[Phileas]

Originally Posted by hayesk 

Yup - not only does it give you the disk space, but the WiFi too. I wonder if Apple would consider releasing a "Time Capsule Express" - basically an Airport Express with hard disk in it.

The Time Capsule comes with a Base station built in, so yes, your product idea already exists. Has been for some time.

[Spheric Harlot]

Yes, but it gives much more than the average iPad user requires, and it costs about twice what a decent backup/wireless solution should - as an add-on for iPad customers.

Make the iPad self-updateable, add a $150 wireless Time Capsule Express for full backups, and watch the iPad take over home computing.

[Paco500]

Speaking of the whole need to be tethered thing, I ran into a guy at Starbucks in London this morning who was fondling his new iPad 2. Of course I accosted him and asked his thoughts. He hadn't been able to turn it on. He'd arrived on a plane from NYC this AM with his new toy in tow, but as he didn't have a computer with iTunes available, he hadn't been able to play with it. I suggested he take it to the Apple store and see if they could get it going, but it was the issue being commented on in this thread in person.

It was really nice physically though. The size and weight really do make a substantial difference, and the smart cover was really cool.

I can't imagine hauling this very cool tool across the atlantic without being able to play with it. I would have exploded.

[Doofy]

Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot 

Make the iPad self-updateable, add a $150 wireless Time Capsule Express for full backups, and watch the iPad take over home computing.

Not with that bloody glossy screen. Half the time I wonder if I should have just stumped up a couple of quid for a mirror instead.

[Eug]

I am getting an iPad 2, but I still think of the iPad line as an internet appliance, at least for now.

Meanwhile my iPhone is my portable but crippled internet appliance, with phone capability.

Originally Posted by Paco500 

I can't imagine hauling this very cool tool across the atlantic without being able to play with it. I would have exploded.

Premature. You may need to work on that. Most people explode after the playing occurs.

[Paco500]

Originally Posted by Eug 

I am getting an iPad 2, but I still think of the iPad line as an internet appliance, at least for now.

Meanwhile my iPhone is my portable but crippled internet appliance, with phone capability.


Premature. You may need to work on that. Most people explode after the playing occurs.

Well played.

[Spheric Harlot]

Originally Posted by Doofy 

Not with that bloody glossy screen. Half the time I wonder if I should have just stumped up a couple of quid for a mirror instead.

I could care less. Not by much, though.

Glossy and matte sound the same to me.

[mattyb]

Matt?

[Spheric Harlot]

Note the lack of quotation marks.

[voodoo]

Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot 

Glossy and matte sound the same to me.

Green and blue probably sound the same too, but they don't look the same.

As for your prediction, nah. People would compare iPads to more powerful PCs if the iPads would be "independent" of PCs and the hipster/consumerist crowd would simply forget about the iPad.

You keep preaching this is "the future". The tablets/smartphones are certainly here to stay, but nothing indicates that they are "the future". They are for the foreseeable future slower and more of a compromise than any other computer.

Yeah they're as powerful as a 5+ year old Mac. My mobile phone of 2005 was more powerful than my Atari ST. But it didn't replace the Atari. The Mac did. My iPod touch is more or less the equivalent of my first iBook (2002). It could never have replaced the iBook though. Even if they had been "new" at the same time.

That's what you and Steve Jobs don't understand. (among others)

Simply that a super thin device that performs as last decade's computers, with serious I/O handicaps and usefulness "compromises", is just that.

A cool gadget. We want one because we can have one along our computer (and can afford it). iPad 2 is a fine upgrade and I'm sure most would be thrilled to own one, but that in and of itself doesn't have any *meaning*. It doesn't mean it's replacing *anything*. In fact it is an addition.

Just to point out the obvious. And the glare is annoying. Irregardless.

[mattyb]

Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot 

Note the lack of quotation marks.

Noted. Now what?

[Eug]

Originally Posted by voodoo 

A cool gadget. We want one because we can have one along our computer (and can afford it). iPad 2 is a fine upgrade and I'm sure most would be thrilled to own one, but that in and of itself doesn't have any *meaning*. It doesn't mean it's replacing *anything*. In fact it is an addition.

Well, it's replacing something in my home... An 8 year old laptop.

But yeah, it's an addition to my other two less than 2 year old laptops, and my two less than 2 year old desktops.

[Doofy]

Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot 

Glossy and matte sound the same to me.

Well I can't help it if you have cloth ears, can I?

