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back to article Apple's iPad - fat iPhone without the phone

Steve Jobs succeeded in surprising no one. The Apple CEO took to a San Francisco stage Wednesday morning to announce Apple's latest effort to change the face of mobile computing, and even the device's name was no surprise. The Reg first dubbed Apple's impending tablet the "iPad" last October. Essentially a beefed-up iPod touch …

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  1. Morpho Devilpepper
    Coat

    Sooooo.....

    It's essentially a pretty netbook for the tablet world? Affordable compared to real tablets (like those sold by Motion), but watered down in a manner consistent with the difference in price? I think that about says it all.

    It's a toy. Period. It's a novelty gadget and I'm bothered by how everyone is treating it like a revolutionary innovation. Tablets have been around since the early 2000s...and they used to be full computers in tablet form, not glorified internet/email/ebook devices.

    I you have neither an iPhone nor an e-reader, getting this will fulfill most of the functionality of both (minus phone functions) but it's hardly indispensable.

    Mine's the one with the HP TC1100 tablet stylus in the pocket

    8 4
    1. Charles Manning
      Reply Icon

      re: Soooo.....

      MS has attempted tablets many times, starting way before 2000, and they've all been complete market failures with only a few niche markets finding a use for them. Why? coz just trying to mak a flat PC and calling it a tablet does not work.

      MS tried to push the idea that every utility worker and nurse would carry around a tablet instead of notebooks and files. Of course that doesn't work unless the organisations commit to complete computerization efforts and the tablet can go a whole shift on one battery.

      You don't want this as a phone or an ipod replacement.... it does not fit in your pocket and it just lacks the keyboard and sheer horsepower to replace a laptop. It will replace none of these and is not intended to [MS's big fail was trying to replace laptops with tablets].

      The reality is that a tablet is ergonomically suited to only a certain set of functions and most of those revolve around the novelty gadget functions: the webpad idea that was thrown around in the early 2000s. Basically a big ipod touch that you leave in the lounge to look things up on the www. Maybe also as an ebook reader and a personal video player / limited gaming device at a push. Limited email and twitter etc is probably OK too.

      It looks like Apple have taken a pretty good stab at a tablet. What is unclear is whether this is enough to excite people.

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      1. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        Thumb Down

        MS has attempted what?

        Surely you mean Microsoft made a tablet OS and said they were brilliant. Incidentally for some things they are. I have 2 and love them.

        However I don't recall Microsoft ever making a single tablet. Feel free to link to the tablet attempted by Microsoft.

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        1. Robert E A Harvey
          Reply Icon

          no real point but,

          The bit that hissed me off about the microsoft attempts was putting the handwriting extensions in the applications (office) rather than in the OS. So you could use it for what they wanted you to use it for, not what you wanted to use it for.

          I wonder how the IPaddy relates to that?

          We really need a big fat ? icon

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    2. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      FAIL

      Stating the obvious

      Another name for it could be the iFad!

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  2. Antidisestablishmentarianist

    Does what I want it

    I understand some people want to multitask but I don't. I want to kick back on the sofa, rest the thing on my knees and have a play - surf the net or whatever. To me multitasking = working. If I want to work I go use a "computer". When I want to relax, yet still consume media, this pad thingy seems perfect. There is something refreshing and slightly retro about doing just one thing at a time. A fuck you to the fast world around us maybe.

    4 16
    1. Fred Flintstone Gold badge
      Reply Icon

      Wrong..

      The reason you want multitasking is not to DO many things at once, it's reducing the startup time for each app and hold it's status, plus some apps just need to be awake all the time to do their job (Skype, diary, messengers, ant-virus although that appears not to be needed yet etc etc).

      I'm in two minds about this. If startup time is indeed kept short it's OK, otherwise it's crap.

      What I dislike more is the lack of -again- Flash. It's the "not invented here" syndrome, I guess..

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    2. Danny 14
      Reply Icon
      Badgers

      so

      so you wouldnt want to (say) open up a browser and maybe have a document open at the same time so that you can keep notes on the holiday you were looking at? Or have a spreadsheet open so you can add up the cost of buying a new car over different plans. Perhaps some random 3rd party app that tracks your current carb intake whilst you plan your menus?

