Everything you mentioned can already be done in Mobile Safari, Check.in (from the Brightkite folks) is a web application that makes use of local HTML persistance, geolocation, and hides the browser controls. It looks and behaves exactly like a native iPhone app.
It's just that your fundamental premise about what Apple did is so totally wrong it actually makes everything else you said seem more wrong than it would otherwise.
I elaborated above. CocoaTouch != Cocoa.
Uh, dude? You do realize that the iPhoneOS running on your iPad is a scaled down version of OSX, which is a desktop OS, which is a scaled up version of NeXTStep
Yeah, in 1992 I was doing my emailing and Usenet reading from a NeXT box, so I kinda get it.
Guess what? iPhone OS is OSX scaled down.
The APIs that people actually code to, CocoaTouch, are completely new. They resemble the Cocoa APIs, and even share a few method names, but they are not the same, which is one of the first things OS X programmers realize when they try to just recompile something they’ve written for the desktop. The kernel is the same, but I think we can agree that kernels are pretty much commodities at this point.
No, you have no idea what you're talking about, as we've already established; Windows CE is its own OS and not based on another Windows, so it's not scaled down from anything,
The HP device I thought we were discussing here was demoed as a Windows 7 tablet, which, as you note, has nothing to do with WinCE. Why are you moving the goalposts? I may be mistaken here, but does the WinCE family support multitouch at all?
More products are probably cancelled than actually brought to market. Microsoft cancels things all the time. WinFS anyone?
One big way Apple’s been kicking people’s butts is by only showing things that become real products. It’s a lesson the rest of the industry should pay attention to.
Oh wait, you're ignorant of history, sorry about that. Or are you being deliberately obtuse?
Cool, that was pretty much the Elvis Presley of ad hominems. i salute you.
You are the typical happy iPad owner, using a revisionist view of history to "prove" your point, and justify your purchase. Too bad you're 100% wrong.
Well, I might as well just go home, then.
Honestly curious (not trying to be snarky), but how many truly tablet-centric applications did you regularly use? What proportion of the time we're you using applications that were really optimized for the form factor?
My (admittedly biased) experience has been that requiring developers to really think about the platform results in ultimately more satisfying applications.
It’s become pretty clear at this point that scaling a smartphone OS up, rather than scaling a desktop OS down, is the better approach. Someone had to stick their necks out and try it. Microsoft tried and failed to scale Windows down, but Apple has apparently succeeded going the other way. Let’s not forget that the outcomes were far from obvious even as recently as a few months ago. HP getting on stage with Microsoft in January was their throwing in their lot with the desktop approach. I think they’ll ultimately come out happier having reconsidered. It actually took corporate chutzpah for them to cancel the Windows 7 Slate after showing it.
It is a stopgap, at best. Someone needs to take the time, do the research, and do the work to write an OS for these devices instead of trying to patchwork add and remove bits and pieces of systems clearly designed for other purposes.
You may be right, but remember: shipping is a feature, and, IMO, the most important one.
(disclaimer: happy iPad owner here...)
Sanyo != Sanrio.
Just because someone checks Facebook using their iPhone doesn't mean that things have really changed, mobile devices are still crappy for doing just about anything on the internet. Yeah, I might read a blog or two, check the news, etc. but its painful to do so, even on the best devices.
Not trying to be snarky here, but have you actually spent any real time browsing on an iPad? A couple of months ago I might have agreed with you about the quality of the web browsing experience on mobile devices, but now I've owned an iPad for a month and use it full time at night and on weekends. The big reveal is with a fast browser on a large enough screen, mobile browsing really isn't painful. Browsing on the iPad really is a desktop quality experience for anyone who can't be arsed with Flash (I use a blocker on the desktop)
So, basically, your response boils down to "you're not me." Thanks for that, it really adds to the conversation.
The iPad is not sold as a standalone computing device -- it's plainly stated that iTunes running on OS/X or Windows is required for syncing. My media server (which is also the system that handles video downloads for the house) has an instance of Air Video Server running.
I should state that I have a netbook running Ubuntu as well. I nearly never used it for video playback except for files I'd preprocessed on a beefier machine, anyway, as it labors mightily when dealing with video that hasn't been downsampled. It's a much less pleasant video consumption environment than the iPad (less portable, runs hot, has noisy fans, and an inferior display.)
I say this all not to say if the iPad will or will not supplant netbooks, just to note that if you think of it as only a consumption device you are missing out on a lot of what it can do, and do well.
It's actually very well suited for certain varieties of content creation. I co-edit a music blog and I'll be covering a music festival later this month. I'll be shooting event photos with a DSLR, transferring them to my iPad, and posting directly to the blog via the Wordpress app all from the event grounds. In previous years, I'd have to take a full day's photos home and batch upload them in the wee hours between festival days. The much greater portability is actually going to make a big differencenin how well I can cover the festival.
AirVideo will happily transcode pretty much any modern video file you throw at it for iPad viewing.
it would be silly to go point by point on this, suffice to say that half the things you say aren't possible on the iPad actually are.
I'm lying flat on my back in bed responding to this post on an iPad while my wife is asleep next to me, which would be very nearly impossible on a netbook, let alone anything larger.
Your use cases are not universal, and I know mine aren't. The myopia so many of my neckbearded brethren have is the inability to perceive why anyone would ever prioritize features and usability in ways different from their own. The fact that so many people still fall back on bullet point lists whenever discussing products illustrates this more clearly than any comment I could post.
Not only does it work fine in the stock Mobile Safari, but it's a cleaner view than in most desktop browsers because there's lex extraneous embed chrome in the webview: http://l.freeke.org/wkwlg
"Once is an Accident, twice is a Coincidence, and three times is a Pattern."
Beware of Programmers who carry screwdrivers. -- Leonard Brandwein
