blogs: Rick Redding 

Looks to me like a great big iPhone, but if you listen to Steve Jobs, well, there just aren't enough superlatives for the new iPad, released today. Only $499. The 9.7 inch screen, a half-inch thick, weight a pound and a half. Steve Jobs, at his press conference: "What this device does is extraordinary. . . It's the best browsing experience you've ever had. It's phenomenal to see a whole web page right in front of you and you can manipulate it with your fingers. "It's unbelievably great, way better than a laptop, way better than a smart phone. "To see the whole web page is phenomenal. To be right there holding the Internet in your hands. It's an incredible experience." So now you know.

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	Beverly Bartlett   wed jan 27 2010 at 3:19 pm         ·  I am not the first woman to note that Ipad is a terrible name. They apparently need more women on their marketing committee.
	JennTheMermaid   wed jan 27 2010 at 3:20 pm         ·  I concur. Why not just call it the maxIPad? ugh...!
	Gary Guss #313635   wed jan 27 2010 at 3:31 pm         ·  So .... does it have wings too ?
	Beverly Bartlett   wed jan 27 2010 at 3:38 pm         ·  I'm going to wait for next year's model. The minipad!
	ericbrown   wed jan 27 2010 at 5:27 pm         ·  I want to be excited by the iPad (or the "iSlate," which is infinitely more cool). I just can't imagine hauling that thing around with me. I don't know, maybe it's because I do more with my laptop than surf the web, read NYT.com, and listen to music. Maybe in six months I will be eating my words, but the thing just looks like vaporware.
	Bragi   wed jan 27 2010 at 6:04 pm         ·  I agree with ericbrown, I don't think Jobs understands the ultra-portable market. He's expressed a contempt for the netbook form factor and size, not listened to just about every company that writes netbook operating systems that say "people do more than web browse on them" and then produces a product that is little more than an enlarged iPod Touch. I use my netbook for everything I use my larger laptop for except gaming, which means lots of typing, and a touch-screen keyboard simply won't cut it. Yeah, yeah, I know there's an add-on keyboard... Probably for $150 at your Apple Store on top of the $500 minimum price for the iPad. Or a $400 netbook that has a keyboard built in. It'll sell a bazillion units because it's a gee-wizz gizmo with an Apple logo on it. It's not much of a game changer. I think it'll kill the Amazon Kindle dead, though, and if I had to choose between a Kindle and an iPad I'd chose the Apple any day.
	Beverly Bartlett   wed jan 27 2010 at 6:21 pm         ·  I think you're wrong about the Kindle. The people buying Kindle's now are not the logical market for this product. It's half the price for one thing and I don't see what makes this anymore of a desirable substitute for the Kindle than the Iphone is. The Kindle still has the awesome ink and is just highly functional. It's not showy. Has never been showy, but it just really "works" as a reading device. No, you can't do other stuff on it, but you never could. That was always it's disadvantage to say a netbook. I don't see how this changes that dynamic, just because it loses the keyboard. (Especially since it doesn't have the ink.)
	Bragi   wed jan 27 2010 at 6:27 pm         ·  Well the newest Kindle is about $350 and the lowest price iPad is $500. If you add on the extra things an iPad can do (like web browse, play video, light duty typing, etc) I think a lot of people would see it as a no-brainer. Not to mention the iPad can probably read the de-facto standard ebook format (PDF) natively and at full color and there's already contracts with book publishers (undoubtedly with similar terms as music has on iTunes which is highly favorable compared to what Amazon has) I can see it happening. Most press I've seen for the Kindle can be summed up like "it's nice, but..." The iPad fixes most of those "buts".
	Beverly Bartlett   wed jan 27 2010 at 7:27 pm         ·  Yeah, the Kindle, as we know, won't last forever, or even "for long." But I just don't think this, in and off itself, is going to be the death blow. Do you have to have a contract for this? I don't even know, but you don't on the Kindle. And you do at least have the option of entering at the $250 level, which I think is still their top seller. (The other one's main feature is "global wireless" -- which...) Anyway, I think I'm making sort of a nitpicky argument that isn't really the main point so I'll just slink away now and console my poor little insulted kindle. ;-)
	Bragi   wed jan 27 2010 at 7:37 pm         ·  Well I wouldn't even look a the low-end Kindles, I have about 500 PDF ebooks with complex formatting that it would destroy, so if there's no native PDF support I won't even consider it.