      Multitasking is more than just word+excel+powerpoint+paint

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    3. KnucklesTheDog
      Reply Icon

      Are you sure?

      I can see the logic with what you've said, but it does mean you can't surf whilst listening to Spotify, receive IMs whilst watching a film etc...

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      1. Robert E A Harvey
        Reply Icon

        maybee

        Some years ago I watched an episode of ST:DS9 in which a ferengi was doing his accounts with a whole table top full of PADDs, picking them up, poking them and putting them down. I've often wondered since it there was some point to that.

        I now know the point. If you want to surf while watching spottify, whatever that is, you will need TWO iPads.

        Clever, Apple.

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  3. Ian Ferguson
    Paris Hilton

    Stock price

    What stock price are you looking at? As far as I can see, NASDAQ:AAPL is up just under one percent today.

    0 1
  4. Neil Stansbury

    Hardly...

    [...]The Reg first dubbed Apple's impending tablet the "iPad" last October[...]

    "iPad inbound" in a title subscript is hardly "dubbed" in the context of the article that read:

    [...]Foxconn has also been named as the Apple tablet's producer in the past, though since the company also makes iPhones, iPods and Macs for Apple, it's one of the more obvious choices for the iTab.[...]

    and

    [...]Foxconn will punch out 300,000-400,000 iTabs initially, the insiders suggested.[...]

    A close call maybe, but no banana.

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  5. jai

    stock price

    stock price being down is not interesting - it's ALWAYS down after an Apple event. either because everyone is cashing in on the recent spike leading up to the event or because all the websites and media had been speculating so wildly about the new product that the real thing could never hope to live up to

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    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      ...probs as he still looks so ill

      ...better than his last appearance, but a long way from recovery.

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  6. Apocalypse Later

    A4?

    A4? That's going to be confusing in Europe. Better not put it in the spec or people will be expecting something larger.

    The idea that a lot of these will end up docked as digital picture frames is amusing. That's how I'm using my old Win98 Thinkpad, but it has a bigger screen (almost A4 in fact).

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    1. SC Handle
      Reply Icon

      Unlikely

      A lot of European users can actually tell the difference between a piece of paper and an electronic device. I admit some might struggle, but not that many

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  7. Harryposter

    Less is less

    What a load of crap!

    I am a graphic designer with 25+ years experience and used to be a 'Mac-fascist' until Mac OS X came around.

    I have switched to PC for well over 10 years now and will never go back to Apple: I had the chance to work on it again and, oh God, I can't believe what a pile of over-rated and over-priced rubbish it has become!

    Full of bugs, bloody slow and unstable, not even able to deal with postcript fonts for which it was supposed to be the reference.

    Well, not anymore Steve!

    And nothing will ever replace the smell of fresh ink and the feeling of real paper, not even Apple.

    No Flash, no multi-tasking... enough said.

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    1. Semihere
      Reply Icon
      Unhappy

      @Harryposter

      I agree with your views of this device, also as a graphic designer of 20+ years experience (Mac head since about '86).

      I have to disagree with your assessment of OS X though - it's a fast, streamlined OS that lets me perform day to day work far quicker and with less hassle than the alternatives, and an OS that 'gets out of my way' is vitally important. Never falls over (unlike XP and Vista machines I also use daily for other less demanding things) and runs REALLY fast, even on some fairly old hardware. Plus the alternatives are either non-standard apps like GIMP or having to deal with the hotch-potch of Windows-based versions of my apps that all use weird unfathomable keyboard shortcuts rather than the mnemonically designed OS X system.

      Postscript fonts haven't really been very relevant since the 90s (with the introduction of TrueType... around the launch of System7 perhaps?) and even now OS X supports most decent correctly mapped Type1 PS font fine - it just struggles with those old dodgy Monotype and Type3 PS fonts. OpenType and TrueType work out of the box, as long as full support of Windows-native OTF and TTF fonts.

      But again I agree with your views on dead-tree-press books. With a real book you can read it, then pass it on. You won't be able to do that with your locked-down iPad EBooks!!!

      The iPad is an epic FAIL in my eyes - mainly because I was hoping for a computer rather than a consumer 'toy' type of device. Even something as feature-stripped as a MacBook Air would have been useful with the multi-touch screen mounted in place of a keyboard/trackpad, but this is just overblown for serious use and way too locked-down.

