As usual great keynote preso from steve jobs. I have to say i have mixed feelings about this new device from apple. I still can’t decide my overall opinion, but here are few thoughts
- Pricing seems decent, starting at $499 for wifi and $629 for wifi+3g models. This is definitely nice, not having to shell out another 1000$ as reported.
- No camera! Lot of rumors about front facing vs back facing camera, possible login with face recognition etc. Sadly, there is no cam!
- Nice dock with keyboard and charger! Looks beautiful, and much better than the soft keyboard. I wonder if has a soft keyboard as well.
- Price is competitive to netbooks.
- Looks like a big ipod Touch! If I buy an app on iphone/ipod, can i have it on the ipad too? or do i have to buy it again?
- Even just being a color kindle is not bad. Kindle has an iphone app and all iphone apps are supposed to be 100% compatible with iPad, so why buy a kindle? Can we order kindle books without a kindle?
- I already have a kindle, but i wouldn’t buy a kindle anymore over an ipad, if i were looking at a ebook reader.
- Borders seems to be the biggest loser here.
- If I were in the market for a netbook, iPad would be near the top of the list as well.
- Battery life seems to be a potential issue.
Overall, neat device, but nothing revolutionary. The key thing is that apple got their foot in two segments that are growing very fast – netbooks, ebooks. Let’s hope the next revisions of these devices are even that much better
According to the presentations, you can sync the apps you already have… just pull it out of the box and sync. Not sure what you mean by “soft keyboard”… you mean one on the touch-panel display? That was shown multiple times in the keynote. I wonder why there’s a need for the keyboard accessory if it’s bluetooth… can’t I just use my bluetooth keybaoard? (Say, come to think of it, why can’t I use my bluetooth keyboard with my iPhone???)
The iPad was pretty much what I expected, but I’ve got to say that I had a much different opinion of Steve Job’s presentation skills this time… I was embarrassed for him, it was so bad. He spent so much time showing things everyone already knew about (“Look, you can surf the web!”) and way too little time sweeping us up in how /this/ version of the experience we already know is /magical/. And the way he revealed the price… snoooze. Could have been *so* much better, as I suggest here: http://regex.info/blog/2010-01-29/1440
Jeffrey
Yes, I saw the soft keyboard, after a little bit. But all the buzz seems to be about the new processor. Sadly, even though the new processor seems great, it is disappointing to hear that the iPad cannot support multi-tasking
I agree. If it was now, I would have thought of buying iPad instead of the Kindle. However I think I may go with Kindle since I need that as a reading device that won’t strain my eyes. The iPad does not have e-Ink like Kindle and would be harsher on your eyes. In my point of view iPad has been a disappointment. It is just a big iPod Touch – no innovations.