[NTLK] ipad

[Mark Bock]

On 1/28/10 9:21 AM, Phil Muller wrote:
> I guess what I am saying is that I don't like the way the market is going,
> it seems to be entirely centered towards creating only media-centric devices
> that consume content and focus on social networking.

That's what consumers buy. But that said, I think the problem right now 
is that a lot of people are looking at the iPad way too literally. Don't 
think of it solely in terms of what Apple has presented, or the 
applications that come preinstalled. The Mac wouldn't be very useful 
either if it didn't have an ecosphere of third-party applications and 
accessories.

Use your imaginations. Think about what sort of things people could do 
with an iPad, given the right apps and accessories. One of the things 
that immediately sprang to my mind, because I'm an avid motorcyclist: 
all it needs is a GPS antenna that plugs into the connector slot and a 
good GPS app (with maps stored in memory, not downloaded on the fly) and 
it would make a fantastic replacement for the paper maps most of us 
still keep in our tankbags -- traditional GPS screens are too small and 
don't show enough detail to see a good-sized section of map and 
determine which route you want to take, but the iPad screen would do the 
trick beautifully.

The Newton is actually a great example of this. The community has 
extended the platform and used it in ways Apple never imagined. No 
reason the iPad should be any different.

> As far as adding content, if the articles so far are correct it is running
> the same OS as I have not on my Touch, some iteration of iPhone OS 3.xxx. I
> have a hell of a time getting my content on it, in its original form, and
> that's only if I get another app from the app store to do so, it is not
> built into the OS.
>
>    
In what way do you have trouble getting content? I have no trouble downloading apps, movies, and music on my iPhone. Or are you referring to documents you've created on your Mac/PC?

Given the fact that the iPad will have iWorks available for it, there obviously has to be some way of syncing application-created documents. I should think the same would be true for any other apps that are created for it.

Simply put -- at this point I think it's much to early to condemn the iPad. We need to see how it evolves, and more importantly, how its ecosphere of apps and accessories evolves.

--mark

. . . . .
mark bock
KB1EXL
markbvt at comcast.net

"A youth who can't hit a cathedral at thirty yards with a Gatling gun in
three-quarters of an hour, can take up an old empty musket and bag his
grandmother every time, at a hundred."          --Mark Twain