      Details not out yet I don't think, but I'd imagine the only way to install anything will be through the restrictive app store. No proper OS, meaning no proper work. If I want to sit at home and 'surf' or look at my photos I already have a device that does this better - it's my laptop. What I wanted was something with the power and usability of a laptop without the bulk of a clamshell... and running OS X!

      Overall I think we're in agreement... just minor differences... but MacHeads and non-MacHeads alike we seem to be disappointed with Apple's recent moves.

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      1. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        FAIL

        OSX is good? orly?

        i am a network engineer and i happen to own the late 2009 MBP. I use both windows and OSX and honestly i can only compare OSX to WinXP before even the first SP. it is not even close to the functionality and stability of Vista and Win7. Safari crashes all the time, MSN crashes all the time, the interface is absolute crap with the dock taking a huge portion of the screen. The firewall is disabled by default (WTF?), it frequently locks up, it is slower to respond to clicks and overall offers much less functionality whether that be the sorry excuse of a game it has to other various software utilities. Software support is zero compared to windows and it has loads of badly written applications that feel hopelessly slow. I am typing this on the MBP by the way. The only thing I enjoy is the very long battery life and that it automatically adjusts screen and keyboard brightness.

        In terms of design, it is thin and light but the edges are quite sharp and leave marks on my arms as i type. Hardly revolutionary. Functionality of the trackpad is annoying. Mouse gestures are useless apart from going back and forth with 3 fingers. Double tap to drag something and you have to lift your finger for a second in order to release the item and get back the control of the cursor. That second feels like eternity and it feels like it slows down your productivity big time. I constantly find myself dragging windows left, right and centre because of the way the Dock works and how applications are not self contained in their windows. What windows gives you in a toolbar inside the application, the same applications gives it as a separate window floating above your workspace that you have to drag around all the time just to see what you are doing. How is this acceptable?

        My verdict on Apple products is one: Flashy toys. They can take their mouse gestures and fancy crap and stick it you-know-where. I would rather give them the middle finger gesture than spend a dime on their products again.

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        1. Steen Hive
          Reply Icon
          Thumb Up

          It really is good!

          Runs great on my iHack. Now if we could only get that bastard ATI Framebuffer port from Xorg sorted, I'd have it full-time on my Tosh Lappy as well.

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        2. Anonymous Coward
          Reply Icon
          Anonymous Coward

          Absolute garbage.

          Safari does not 'crash all the time' - this is a straight up lie.

          The dock can be altered in size and set to disappear until you mouse over the bottom edge of the screen. Try looking in the Preferences some time!

          The firewall is disabled by default? Big deal. So was Xp's until that worm that caused it to shutdown in one minute straight after boot appeared.

          OSX does not frequently lock up.

          " it is slower to respond to clicks and overall offers much less functionality whether that be the sorry excuse of a game it has to other various software utilities" - this sentence doesn't make sense.

          Software support is zero compared to Windows? Bullshit. There aren't 10 million crappy free applications that no one uses is more like it. All the major programs are available for Macs as well as Windows.

          Every Windows laptop I've ever used 'automatically adjusts screen brightness'.

          "Double tap to drag something and you have to lift your finger for a second in order to release the item and get back the control of the cursor. That second feels like eternity and it feels like it slows down your productivity big time. I constantly find myself dragging windows left, right and centre because of the way the Dock works and how applications are not self contained in their windows"

          Boo hoo. It took me about a week to get the hang of trackpad usage.

          Really, you make yourself look stupid by typing such garbage.

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        3. Sean Timarco Baggaley
          Reply Icon
          Flame

          For someone who claims to work in a visual medium...

          ...I sure as hell wouldn't hire you to design user interfaces. Windows 7 is, to be fair, a much better stab at ripping off OS X than Vista was, (and I do like some of the little features Microsoft added), but their inconsistent, laissez-faire attitude towards UI design and enforcing their own guidelines has produced some godawful applications.

          I particularly hate the seemingly constant stream of requests for updates and restarts, not to mention the stupid, stupid apps that insist on grabbing focus for some trivial question just when you're about to type a space in another app. (OS X still isn't quite as good as it could be in this area, but it's still a vast improvement over Windows.)

          Grrr! Froth! Foam! (Etc.)

