Apple Announces the iPad.

[iJohnE]

Potty humor aside, what are your thoughts?

My thoughts, iFlop. Come on, the thing has absolutely no use. It's like the mated an iPhone and a MacBook, and then took away a ton of the features.

No multitasking- that's the iPhone's biggest enemy.

No camera- I'm not getting into this one.

No handwriting recognition- This is a pointless device with out it, who is honestly going to want to record notes with the soft touch keyboard?

Anyone else want to chime in?

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[DJGM]

Well, I came up with the idea of an Apple iPad right here on this forum ... 5 years ago ... !

From 2nd January 2005:
The Apple "iPad" - a decidedly stylish new PDA.

I can't find the images I created at the time ... they were on my old ntl:home personal webspace, which is long gone.

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[beanboy89]

Well, I came up with the idea of an Apple iPad right here on this forum ... 5 years ago ... !

From 2nd January 2005:
The Apple "iPad" - a decidedly stylish new PDA.

I can't find the images I created at the time ... they were on my old ntl:home personal webspace, which is long gone.

It's hard to believe that Apple came up with an almost identical product five years after you made your concept, Greg. The name, the feature set, everything. Absolutely amazing. Maybe you should work for Apple's design department...!

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[Antony]

No handwriting recognition- This is a pointless device with out it, who is honestly going to want to record notes with the soft touch keyboard?

That's not exactly correct. According to the specifications:

Keyboard support for English (US) English (UK), French (France, Canada), German, Japanese (QWERTY), Dutch, Flemish, Spanish, Italian, Simplified Chinese (Handwriting and Pinyin), Russian

There's handwriting for Simplified Chinese. (I guess it's like the iPhone's Chinese handwriting).

As for the on-display "soft" keyboard, Apple said it is "almost full-size", which to those of use been sending SMS, or chat messages on iPhone's on-display keyboard, I am sure many of us would appreciate the much bigger "almost full-size" version of the keyboard.

If I am to get the iPad, I would also get this Keyboard Dock from Apple for iPad. Typing on proper full-size keyboard is always faster than writing to most people.

Anyone else want to chime in?

Well, the size and especially the light-weight of it suit my need when travelling out.
It's not a superpowerful computer, which I really don't need to take that out with me.

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[Antony]

Well, I came up with the idea of an Apple iPad right here on this forum ... 5 years ago ... !

From 2nd January 2005:
The Apple "iPad" - a decidedly stylish new PDA.

I can't find the images I created at the time ... they were on my old ntl:home personal webspace, which is long gone.

Amazing! To be honest, I forgot about that completely.

(I hope you can find the image you created back then.)

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[Mandrake]

I'm not entirely convinced of the tablet form factor. There's the mobile phone and iPod form factor, those devices fit right in your pocket no problem. Despite how thin and light this thing is, it's quite close in size to a thin and light notebook or an (ugh) netbook. They failed to adequately make the case that this thing is better than a full CULV notebook. It craps all over a netbook, that I don't doubt. That's probably because netbooks are incredibly slow and awful to use. When we look at the capabilities of the devices there's just no denying I'd rather cart a CULV notebook around and have an iPod touch or iPhone in my pocket. The display, though, looks absolutely stunning. My 2 cents.

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[Don_HH2K]

I think that the iPad is, at best, going to find a niche market between handhelds/smartphones and subnotebooks. Apple should have taken more of a tablet PC approach and implemented the necessary hardware to run the full Mac OS X - iPhone OS is to OS X what Android/Maemo/etc are to Linux and and Windows Mobile is to Windows: something you typically don't find on a full-fledged PC. A touch-screen Mac would be an entirely new thing, and potentially much more of the game-changer that the iPad was hyped up to be, but the iPad running iPhone OS is basically just a big iPod touch with 3G data.

The keyboard dock looks somewhat unwieldy for an Apple product. My 10-year-old Visor's addon keyboard is the exact same size as the one on my 15" laptop, but folds down to the same size as the handheld itself (which is only slightly bigger than the original iPhone) for travel. Given Apple's attention to portability and elegance, I'm surprised they didn't incorporate a folding layout or similar.

Well, personally I'd rather have seen a tablet version of the MacBook Air.

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[Antony]

Apple has announced that iPad™ will be available in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the UK on Friday 28 May. Customers can pre-order all iPad models from Apple’s online store in all nine countries beginning on Monday 10 May. In the US, Apple has already sold over one million iPads.

In Australia, the prices are as following:
Wi-Fi models: 16 GB for A$629, 32 GB for A$ 879, 64 GB for A$799;
Wi-Fi + 3G models: 16 GB for A$799, 32 GB for A$ 928, 64 GB for A$1049;
Unlike USA, all prices are GST (tax) inclusive.

iPad will be sold through the Apple Store (online), Apple's retail stores and select Apple Authorised Resellers. The iBooksâ„¢ app for iPad including Apple's iBookstore will be available as a free download from the App Store on 28 May.

Apple plans to release iPad in Austria, Belgium, Hong Kong, Ireland, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand and Singapore in July. Apple will announce availability, local pricing and pre-order plans for these nine additional countries at a later date.

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[Antony]

Amazing sell results!

Apple sold over 300,000 iPads on the first day (in USA only).

Apple sold 1 million iPads in just 28 days time.

Then, the sell opened to a few selected countries internally (only 9 countries) on 28th May, and Apple has sold 2 million iPads in less than 60 days.

Well done Apple.

Also, according to today's Australian IT, iPad stocks are running low in Australia after 3 days since it first went on sell on 28 May.

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[Antony]

Another exciting news from Apple. (and sorry to bring the news those who hate Apple.)

Apple sold 3 million iPads in just 80 days.

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[DJGM]

Another exciting news from Apple. (and sorry to bring the news those who hate Apple.)

Apple sold 3 million iPads in just 80 days.

Well, regardless of the pros and cons, and individual opinions about this device, that is a good result.

Although is the success based upon the initial hype, or is it likely to be long-term? Here's hoping the
future revisions of the iPad are a better products than the first, as was the case with the iPhone.

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