Not a terribly viz-oriented news topic, but it is popular today. Watching the announcement, I found myself very underwhelmed and wanted to share some thoughts:
- No mention of GPS
- No mention of 3G or Edge They just announced that “Some models” will have cellular connectivity
- No mention of a Camera
- Applications can run “in a box” or “2x pixel”, implying the screen is double-wide and double-tall as the iPhone screen.. Making it something like 960×640 (480×320 doubled). But no mention of running multiple apps at once in a side-by-side or foreground/background usage.
- Not 16×9.. The res would take 720p with space leftover, but not 1080.. Not a bit deal.. (Sorry, Brain fart there. I was thinkin 480p) As it is, it doesn’t handle any HD format.
- Very impressed by the battery life on it.. They claim 10 hours of Video playback, and a full month of Standby.
- iBooks is neat.. corny name, and it looks like they just cut-n-paste Delicious Library & Stanza for the interface..
- ePub compatible.. that’s nice.. Now to see how easy/hard it is to get ePub books from other sources into it.
As I write this they are discussing iWork for the iPad (getting tired of the iNames). I have to wonder why? Do they really think people are going to be writing documents or building spreadsheets on this thingSeriously? Maybe a document/presentation viewer, but the full suite?
No word on details like the chipset involved. Several people theorized it might sport the new PowerVR chipset, but nothing has been announced one way or the other. The only concrete numbers so far is the 1Ghz custom ‘A4’ processor from Apple. The games they’ve shown are better than iPhone/iPod graphics, but not as good as PC, which is to be expected. That could all easily be explained by the improved CPU.
What are your opinions?
UPDATE: The Apple iPad page is live.. Some things to note:
- The resolution is 1024×768, better than I expected. Still not HD-worthy, but better.
- It says it will play up to 720p, but I guess it must be resampling it.
I love the way Apple IPad looks. I love th slim design. It is a great concept. I saw someone with one he said he loved it. It is easy to use. The prices is a little to much for me now.
Hello Randall:
I like this article. If Apple is doing a derivative of the iPhone, the iPad, they should improve it. As you mention, iPhone does not run multiple apps at once in a side-by-side or foreground/background usage, neither in the iPad is mentioned this. What is this? A double sized iPod/iPhone? LoL, in the picture, look a t him and look the iPad.
Now a good thing I found in this machine is the A4 processor. It seems to be the same Snapdragon processor of the HTC HD2 (Windows Mobile PDA/cellphone) running at 1GHz. This processor contains high performance 3D graphic (133M 3D pixels/sec), 20 times+ better than the 3GS. I wonder is this A4 processor have the nVidia Tegra or the ARM Mali.
I’ll never expect that iPad games will have good graphic as the PC. It will never be good as PC’s current graphics, GeForce and Radeon GPUs. Radeon only have brilliant graphics, but the GeForces are very advanced. There are more than a GPU. Also im getting tired if the iNames; iBook, iWork, iPod, iPhone, iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS, iPad, iTunes, iMac, iLife, etc. xD xD lol.
@Can improve Well, iWork will open Word Documents.. and the Pogo Stylus is compatible.. So the only question is whether or not they’ve added any way to “doodle”.
I would buy it if could use a stylus to make handwritten annotations to existing WORD documents or pdfs.
A bit of multitasking would be ideal as well,…. lets say open email and a word processing application.
It’s still tied, for the most part, to a PC. Gotta have iTunes to get non-web content. Or did I miss something? Is there a way to only own an iPad and still be able to load it with music/video/photo content.
It looks to be an oversized Ipod Touch for OLD PEOPLE – Big Buttons Big Apps…. I’m not impressed at all.
Second Generation iPad will feature:
— 1280×960 resolution
— Apple A5 dual-core CPU @ 1.2 GHz
— Flash enable web broswer
— integrated camera
Yes, I am making all this up. My point is that all the features missing from this first generation iPad will probably be found in the next generation iPad. After all, you must have built in obsolescence, just like the iPhone, iPhone 3G, and iPhone 3Gs.
Disappointed with 1024×768, though same as my 12.1″ PowerBook G4.
A resolution of 1280×960 at 9.7 inches would have made it 165 dpi, about the same as iPhone’s 163 dpi and capable of the full width of 720p video. That would have been awesome, real 720p HD at iPhone’s (and iPod Touch) resolution density. I wished for the Cortex A9 dual core too. I never heard of Apple’s A4. Apparently most people haven’t till now.
Underwhelmed – whats the point? Touch screen for input!!!!