          </Rant>

          The Dock can be trivially resized, relocated and auto-hidden, with magnification turned off too. (How the hell is it taking up so much space on your laptop anyway? It takes up *less* space than the Win7 dock that appears when I'm running that under Parallels. And that's using Coherence with Aero *disabled*.)

          The firewall was on by default in my recent install of OS X 10.6, so I'm guessing you've only played with an older version of the OS. NOTHING was enabled by default—not even the Apache web service. Basic (LAN) networking is enabled, but not much else. (And the FTP and Samba sharing options are smothered in warnings and caveats, so you'd have to be blind, stupid, or both, not to realise that there are security risks.)

          Stability? I've never had a kernel panic. I've seen it run a bit slow when the hard drive is being hammered, but that's probably because I prefer capacity over raw speed in my hard drives. (I'm a technical author by trade.)

          I have Age of Empires III installed and that runs fine. Granted, I'm not an avid FPS enthusiast, but then, consoles are the gaming platform of choice now, not PCs. The games which sell the most on the latter are either the usual MMORPG genres, or casual games... and the latter are well-represented on Macs too.

          I *have* seen Safari fall over once or twice. In both cases, it was entirely the fault of Adobe—those well-known purveyors of overpriced, bloated bugware—and their Flash plugin. (Hell's bells, even Apple's own Preview app is a leaner, meaner Adobe Reader than Adobe Reader, and that's saying something.)

          I have no issue with running Windows 7 in both a VM and as a dual-boot option—my work requires it anyway, but I've seen OSes come and go since the early '80s and I'm well aware there's only a "least worst" OS. Apple has to compromise rather less than Microsoft do in producing a general-purpose operating system, so they have inherent advantages there. That Windows runs *at all* given the sorry state of some of the applications and drivers I've had to use on it is a f*cking miracle of engineering.

          Don't blame Apple or Microsoft developers for the faults of others. Most of the stability problems in any of the major OSes—Windows, OS X, Linux, whatever—are attributable to *third-party* applications. The correct solution isn't to wail and moan at Microsoft or Apple, but to moan at the bloody incompetents who wrote the bug-ridden, ill-designed software that caused the problem.

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        4. Pollo
          Reply Icon
          Happy

          Re: OSX is good? orly?

          Seriously - I'd get your MacBook looked at. I am in possession of two MBPs from late 2009 and one MB from 2007 and none of them suffer from the problems you experience.

          But if it is sooooo bad, how come you're using it at all? Battery life isn't a reason to put up with the experience you've had surely?

          Anyway - good luck to you. I for one LOVE my MBP and would not trade it in for an MS OS for doing my day to day again.

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        5. Volker Hett
          Reply Icon

          Funny thing, my experience is totaly different

          I'm a sysadmin supporting lots of Windows and RHEL Servers on VMWare ESX hosts as well as Windows Clients. I have a late 2009 MBP, too and still use an early 2007 white MB. Both run fine, Safari never crashed on me, I have all the tools I need for remote administration of windows and linux hosts, oops, forgot the AIX and HP-UX hosts but there is noch much to maintain, and much more.

          Firewall on a client? I have one in the Internetgateway! The Dock is scalable and can go into the background, just as Win7s activity bar does.

          I know my way around in several Windows operating sytems and a good bunch of Unix too and get paid for it, but I don't use those myself.

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    2. Ivan Headache
      Reply Icon

      Well,

      Though I can't comment on your graphics ability, I have to wholeheartedly disagree with your comment about OSX.

      I think you must have been using the very first version.

      Crash, slow, Unstable. When, where?

      Haven't had a crash on my "pile of over-rated and over-priced rubbish' in I can't remember how long. And it certainly isn't slow.

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  8. David Barrett

    HMMMMNNN

    What Id really like to see is somthing similar in design to a paint pallette... having not held an iPad I cant be sure, but I have a feeling that this will suffer the same issue as the iphone.. slippery plastic easily dropped due to size...

    At least with a paint pallete type object it would be less likley to be dropped..

    Still looks pretty good though.. Will I buy one? No - as long as there are slates/tablets/pads available from HP etc Id rather be able to multi task and run my own software...