	Beverly Bartlett   wed jan 27 2010 at 8:37 pm         ·  Well, I'm sure for very important people like yourself this is true. But some of us are just trying to read "The Girl With the Dragon Tatoo." ;-)
	Bradley Woods   thu jan 28 2010 at 12:43 am         ·  It lacks a lot. First no camera. That means no cool video chat on the IPad (like 10 minutes into Demoltion Man when Sandra Bullock is talking to the Cryo-Warden) Then the big one for me is that it still can't multitask. I mean come on. Windows OS can Android can. Why not Apple. This thing has a 1 GHz processor your telling me it cant run 2 apps at once? Dont forget No GPS, No USB Port, No HDMI, No Flash support and a common Apple feature NO REMOVABLE BATTERY. I just think everyone should wait a little bit and wait to see what others will put out. I will be waiting for a high quality Android based Tablet. I sudgest everyone do the same. Yes and the name is awful.
	dadof2inky   thu jan 28 2010 at 7:32 am         ·  an android based tablet with removable battery and a solid state hard drive that could be upgraded and with a ton of ram would be something that I would most likely buy. They could call it the gSlate.
	Bragi   thu jan 28 2010 at 10:01 am         ·  Heck, the HP tablets with Windows 7 look plenty nice. I tend to reference my ebooks while using other, Windows-based, software. Not to mention those tablets can run anything Windows can run, which means I could use fully featured software I'm accustom to and not be locked into an "app" that probably has minimal features compared to a normal desktop version.
	Bragi   thu jan 28 2010 at 10:01 am         ·  I forgot to add that running Windows means it can run malware, too, but considering the first thing someone's going to do with these iPads is jail break them, they'll get malware, too.
	Beverly Bartlett   thu jan 28 2010 at 12:17 pm         ·  $30 a month? In addition to $500 up front? The Kindle is FREE after the purchase price. You have to pay for books, although not even all of them, but you don't have to pay for the service that delivers the books.
	JennTheMermaid   thu jan 28 2010 at 1:05 pm         ·  Everyone thinks the iPad name sounds femine hygieney! http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/01/27/apple.ipad.reaction/index.html?hpt=T2
	Bragi   thu jan 28 2010 at 3:08 pm         ·  Consider this fact about its usefulness. It doesn't support Flash, which means this page we're looking at right now won't work right. How about watching some YouTube...nope. Hulu...no. What about NetFlix? Won't work (due to Sliver Light, not Flash). Like it or hate it, in today's Internet if you can't view Flash you can't use any "rich content" like video. Of course this might be a marketing thing. Instead of getting the TV episode on Hulu for free or the movie on NetFlix you get it from iTune... for $15.
	JennTheMermaid   thu jan 28 2010 at 3:17 pm         ·  YouTube now supports HTML video...so you can get that. But, you're right about everything else. I have an iPhone and it's the only thing I hate about it. No flash support.
	Bragi   thu jan 28 2010 at 3:21 pm         ·  I personally hate Flash and I'm glad that HTML 5.0 has built in video, but that video codec is poorly defined and if, say, Microsoft's version of it uses a codec that Firefox, Safari, Opera, Chrome, etc. don't or can't (due to GPL) use then there will be widespread comparability problems. At least Flash is a nice, cross (supported) platform interface that can be targeted. It's also worth mentioning in the smartphone ecosystem the iPhone is unusual for not supporting it, which reinforces my theory about wanting to sell you iTunes video.
	Bradley Woods   thu jan 28 2010 at 4:30 pm         ·  I have a HTC G1 that runs android and i love it. no flash at the moment. Adobe is working on getting it to Android first. Apple still has no plans for flash. Anyone with Android OS will probably have it in 6 months or less. This is why Apples stock droped this morning. Tuesday Apple was at 213 points today its at 199. I think everyone agrees like we do. This thing sucks. HP is looking good with windows. Android would be great too.