There'll be an app for that.

It}s Apple playing the observation game. They did this with the iPod where they looked at existing MP3 players and asked themselves how they could improve it. They looked at netbooks and ereaders and worked out what was wrong with them and then made their own.

Apple are very good at analysing and reacting to existing products.

From the apple website...

So are they outputs then i take it? I'm still amazed they havent made the native resolution 1280x720 for proper 720p playback.

Far as I can tell, it's an oversized iPod Touch, that'll probably get 'features' added to it a year from now that would have been appreciated in this version - that's kind of what I mean by questioning how 'revolutionary' it is

Supposedly, it doesn't really compete with e-reader screens at the minute (something to do with others' use of e-ink ), but we'll see I guess, and it could be a compromise for people who wanted an e-reader that did a bit more...

Compromise because HD playback is not the central remit of the device?

Not to argue for the sake of it but on the main features page it lists video playback and states:



Seems strange to me then that a device which is touted as playing HD and widecsreen has neither a wide screen or a native HD resolution. Now where's that head slap smiley....

Sounds good, as long as Apple don't trip up like they have done with some of the iPhone Apps...

It's Apple's answer to the netbook. It's the device that you take to show granny the photos of your holiday, it's the morning paper, it's the book in the car. It's not a replacement for a laptop.

Flash shouldn't be a problem. It would be nice for people to move away from Flash and use H.264.

If it had a camera on the front and perhaps didn't use the App Store method for distributing apps then I'd be happier. A IR port would be quite cool too, make your iPad a huge programmable remote!

Hello all, im a n00b to this board.

I have been quite underwhelmed with the IPad and was horrified to hear that it would carry the same odd limitations that my Iphone suffers (pre-jailbreak) in that it still has no flash, an odd if not completely absent file system and still no multi thread!

I think this will be another Apple TV bit of kit, loved by the hardcore minority but generally unseen in the wild.

I am quite keen to see where this thing will find its home. If Apple have forged a path of glory into a weird market where people dont need to transfer files easily and view a massive percentage of the webs content then good for them. But i just dont see it.

I call stealth itunes/appstore booth.

welcome to the madhouse

Ooh, welcome.


Have a look at this video of someone playing with one. At one point they are in the 'settings' application and you can clearly see there is a 'file sharing' tab. We don't get to see what that entails but my guess would be some sort of webDAV/FTP/SMB access to a sandboxed 'common file store' on it.


You mean multi-task. Given the spec rumours I've seen, it will definitely multithread.


As I posted in another thread, I think it's target market is people who want to do 'computery' things (email, the web etc) but don't actually have the technical knowhow to deal with the maintenance and troubleshooting PCs almost always require. A lot of techies (like me) will be thinking the same thing I did - 'I could buy one of those for my aged parents and then they wouldn't be ringing me up every 10 minutes because their computer is doing something weird'.


Oh yeah. It's not even that stealthy...

Hello and welcome, I hope you enjoy your stay.



Flash shouldn't matter. Complain to the web sites, they will soon change it to a compatible format if they value customers. I think H.264 is a more open standard, people like YouTube use it. Apple likes H.264 and I think it plays in normal Flash players, so if people want Apple iPhone and iPad users to see their content, they should change to H.264 for video or something like Ajax for interactive content (better accessibility).
As for a file system, Apple doesn't need a visible one. They are the Crème de la Crème of simplicity. Why have a finicky file system to organise and navigate through (on a device with limited space) when you can have Photos and Documents and Spreadsheets and Presentations? It's a much simpler and natural solution. Just odd to us geeks!
As to multi threaded, I'd have thought so, and true multi-tasking too (it's a multi-core chip by the looks of things), apparently the chip is an ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore as reported here.



I'd like to see too. I hope it takes off, the first version I've no doubt is to test the water. I'll be looking at the third or fourth generation I think...