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  9. Anonymous Coward
    Jobs Halo

    two probs

    no multi-tasking

    4:3 aspect ratio

    the first means it's not a serious work machine just a big ipod touch

    the second means crap for watching HD, DVDs etc etc

    it's the second one that is the biggy

    but look at the price - in Apple terms, it's cheap so there are compromises (big ones). The processor (in-house PA semi, ARM core?) means that they are screwing every ounce to get what they are giving you - not really up to doing much more (adequately) but my guess is that the quoted battery life is probably real. They want you to buy a macbook as well ...

    This is version 1; Version 2 with better processor and a camera is the game changer

    not really interested in the tirade that goes "my (shitty) win7 laptop does everything (badly) and I only paid £27.50" but it's coming I'm sure ...

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    1. jai
      Reply Icon

      multi task?

      why do you need multi tasking for work?

      so that you can run twitter and IM in the background while you're "working" ?

      there's going to be nothing to stop you writting a document in iWork, then switching out and reading an email, then back to the document, then flip into the photo viewer, copy a picture, back to document, paste, launch Keynote, put together a few slides, into Safari to look something up on the web

      because all the apps will autosave on close, and when you open them, they'll likely go back to where they were last, they don't need to be persistent in the background. and you yourself can only do one thing at once

      besides - if you're going to be working, you're going to want to be sat at a desk, so might as well use a desktop or a laptop. the iPad is aimed at those of use who sit uncomfortably on the sofa with a heavy and hot laptop on our legs and just want to surf the web while watching telly

      2 9
      1. blackworx
        Reply Icon
        FAIL

        "why do you need multi tasking for work?"

        For the same reasons you think we shouldn't.

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      2. Samo
        Reply Icon
        Thumb Down

        @Jai Multitaking

        So, no need for multitasking for Joe Bloggs web surfing?

        So, I take it you don't have any friends online then, as you won't use an IM client whilst web surfing, as that won't run in the background giving you notifications that some one has IM'd you?

        Similarly, if you were in an email chain, collaborating on a document, say, you won't be notified of a new email that came in whilst you were editing the document (apparently, you *might* first party apps working in the bacground, so this point may be moot).

        there are many things you might want to run in the background, which need to be running to give you notifications.

        I'm not saying it's a life or death feature to have (although I certainly want it personally), but saying multi-tasking is not required because it's not on Apple's new Jesus Pad is just gulping down Jobs' Kool Aid.

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        1. Volker Hett
          Reply Icon

          IM and Websurfing is no problem at all!

          open one tab with meebo and another with the website you want to see. If you don't like meebo, find any jabber server with a web interface of your liking.

          Problem solved!

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      3. Harryposter
        Reply Icon

        Yeah right, who needs multi-task?

        Okay, you just want to browse the web while watching your telly...

        As I said in a previous post, I am a graphic designer and would have loved to be able to use this thing on the move.

        No way this will ever happen: I need multi-tasking of course, I need my InDesign, my Photoshop, my Acrobat and my Illustrator all open at the same time as well as my Firefox (not Safari for Christ's sake!) to get stock images and my email and FTP client for liasing with clients and printers...

        Apple used to be the reference for designers a couple of decades ago even at an outrageous price tag.

        They went from selling reliable professional gear back in the 90s to selling gadgets to the average Joe since 2000 at the same price tag.

        I am sorry to say that, but Apple does not rule anymore in the graphic design industry and I don't care about this anyway, as PC are 10 times much cheaper and 10 times more reliable nowadays...

        I am telling this by experience (25+ years), not because I am some kind of deceived Apple head.

        One of my clients had to pay his printers a heafty penalty for not delivering the pdfs in time because of his latest G5 with the latest OS X and more powerful processors and Ram than anyone working at the Pentagon would dream of... not delivering.

        Fortunately I went back home and delivered with a big sigh of relief with my AMD Windows x64 based machine...

        Apple should stop selling computers, though I don't mind them selling what they are good at: useless gizmos to show off with in the bus/tube.

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    2. Anton Ivanov
      Reply Icon
      Flame

      Spot on

      You also missed one more item:

      While Sony can easily do MPEG4/h264 in 480x272 and Archos can do full HD, the "i" family of devices so far has been able to do at most 320x180. On any screen above 6 in in size that looks like utter shite.

      So, unless they have drastically improved the decoding performance this device will be total crap for any video watching.

