVD drive and lacks Flash for some very, very good reasons

I hope iPhone OS never supports Flash. Flash brings absolutely nothing to the web development table anymore. All it will do is eat resources and make your battery life even worse, and crash a lot

..but that's another rant

ah...well, if its not meant to replace a laptop, and not function as one - what exactly is it supposed to do/be?

for me to buy one, it needs to be "something" - apart from looking pretty...

IAIN wrote:ah...well, if its not meant to replace a laptop, and not function as one - what exactly is it supposed to do/be?

It's designed to part neotards from their cash.

Tomo wrote:It's designed to part neotards from their cash.

Ooh, harsh

It's got two uses

It's a lounging computer, designed for using on your sofa. Something you can use to surf the web during the TV adverts, something to glance through your email with. It's a portable computer that's easy to use which doesn't have what you don't need (keyboard and mouse which are awkward to use on a sofa, and the slow bootup times laptop have). Imagine using it to check through the radio times to see what's on (yes yes, Sky EPG..), imagine using it to order a pizza, or to check the reviews for a film that's on TV later on that night. Imagine, even, using it to control other things in your house. All without having to open up a laptop and sit up to use it

The second use is a bit harder to explain. It's a sort of electronic clipboard. It's something you might carry around with you to keep track of things, or to note things down. Something which a building surveyor might use, or something which a shop worker might use to do a stock take. It can be used similarly on TV: Jake Humphrey uses an iPad during the Formula 1 coverage, which he uses to keep tabs on what's going on on twitter. This is the sort of use that it's ideal for (laptops would be impractical in this case)

Plus, it's also a pretty good ebook reader

Thanks for that Kolm, I much prefer an honest assessment by one who knows to all the media hype and crud flying around!

Kolm I think uve just enlightened me to all the great uses for it : ) top man thankyou.

Now I want an I-pad...

My laptop avoids the slow startup times with a little button that puts it straight onto the internet through a separate operating system (called splashtop), and that starts in under 5 seconds! Great for avoiding viruses too, as splashtop has no access to the hard drives.

OK, here it is

A blogger on Gamasutra recently posted a considered discussion about Apple and Flash. It's nicely balanced -- as a developer, he's coming at it from a third point of view and can see points and flaws on both sides.

It gets pretty technical in parts, but is worth reading, or at least skimming:
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/WilliamL ... _Flash.php

I kinda disagree with the pro flash points there (I didn't really read the anti flash ones, I know that Flash is rubbish)

HTML5 isn't a complete standard yet, and as I recall they're still ironing over the finer details, like video encoding. Google have recently bought an encoding technology that's as good as h264 and are rumoured to be releasing it open source, so we might yet get the de-facto standard within a couple of years

But making two versions of a video ain't that much of a bother. People already make multiple versions of games (PSP, xbox, iOS, etc) so I have no problem with hitting 'export' twice

Which comes to his second point. People already make multiple versions of applications, no matter what kind of computer it is (Windows, Mac, linux, iOS, Android, xbox, etc etc). It's normal. I don't get why people are attacking Apple for this. Java, an attempt at making application development universal, never really worked

As for people being able to read your source code, you can likely encode it. Job done

so in summing up, this'll save me from checking my email from my laptop if I'm watching tv...

though, i could just check it on my phone (none iphone)...or, just wait a bit before i go to bed...

and, it may help people doing stock checking...thus replacing a notepad and pencil...

hmmm...



i think my 600 quid is safe for now...

seriously - it needs to do something a lot better, faster, easier or just "something" that the rest of my stuff does currently...

my phone is easy to use, touch screen, reliable, i get unlimited texts and internet use for £15 a month, plus that £15 for credit/phone calls/whatever too...

my laptop is nice and fast, plays my dvds, decent broadband connection...AND! i usually watch tv lounging on my bed...

if the ipad added multiple windows/tabs, and a dvd player - i'd be interested, but i take it thats against what its supposed to be...which is not very useful