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It’s Official: Apple’s iPad is Killing PCs

Chuck(G) said:
How well do iPads work for the sight-impaired? Since we've essentially removed the keyboard, how does a blind person get along with these?
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HP made a mouse that can connect to your computer via a wireless network connection. It doesn't interfere with your existing connection, so you don't have to choose between internet and a mouse. I don't think they've came out with a wireless keyboard, but that concept may solve the problem for impaired people.
 
Yea, LOL, it does seem to be grasping at straws but how far should patent laws go. Is innovation and competition at risk of being crippled?

Let's face it, most technological innovations are not entirely novel. We all stand on the shoulders of others.

Tez
 
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Eudimorphodon said:
For those people a magical locked-up-so-they-can't-break-the-software-easily slate that holds the user by the hand and gently leads them to where they can spew their mindless ramblings into Twitter and Facebook by bashing their face on the glass is precisely what they've been looking for all these years.
...not because of some immaculate and perfect birth from the womb of their resident Technology Jesus.
...anyone that does real work on a computer (as opposed to just vomiting random thoughts about what they ate for lunch that day into a blog)
...while content consumer/Tweeter crowds will migrate to using whatever stylish solution tickles their fancy in a given week, always preferably something that doesn't require opposable thumbs.
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I love you for this.

Lest we all forget it was only about four years ago that the NetBook set the world on fire. It was getting difficult to find a geek that hadn't dropped a good chunk of the price of an entry-level iPad on one and then tried *really hard* to justify their purchase by dragging it around with them everywhere and trying to use it for real work. (I'm not looking down on anyone here, I was stupid enough to buy one myself.)
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However, I'm a little baffled by the hate spewed against netbooks. Is it just that it's an annoying marketing term for "small laptop?" Or is it that I only got in with the second-generation machines, when they'd stopped being overgrown palmtops and started being small laptops? I dunno, but my Eee 904 has served me quite well over the past three years, and I've never had a problem with it...
 
My distaste for netbooks was 1. their refusal to call it a sub-notebook and 2. lack of any peripherals to export data productively. I know I just commented on wanting that but I couldn't comprehend making it useful without having 8 devices all hooked up and strewn over the table. Even the wearable computers I had were more convenient but if I had to connect the floppy or a USB external drive bay (burner, cdrom, drive, etc) it instantly became less portable than anything I would have had to begin with and more packing afterwards.

Don't get me wrong, I thought sub-notebooks were cool but a lot of them still had build in floppy drives. I suppose it was before USB was so common and cheap so now yes transferring large amounts of data is easier when you have it on your key chain.

But the ipad I don't get.. I could be dense here but I can't load anything I don't pay for on there, can't use any apps I own for another system even if I did already pay for it, far as I know I can't export data easily without loading proprietary software (itunes) that scans through things and seems invasive as it is, and no I don't feel like uploading anything I want to share to a questionable cloud server that I don't know the integrity or privacy of my data. I'm too old school to be trendy like that I guess.

Better go get the lawn chair out.
 
commodorejohn said:
Huh. I get that it's a pain to lug around a portable CD/DVD drive, but even when the original Eee came out, 4GB flash drives were affordable and USB 2.0 was a firmly-established standard...
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Except that from what I remember, early netbooks did not provide the full level of power through the USB port so many USB powered devices and higher capacity flash drives would not work. With only 2 or 4 GB of storage installed, an SD card had to be added to make the system useful. But the SD card (or a USB flash drive) isn't secure against all the bumps a mobile device faces. Netbooks (at least at first) were not effective in their advertised usage scenarios.
 
commodorejohn said:
I love you for this.
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I didn't really think it through at the time but I really like the idea of someone in a black turtleneck holding an iPad firmly in both hands and repeatedly hitting himself in the face with it. "I'M BLOGGIN ON TEH INTERWEBS! DURRRR! TANX APPEL!"

However, I'm a little baffled by the hate spewed against netbooks. Is it just that it's an annoying marketing term for "small laptop?" Or is it that I only got in with the second-generation machines, when they'd stopped being overgrown palmtops and started being small laptops? I dunno, but my Eee 904 has served me quite well over the past three years, and I've never had a problem with it...
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I guess perhaps I was a little hard on them, as there are usage models for which they work. But I did see a lot of quite tech-savvy people buy them (and I was one of them) on a whim at the height of the fad without really thinking it through. A lot of us had this idea in our heads that, well, most of what we did on our work laptops was run SSH sessions, read and write web documentation, and check email so the fact that Netbooks only had about the CPU power of an old Pentium III was no big deal. Why not get the cheap disposable ultra-portable to save wear and tear on the big laptop? (Besides, who doesn't look more virile toting around a "Man Purse" than a real laptop bag? Laptop bags are for sissies.)

The problem was simply in execution. Things like "92% full size keyboard" sound okay in the abstract but unless you're a child or unusually small/patient it's a problem. Worse, the low-res screens simply do not have enough real-estate to let you do more than one thing at once. Tabbing between full-screen tasks is fine if it's between random web surfing and email but it's really annoying to try to use a NetBook to reference documentation and work on a problem at the same time. Even the "ultra-portability" aspect was sort of a problem simply because many of them had miserable battery life. (Unless you went with the giant sticks-out-the-case optional battery, but then the machine wouldn't fit in the cute little NetBook sleeve anymore...)

I dunno. Again, undoubtedly they work for some people but the random sample I saw ended up spending more time than they probably should of setting their NetBook up only to end up abandoning it in a few months and going back to their real laptop.

(The "Apple people" were the worst of course because inevitably they wasted days if not weeks getting a pirate build of OS X running on their MSI Wind only to discover that on top of all the other gotchyas even OS X's GUI has pretty severe problems with 600 pixel high screens. Ironically/predictably some of those same people are currently lugging around iPads and trying oh-so-hard to make productive use of them. Let's see how long that lasts.)
 
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