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    3. David Gosnell
      Reply Icon

      4:3

      Whilst not to everyone's liking, the aspect ratio is a good thing in my opinion. With the ever increasing trend towards super-dooper-widescreen on everything, I'm happy to see a return to what's most versatile - especially for a device intended to be used in varying orientations. Hopefully renewed interest in the ratio will make it economically viable for others to follow suit.

      One thing right, that's better than nothing!

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  10. E 2
    Flame

    1024x768

    Good quality still image porn these days is offered at around 3000 pixels short dimension.

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    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Coat

      Yeah, and one other thing to consider:

      Is the iPad, er... 'splashproof', or spongeable?

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      1. M Gale
        Reply Icon
        Paris Hilton

        Blah, title.

        It's "oleophobic". Assuming it's also hydrophobic, this should cover most of the, ahem, substances, that will be getting sponged off of an Ipad.

        Though from what I've seen, some people won't even be requiring the porn to achieve that kind of soiling.

        Paris, because she's oleophilic.

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  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @Does what I want it

    So multitasking is too much like work? Lets hope you don't start listening to something on Spotify and then want to check something on the web browser. So just make sure you want to consume those media one at a time just like God^H^H^HSteve intended

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    1. blackworx
      Reply Icon
      Pint

      @ AC 00:12

      I wholeheartedly agree with the point you're making, so hopefully this reply will get in before the mactards all pounce...

      I think "Safari" and "iTunes" will be multitasking and therefore able to run in the backgound whilst you try to do whatever it is you're trying (and no doubt failing, but in a stylish way) to do in the foreground.

      You can get Spotify in the fapStore? Isn't it unworthy or image-sullying in some way?

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  12. uhuznaa

    No simlock

    Hmm, I don't understand that article. First the 3G models have no simlock, so you can buy and use any plan you like. Then, the announced prices for data plans weren't at all shabby for the US, especially as they are prepaid with no contract. They're dirt-cheap, actually.

    In fact I think that Apple is actually really screwing with the providers here. They will *hate* that thing.

    Multitasking: Well. If the thing is fast enough and all apps save their state and you use the home screen as a kind of task switcher, where is the difference? Yes, you can't have apps of your choice running in the background, but in reality for 95% of apps this is useless anyway. If the apps run fullscreen and restore their state what do you care about them running or not? You can see and use only one app at a time anyway. The battery and RAM though *will* care. If Apple can get some framework up to allow things (not necessarily full apps) running in the background for selected things, this might be not that a bad way to use the available resources. I think resisting the urge to go the seemingly easy way and do it as all others do it is something only Apple has the balls to.

    And iWork together with the keyboard-dock (and the ability to connect BT-keyboards) really goes a long way to make this more than just a toy. You can at least work a bit on documents, spreadsheets and presentations while travelling somewhere and don't have to lug a laptop. And there is a VGA adapter (1024x768), too. I bet there will be many people finding that between all this their need for a laptop may be not so urgent at all.

    I'm really surprised about all this sneering. This is a clever device and nothing less than useless. Yes, being locked into the appstore isn't great, but being locked into the Intel MS world isn't much better and I have the feeling that exactly this (doesn't run Windows apps -> useless) is exactly what many people hate about it.

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  13. Anonymous Coward
    Unhappy

    Disappointed

    What a huge iPod Touch!!! Rechargeable through USB and can last for 10 hours operation. I am expecting a tablet MacOS with x86 processor. Probably modbook is still a way to go.

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  14. Anonymous Coward
    Jobs Horns

    @A4

    Its also going to be confusing when it comes up against competitors with ARM A8/A9s in them .... given the way Apple are so possessive about iWhatever then its a bit of a liberty for them to use a name that sounds as if its part of the ARM road map (though as A5 is now the reduce performance version of A9 then are they wanting us to think their new processor is the reduced performance version of the previous generation?)

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    1. g e
      Reply Icon

      A4

      Not to mention Audi

      0 1
  15. Anonymous Coward
    Coffee/keyboard

    lorsque la caravane passe...

    it amuses me how gits like nerds start shouting out loud that this product suck and that it is a failure much like they did in the past for pretty much anything that apple produced. yet they don't seem to learn from their miserable and meaningless dribble do they.

