Apple

Worthwhile to get?

I'm waiting for SkyWriter to jump in and tell us about how it's the Second Coming, but even in my humble opinion, yes, the iPad is a worthy product.

I got mine expecting to develop apps on it and make a few bucks, rather than use it very frequently, but I quickly found myself using the device whenever I was home and lounging around. My roommates love it too - it's great for playing some casual games / making conversation when people are over, and it's fabulous for quickly picking up to look something up online.

It's also not half-bad for more extended browsing sessions, although heavy foruming or e-mail use gets tedious without a keyboard, at which point you might as well break out the laptop.

It's pretty much useless for actual work for me (I need more screen real estate and multitasking to do anything), but it's fantastic as an anti-distraction tool - all distractions go on the iPad, and no distractions on the desktop display means I have to notice and consciously decide when I'm drifting off task.

I'd get the WiFi model and not the 3G (although I think SkyWriter thinks differently) - I find carrying the iPad around on my person to be horribly inconvenient and thus I naturally find myself only using it where I have WiFi (work/home). 3G wouldn't help me much and I don't regret saving the money and not getting it.

we have three, all 3G. there is no leverageable WiFi in our area.

one bug i've noticed is that you can't scroll message entry windows for posting to forums. make for short reply's.

The hard core Mac guy that I am, I bought one when it first came out. But then sold it bit down the road.

It seems it would be a great product for someone that wasn't a hard core computer user that wanted a simple web access device. I found I only used it for checking email, surfing the web when I was chilling, and so on. It was great at what it did....but I couldn't see spending that much cash on a portable web browser.

If you have a laptop and iPhone, you may not see the need (that was my issue). It's one of those things that either fits in your life, or is an extra thing you sometimes use. A good use is if you have the 3G one and no smart phone, will come in handy on the road, otherwise, kinda pointless if you have an iPhone.

But its defiantly a well build, stable, and well designed device. If there was a tablet to get, that would be the winner IMHO.

What really makes the device for me are apps that take advantage of the unique control interface, particularly music apps (NLogSynth Pro, miniSynth Pro, Korg iElectribe, MorphWiz, etc.) Keyboard centric apps aren't nearly as fun to use though tolerable for light usage (Pages, Numbers, iSSH, etc.)

Hopefully developers will release more synths as time goes on - tweaking knobs and sliders on the touch surface is just fantastic.

Here's kind of a neat video showing off some of the above music apps: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Q4GZq7TEqk

The iPad is cool, no doubt, but I am still unimpressed with it.

I had a Samsung Galaxy Tab for a while before they were released to market. I actually liked it more than I was expecting. I only had it a short while and only played with a few Android Apps and flicked through a few ebooks... I have tons and tons of ebooks I have collected over the years and I think a tablet like an iPad or Galaxy Tab would be a nice toy to have, just for playing with and reading, that I can not come close to justifying at the moment.

I am thoroughly sick of coding mobile Apps now, I probably won't release an iPad App unless I get paid alot upfront.

R.

From what I've seen the Galaxy Tab takes the Android UI and applies a judicious helping of Apple UI elements to it (the e-book reader being the most obvious example), so it probably is pretty comparable to the iPad if the smaller Android tablet is your cup of tea.

Listen to Steve Jobs rant about the 7-inch tablet formfactor on today's earnings call, though, and you'd think the Galaxy Tab will bite your fingers off or something!

And I agree with you on the mobile apps, which is why even though I work at a shop with a mobile product I stick to back-end and algorithms

I have a couple iPhones, the girlfriend has an iPhone, I have an MBP, she has small 11" notebook (its not an atom so I guess its not a netbook). We rarely even use the kitchen computer these days because of that so I just can't justify an iPad yet. Now, if there wasn't 3 iPhones between 2 people, I might consider it as it is a solid device.

eMGee wrote: What I really hate is that my iPad can't be ‘jailbreaked’ (at the moment), with the current software version/revision.

It can; look up limera1n. In one click you can be jailbroken on any current Apple device.

I think a lot of people are discovering that the iPad replaces neither a phone, nor a laptop, nor a desktop. And with the neverending distractions we all have in our busy, modern lives, is there really enough time to spend on *yet* another device?

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/6f638e54-db10 ... l?hpt=Sbin

Netbooks stole the Laptop market's thunder 3-4 years ago and grew really fast. But today, that segment is shrinking. Laptops have not been replaced. They are very much around. I think Tablets will certainly be a popular form factor, but the overall penetration potential is limited. I don't think the tablet will in any event become the new de-facto client, as many analysts are/were projecting.

Zooming in from the macro view, I do own an iPad. It's fun to use, but I keep running into limitations. As Skywriter mentioned, since you can't scroll HTML textareas, using any kind of web based app that requires significant text entry (Forums, email apps, newgroups, CRM etc.) is painful if not impossible. The lack of state-preservation across open tabs in the browser means that often, as you switch from tab to tab, the entire page reloads. If you've typed content in one of these pages, too bad. It's all gone. I still don't enjoy typing on the iPad one bit. I've owned it pretty much since it came out and have never gotten used to the widely spaced keyboard which is not fit for one-handed typing ala iPhone, and nor is it fit for netbook style two-handed typing. Also, I think I've had too much of Apple's controlling approach to everything from storage expansion, to batteries, to choice of carrier to how apps get approved and installed. Once you've had enough of the kool-aid and the initial excitement starts to wane, you do tend to find these aspects more than a bit irritating.

Who has the most fun with the iPad? Probably my kids, who play games on it. But even they spend more time with their netbook since the bulk of the websites they visit are Flash based (educational content, flash games etc.) and none of those work on the iPad.

I would wait for the next round of Windows based tablets before making up my mind on which device to go with.

I'm starting to think about getting one, with the Verizon MIFI bundle actually. Not as handy maybe as a 3g iPad, but I plan on using the MiFi with my other devices and Verizon does seem to offer the $20/gig offer otherwise.

I have a couple friends with them. Reading PDFs on the go was the killer app for one. Another who has a hard time getting to sleep reads wikipedia in bed, since I do that with my iPhone already I see that being a big use for me.

I prefer real books for reading. I do have some books about BASIC programming in electronic form, but they are in HTML not PDF.

How portable the iPad really is? I would think twice before carrying something as expensive in my pocket. It would soon be like my phone: No buttons, just use the membrane. No problem if you are blind, there is nothing to see on the screen anyway. I hate writing text messages, so it still works ok as a phone.

I see more and more of them on the train every morning with some dolt playing a stupid game on them.

R.

While quite a few of the previous comments right here were rather negative, nevertheless a few days ago I got myself an iPad [3G, 64GB]. Up to now - I LOVE it, whatever you say...it's PHANTASTIC!!!