iPad

[fog]

Yeah I'm slightly underwhelmed too although providing we get a sensible price conversion (yeah right) it's slightly cheaper than I imagined so I may still be interested.

[Wudzi]

It's a tricky one.

Given that its the iPhone OS it's no good to me to drag round for work purposes because the VPN client won't work. It's only use really is to mess round on the net on the sofa at home, or read/watch stuff when on the move.

I can do all that on a combination of iPhone/netbook running OSX

I was proper underwhelmed but like a lot of people, I'm terrible for new Apple shiny shiny. If the cheap one translates to <£400 I know I'll bite :p

[Cloudane]

My bet is on £460 for the $500 model.

As the various hands-on reviews (Gizmodo, Engadget) have said, it really needs Flash and multi-tasking to be enabled, as these features that are already lacking in the iPhone and a mild annoyance there, are all the more prominent on a larger device.

Interesting that apps such as Calculator and Weather are missing, but I should imagine they'll appear in software updates - and they'll probably have one before launch as it looks pretty buggy at the moment from the hands-on videos.

The 3G version has Assisted GPS, does anyone know if this means a real GPS, or is it just cell triangulation like on the original iPhone? The Wiki article on the technology says "If it also has functioning autonomous or standalone GPS, it may use standard GPS" (emphasis mine), so it doesn't seem to be a certainty. If it is a real, accurate GPS it'll make an awesome device for car navigation from the passenger seat. Whether it'd swing me onto that version of it, given that I intend to use a Mifi for mobile connectivity, is still a question in my mind.

Hugely tempted despite a few shortfalls that will hopefully mostly be fixed in software updates.

I see b3ta are already at it with a compo.

[Nixie]

I really want to like it, But all I see is an upgraded and upscaled ipod touch. I would'nt mind my itouch to be a tad bigger, but this looks silly big! I mean It's absolutely impractical for 99% of uses. Does it have a USB port??



...I want one!

[Deckard]

From electricpig

The Apple iPad has been dated for the UK, and we’ve got word of when the first shipments will land over here in Blighty. Start queueing up in March, as that’s when Apple will release the iPad on this side of the pond

[VNVObit]

expect you'd have to jailbreak if you want to use SD cards through USB for anything other than uploading photos

Unfortunately I doubt that'll ever happen: USB doesn't work that way. USB essentially works on a kind of client/server basis where something is either a host (i.e. a PC or laptop) or a peripheral (a camera, hard drive, iPad or web cam). One host can connect to many (up to 127) peripherals but a peripheral can only ever connect to one host and never another a peripheral.

Firewire, on the other hand, is a 'host-less' technology that doesn't require a PC to mediate between peripherals.

didn't know that (my tech knowledge is not that extensive)

knew they'd have a way to import photos but wouldn't allow more than that

[RiK]

Just been to the Vodafone site and their top-ups now expire after 30 days, not going to bother now.

Thankfully that's only for new dongles purchased since they changed the pricing. if you can find one of the original (with 1Gb on the box) like mine the old £15/Gb no expiration pricing applies unless you specifically ask them to change you to the new model.

[RiK]

It would be highly desirable for someone in the jailbroken dev community to write something that allowed for this to be used as a storage device accessible from the rest of the system...

Interesting snippet from the new SDK (and I'm not breaking NDA as this was all over Macrumors within minutes )

File Sharing.
A shared file directory is provided that will mount on your Mac or PC. This is presumably how files such as iWork documents will be transferred to and from the iPad. iPad applications will be able to access this shared directory.

So, yay!

No multitasking (yet) but I'm betting they'll be adding something in iPhone 4.0.

[Yak]

From electricpig

The Apple iPad has been dated for the UK, and we’ve got word of when the first shipments will land over here in Blighty. Start queueing up in March, as that’s when Apple will release the iPad on this side of the pond

Excellent, just in time for L. Ron Hubbard's birthday .

[tufty]

Really no flash though? Huge downer.

I dunno. Flash player on the Mac has been wank - well - forever, and Apple seem to be (thankfully) hanging their hat on HTML5 video instead.

[edit]
Just did a quick test, watching the same youtube video under Safari using flash and then html5 on my iMac:

Flash : flash plugin, ~30% cpu, Safari ~8% cpu
HTML5 : Safari ~10% cpu

Flash player sucks. It deserves to die.
[/edit]


10 hours of battery is good news.

Also, its bigger than my Newton! I'll have to buy a new case! OMG

It's still very app-centric, though, which is a big disappointment for me.

[Misfit]

Really no flash though? Huge downer.

I dunno. Flash player on the Mac has been wank - well - forever, and Apple seem to be (thankfully) hanging their hat on HTML5 video instead.

[edit]
Just did a quick test, watching the same youtube video under Safari using flash and then html5 on my iMac:

Flash : flash plugin, ~30% cpu, Safari ~8% cpu
HTML5 : Safari ~10% cpu

Flash player sucks. It deserves to die.
[/edit]

All I want is a device that can play the BBC's embedded media. It's not that much to ask a device to be capable of running one of the World's most popular sites is it?

[HGFB]

If it wasn't for the screen size and resolution my iPhone would be the perfect train based web browsing device for me.

So I'm having myself an iPad

[t0ne]

Just been to the Vodafone site and their top-ups now expire after 30 days, not going to bother now.

Thankfully that's only for new dongles purchased since they changed the pricing. if you can find one of the original (with 1Gb on the box) like mine the old £15/Gb no expiration pricing applies unless you specifically ask them to change you to the new model.

I've had one of those for quite a while (at least a year I think) and my T&Cs said that the original credit on the stick wouldn't expire but once you top it up then that credit will expire after a month (at least I think it was a month). I only got it for work emergencies and I've never really used it so the original credit is still on there.

[matt303]

I've found a number of apps that turn my Android phone into a WiFi access point, problem solved.

[WiteWulf]

Okay, had a chance to think about a few things and had a chat with the guys in the office this morning (all ):

- The software and hardware both look very safe, a lot like the first gen iPhone. It's essentially the current version of iPhone OS with the built-in apps modified to take advantage of the larger screen real-estate

- I'd expect to see some major changes with the release of OS 4.0 (June?): multitasking I'm not sure about, they're going to want to keep the OS pretty similar to the iPhone and iPod Touch. At the moment current iPhone apps pixel-double (actually a little more than double) to fill the screen. I'd expect to see proper resolution independent GUI programming in the new SDK. This would open up the possibility of higher-resolution screens in the future with well-written apps running with no changes made.

- I'd also expect to see some big changes in the second interation of the hardware, too. It just doesn't make sense for this thing to not use an OLED display. It needs a front-facing camera, too, and an SD slot would be nice (but I doubt we'll ever see it). You know the score, never buy first-gen Apple hardware

- This is something I've been over and over before with regards to media and owning many Apple devices: I don't want to keep my media on this device, especially considering how much they're charging for the devices with larger storage. If I'm at home and on my wireless network I want the iPad to automatically get access to all the music and videos stored in iTunes on my Mac and all the photos I have in iPhoto. Let me sync some items to the local storage for access while I'm away from home, by all means (although access over the Internet to my home library would be preferable!) but don't make me have to choose everything I can view on the device.

- They've mentioned that it's capable of playing HD movies: yeah, it can play video encoded at 720p but it has to scale it down. 720p video is actually 1280x720 while the iPad's display is only 1024x768 so while the horizontal resolution is there you'll have to downsample to display the whole image. And it can't (currently) output native 720p video from the AV connector, either, you're limited to 576p or 480p.

I still want one, though