    Someone wants us to believe that because he/she is a graphic designer that we should take his words Biblically. others like to hint at the stock market as an indicator, yet they dismisses the same stock market when it doesn't suit them.

    In short, nerds and geeks alike are themselves the essence of human mediocrity, only they like to rush into attempting hard to dismiss what they dislike by wanting us all to hate what they cannot make.

    2001: OS X was mocked as a sub OS, some even said it copied windows

    2001: the iPod was ridiculed as a failure that will hurt apple

    2005: The iPhone was laughed at and ElReg predicted that it will fail and fail badly

    2010: iPad, the same dribble is being repeated over again.

    I guess some men don't think or their envy turn sour at some point.

    Ah, for the title, I meant to say:

    ...lorsque la caravane passe, les chiens aboient...

    4 7
    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Thumb Down

      tl, dr

      so long and thanks for the headache

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    2. M Gale
      Reply Icon

      Yawn, title.

      <<2001: OS X was mocked as a sub OS, some even said it copied windows>>

      I don't recall this. I was working with PC World (yes, yes, I know) for two and a half years, and plenty of customers were going "ooh" and "aah" and playing with the shiny Mac toys... before going and spending a quarter of the price on something by HP or e-machines. The mac fans were predictably shooting their proverbial loads all over it. I don't recall anyone saying "it's a sub OS".

      <<2001: the iPod was ridiculed as a failure that will hurt apple>>

      Really, no.

      <<2005: The iPhone was laughed at and ElReg predicted that it will fail and fail badly>>

      As above.. though personally when I want a phone, I want something that makes phone calls. With, you know, buttons?

      <<2010: iPad, the same dribble is being repeated over again.>>

      We will see. The mac fans will gobble it up like they always do, but I don't see masses of people being converted from a laptop to what is effectively a huge Ipod touch. I mean what is it? A computer or a media player? It's way too large to be the latter, and way too restricted to be the former. Plus it doesn't run Windows.

      It'll be a toy for people who like to have the latest toys. It won't fail because Steve's legions of fans have more money than sense, but I don't predict Ipod levels of success.

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    3. Harryposter
      Reply Icon

      ... et les pommes tombent

      It's not 'Biblical', it's just experience...

      I know how you feel, I was as dumb as you 20 years ago.

      Well not that dumb actually as, at that time, Macs used to perform better indeed than PCs and of course I was using them, there was no alternative.

      This is not true anymore: Apple is selling more gizmos than computers nowadays, and I use a PC rather than a Mac in order to get my high-end stuff done and would never go back, and believe me I tried very hard to no avail!

      Apple is just not for the professionals anymore, it's for trendy amateurs. End of story.

      They used to be Einstein and realised it sells more to be Paris Hilton...

      How clever is that from our beloved guru Steve Jobs

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  16. GreyCells
    Thumb Down

    Really disappointed

    No web cam, no USB, no SD card slot, no Vorbis/Thedora.

    For God's sake someone build a decent open web pad... C'mon Arrington, where's the CrunchPad Mk2?

    I would like to use the Epic Fail icon, but of course it's Apple, so everyone will buy one, then in six months when the camera gets added, they'll buy another one. Muppets.

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  17. Anonymous Coward
    Jobs Halo

    No Title

    "I'll buy anything if it's shiny and it's made by apple"

    7 1
  18. Anonymous Coward
    Gates Horns

    So much for...

    So much for the oft touted and long awaited Mac Tablet!!! We've been waiting a goddamned decade for Apple to produce a fsking tablet computer, with all their endless tablet-style patents over the years suggesting they were about to drop the bomb. Then when they finally drop it, it's a complete dud iPod thing!?!? What use is that other than to lure in more Windozzze 'switcher' types with some eye candy?

    I need a computer TO DO WORK, and sometimes a tablet would suit my needs perfectly, but instead I take a Mac Laptop, because Apple don't make a Mac Tablet - I can't use one of these pieces of bling because it won't do what I need to do in a work environment, so no, I won't be buying one either.

    Did anyone mention the AppStore lock-in yet? I prefer to choose which apps I can and will install on my computer, not have them vetted and controlled by my OS and hardware vendor. This is a dangerous precedent going beyond the iPhone/iPod.

    [Bill Gates because Apple have become the new M$]

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