Tom Uban wrote: They could rule to world if only they could get past their smug sense of, "we know your needs better than you do"...

On 10/4/10 8:10 AM, Daniel Seagraves wrote: s in mind, so trying to compare them and speak authoritatively about this comparison is flawed and intellectually dishonest. No, saying that I use products from the company that I'm criticizing means that I am not simply joining a bandwagon without experience. I was not "bashing" anybody for their choice, I was simply making my opinion known and primarily saying that I think that Apple could make their products, which are already pretty good, better. Clearly I implied that the choice is dependent on the user/use when I indicated that I use several. I think that I can quantify some amount of better by the fact that my mac, running three different operating systems has only frozen once on me whereas my PC running Windows has blue screened many times. Of course everyone's mileage varies depending on their use and application sets. Since when is posting ones experiences and views "flawed and intellectually dishonest"? Instead of tying your personal attacks to my comments, saying that I can and cannot do this or that, please start your own fresh comment on the topic...

I did not say it was absolutely useless. I objected to the ORIGINAL original poster, who called it "defining." It's another evolutionary point along a couple of paths and, like a lot of Apple v1s, has a lot of flaws, some of which are unlikely to disappear due to Apple's heavy-handed policies. I'm also not saying it will disappear - hopefully it will evolve into something that isn't so weighed down by Apple's world-domination approach to the user experience, something that isn't so awkward, and something that isn't so stinking expensive. I did not read this as "desperately trying...", but rather read the responses to which you object as saying, "Look, I'm not an Apple-basher." Actually, the iPad has made me more critical of Apple than I've been in years. I almost bought one - until I realized I'd have to stand on my head to make it do the things I want it to do. By comparison, my Android tablet is an open platform, I can read the types of documents I want to read, consume the forms of media that suit me, and I can write code for it (and ON it). (Its 7" form factor also fits in my hand, which is likely why Apple is rumored to be planning a "me, too".) Perhaps my original words were a bit harsh - but I couldn't let "defining" go by without some challenge. And I don't think that the iPad of two years from now will look like the current ooh-ahh gadget of the bleeding-edge set - but given the experiences I've heard with the iPhone, it will assuredly be as unnecessarily limited in its capabilities.

These things are coming out of the woodwork these days - you can't swing a dead Newton :-) without hitting another vendor. Mine was purchased from an online vendor called Merimobiles, and is the "iRobot aPad E7001" with a dual-core Chinese RockChip processor. There's an E7002 now, from what I've seen, with a bit more speed. But the site slatedroid.com gives both information and opinion on a slew of new devices that fall between Ereaders-on-megavitamins and small-footprint netbooks, including somewhere in the middle tablets such as mine. Some devices are being sold through department stores - I even saw a mall kiosk a couple of weeks ago. I too have "mature eyes" and use reading glasses. I've seen these devices from 5" (ISTR there's a Dell device) and up to 10" or so. I elected to go with the 7" form factor for convenience: it fits in my hand, it fits in the glove boxes of either my truck or my motorcycle, it slips into the bag that carries the laptop (Windows 7) that I use for work. Yes, I thought about the larger devices, but frankly that was one reason I stopped consistently using my Fujitsu Stylistic Tablet PC: it didn't fit into a saddlebag. I'm not saying that my aPad is without flaw - it has its 'early adopter' warts. (Many of these are addressed by new flash images built by people in the user community - ah, open platforms are handy, aren't they?) But it's also $150. It has an externally-accessible microSD slot, a USB port that works in either direction (access a keyboard, memory stick, etc. OR serve up USB mass storage), a multitasking operating system - and did I mention it was $150? -- Ian

I admit I bought a MacBook (two actually) for a couple reasons over a Wintel laptop, not the least of which was the aesthetic consideration. There is no doubt they are better looking IMO, and they have a nice uncluttered design. I don't need a zillion different interfaces in/out of the thing. Seems like every wintel laptop manufacturer out there wants to plaster a bunch of different connectors all over the laptop for every conceivable interface type. These days, USB is all I need. I think one thing that Apple really has an advantage over the competition is their power brick design. Not only is it incredibly small, it has that snazzy magsafe power connector, which has saved my laptop untold damage (and that's after having owned an HP which I had to replace the power jack on). The other big reason was OS X itself. I wanted to play with it, and it had the advantage of having Xcode included with the OS, the dev tools for Windows costs a lot (yeah yeah, Vis C++ Free Edition). I have been very happy with how turnkey the OS is while still feeling professional, Time Machine is awesome, and upgrading a hard disk (thanks to Time Machine) was very, very easy. I think the 5-10% of things that I don't like about my MacBook (namely some case weaknesses) have been addressed in the subsequent designs. Does everything I need it to do. Is it the end all, be all? Nope, but I still really like it a lot. YMMV. ________________________________ From: Daniel Seagraves <dseagrav at lunar-tokyo.net> To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Sent: Mon, October 4, 2010 8:10:17 AM Subject: Re: iPad? Really? (was RE: Voice recognition will never kill the keyboard was: Re: Evolution) On Oct 4, 2010, at 7:42 AM, Jules Richardson wrote: Choice of device or operating system should be based on the intended user and workload required. It's not a religion. Saying "I am typing this on a mac..." to qualify bashing someone for their choice is like saying "I have a few black friends too..." to qualify racism. It's hollow and cliche and nobody believes it. You just sound like a dope to everyone except other people who share your bias. I have a Mac and it pays my bills. When I go home I run Windows for playing games. I have a Wii and a Playstation 3 and an iPhone, all of which are hacked for various reasons. Here at work we have many Windows machines and many Linux machines. Each item is picked for their intended task and workload. Some of these workloads are more clearly defined than others, and some of them exist just for entertainment value, but none of them is "better" than the others. You can't say with any sort of accuracy that device X is stupid and useless in all situations because you don't know every possible user/workload combination in existence. Nor can you say that item X is better than item Y in all respects for every workload because everything is designed differently by different people for different goals. It's like saying a crescent wrench is always better than a Vise Grip. They may look vaguely similar, they may have the same user in mind, but they were designed with two different tasks in mind, so trying to compare them and speak authoritatively about this comparison is flawed and intellectually dishonest.