Sounds like apple to me! you can’t even mention Android or Windows in your app store submission without getting threatening emails to ‘cease and desist’ or your app will be pulled – how paranoid is that?

And I’m sorry but the “and I’m really tired of the “if you put an Apple logo on a stapler” type arguments because they’re ridiculous” doesn’t hold water either. Part of the sucess of the ipod and iphone is purely this, device snob value – you’re naive if you think otherwise, the ipods were very much fasion accessories and the iphone has followed suit. And don’t get me wrong, my wife loves hers, but when her battery dies on a flight and she wants to borrow my android phone to play soduku, or her itunes update installs untold cr4p with it the shortcomings are very apparent.

I wonder why decided not to fix this right after he got back. After all, the Newton implements one of the major visions of the era when Jobs was just a Hacker amonst many others.

Its quite obvious to me that the iPad was developed under a lot of pressure. Just look at all the speculation about future extensions. Have you seen something similar when the Macbook Air, iPhone or iPod were released? They had to leave out the most basic things, even carved in a whole for the soon-to-be-included camera. They were under huge pressure from the press, Jobs ignored this market for too long. He was right to lough at those crappy netbooks but he should have realised where this is going with eReaders and Netvertibles.

What I really want to understand is why my Dewalt screwdriver can swap batteries but my iPod and iPad can’t. Since when did toting around an extra battery become such a sin?

Why didn’t Steve think about the fact that being able to pop in a second battery would mean that before my flight HOME from Toyko I wouldn’t have to go searching for some universal power cable and let my iPad sit for hours before having enough juice for the trip.

> I’ve seen so many attempts at tablet computing that had absolutely no
> chance of mainstream success. The iPad is literally the first time that’s not
> the case,

Yeah…I’m sure thats not because cheap low-energy machines recently got mainstream. I’m sure its not because touch interface is mature and cheap enough to put it even in digital cams. And I guess the cheap availability of network and content over network has nothing to do with it. It must be Apple. I wonder how they got this idea to make a tablet just now…its ingenious! Could it be the several enquiries by consumers and journalists over the last YEARS?

Since my disappointment with the OLPC XO-1 about 2 years ago I’ve been anxiously waiting for a company to release a useable and presentable version of it. But no, all we got was the netbook trash. I was afraid Apple would do it and I would have to pay for their closed software and content. I’m really happy they screwed up this much. Now I can sit back and wait for NotionInk to rule them all. Apple and the big brands are going to get quite some pressure, one year from now we’ll all be running around with such fancy pads like they do in StarTrek. Two years from now they will have bluetooth profiles in 802.11 and be powerful enough to serve as main desktop while in the office. (And a few decades later oil and several kinds of metals will be so scarce that we’ll wish we would have spend them on more sustainable products. But thats another story…)

Given what you’ve said, can you explain WHY Apple will have that mainstream success? Does it have anything to do with the benefits or features of the iPad itself? What makes it BETTER than any other product in the marketplace?

My own opinion would be that Apple ensures its success not thru the device but rather through the strangle hold they have around it. (This same strangle hold nearly crushed the company, lest we forget).

So you’ll have to excuse me if I seem jealous that Apple is selling nothing more than sizzle but i think that’s exactly the case here. I wouldn’t take the same tone if I heard there was going to be a mid market device based on OS X, with HDMI output USB and SD slots etc… (I think that’s what a lot of people hoped for).

Instead what we get is something not that the end user is interested in but that fits within Apples corp. mandate (and I completely agree with the AppleTV analogy). This is an AppStore for tunes, movies, books and games play – all on a device with a reasonable screen size – nothing more.

Lastly, I agree that perhaps the Stapler comment was a bit harsh but be honest, how many sets of crap earbuds do you think Apple sells in their stores, just because they have Apple packaging?

I know plenty of folks who think that Apple is more chic than Hello Kitty.

I’ve been following this market for quite a while, and I’ve seen so many attempts at tablet computing that had absolutely no chance of mainstream success. The iPad is literally the first time that’s not the case, so I’m rather excited about it, even it if doesn’t cross off all the items on my personal checklist, either.

And I’m really tired of the “if you put an Apple logo on a stapler” type arguments because they’re ridiculous. If Apple released random products with the Apple logo on them they would not sell significantly more than their non-Apple counterparts. Apple is a great brand, but its brand is based on differentiated products, not just aspirational marketing. Apple isn’t Hello Kitty. When Apple’s products don’t have a clear value proposition, they don’t sell in huge volumes (see AppleTV, Apple Cube, even the MacBook Air and AirPort lines, which have not reached beyond the core Mac audience).

Unlike my kids, I buy devices for their multi-use functionality not for gaming and early onset carpel tunnel.

If you’d go out and buy a $100 stapler just because someone slapped an Apple logo on it, then by all means but yourself an iPad. If not, you might want to take a look at some of the other devices out there. The Archos 9 looks pretty similat (but so farthere have been bad reports about speed and windows 7).

Your slashgear review on the ICD Vega and Ultra have me thinking that Verizon’s got a good chance at competing in this market. ( http://www.slashgear.com/icd-vega-and-ultra-android-tablets-hands-on-video-0869180/ ).