[Shaddim]

Loving my iPad2, though typing on it can be a bitch. Not sure what people are complaining about with speed, this little sucker flies with any iOS app I throw at it, and web surfing is very speedy. Lack of flash does suck though, a lot of my favorite sites just don't look right without it.

[voodoo]

Originally Posted by Shaddim 

Loving my iPad2, though typing on it can be a bitch. Not sure what people are complaining about with speed, this little sucker flies with any iOS app I throw at it, and web surfing is very speedy. Lack of flash does suck though, a lot of my favorite sites just don't look right without it.

iPad 2; you can now not use Flash up to 9x faster!

(stolen from the interwebs somewhere)

[ajprice]

Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot 

I could care less. Not by much, though.

Glossy and matte sound the same to me.

One is glossy, one is matte...





Take your time and think about it before you answer

[Brien]

The matte is nice.

[Eug]

Originally Posted by Shaddim 

Loving my iPad2, though typing on it can be a bitch. Not sure what people are complaining about with speed, this little sucker flies with any iOS app I throw at it, and web surfing is very speedy.

Who is complaining about the speed? It's reportedly quite acceptable. Lots of people complain about the speed of the original iPad though.

[Shaddim]

Originally Posted by voodoo 

iPad 2; you can now not use Flash up to 9x faster!

(stolen from the interwebs somewhere)

Sure beats that Xoom POS that I played with last week, though. That damned thing crashed 3 times in <10 minutes, even my rooted Nook color running Froyo is more stable.

[Shaddim]

Originally Posted by Eug 

Who is complaining about the speed? It's reportedly quite acceptable. Lots of people complain about the speed of the original iPad though.

Previous posts about how tablets are underpowered and won't replace notebooks or desktops. While there was no way i would have bought a single core iPad, the new one is very respectable. While it's still too big to easily carry everywhere, I can see it replacing my MBP.

Here it is, guys. This is the new paradigm shift. Notebooks and desktops will be vanishing in <5 years. Mark my words, a thin sexy tablet that does everything you want will be the standard Mac/PC in just a few years. Buy stock accordingly.

[Big Mac]

BS. The notion that tablets will replace PCs is about as far fetched as the slightly older notion that smart phones would replace PCs. For some who have limited computing needs, tablets and smart phones do replace PCs, but PCs aren't going anywhere.

Tablets and smart phones are great for light tasks - surfing, mobile tasks, social activity. But they're never going to replace real computers for real work or high end gaming. Computing tasks that demand high processing power and large screens - those sorts of things will not be served by the tablet space.

[Spheric Harlot]

They aren't going anywhere, the same way terminal-based computing hasn't gone anywhere. Or vinyl.

You just won't see them around outside a few specialized markets.

[Big Mac]

Again, I think there's simply no basis to believe that. No one I know uses vinyl anymore, but guaranteed there will still be a large PC market in 30 years (if civilization still exists by then).

[Laminar]

"No one I know" is always the most statistically relevant of sample groups. And considering the extreme changes the computing industry has seen in the past 30 years, to make a "guaranteed" statement about what will happen in the next 30 is awfully arrogant.

[Big Mac]

We should make a wager about it.

[Spheric Harlot]

Originally Posted by Big Mac 

Again, I think there's simply no basis to believe that. No one I know uses vinyl anymore, but guaranteed there will still be a large PC market in 30 years (if civilization still exists by then).

At least one person you know does - me, and that's assuming you don't know any DJs.

The current iPad isn't the end-all.

It's the original Macintosh to the IIfx, which hit the market six years later.

By that time, nobody in their right minds still looked down upon the GUI as a toy.

[Shaddim]

Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot 

They aren't going anywhere, the same way terminal-based computing hasn't gone anywhere. Or vinyl.

You just won't see them around outside a few specialized markets.

Exactly. There will, for the foreseeable future, be markets for desktops and notebooks, but the standard will shift. The future is the ultra-portable tablet, and it'll become more evident as they become faster and as the software evolves.

[Eug]

Just a note that 30 years ago was 1981.

[MacinTommy]

Oh, the places you'll go.

[Don Pickett]

Originally Posted by Big Mac 

Again, I think there's simply no basis to believe that. No one I know uses vinyl anymore, but guaranteed there will still be a large PC market in 30 years (if civilization still exists by then).

30 years?

30 years ago almost no one had a computer in their home. Computing was done on mainframes, PDPs and dumb terminals. The idea that a desktop computer would one day relegate mainframes to a small, niche market, and completely destroy the minicomputer market, was unthinkable. Yet the CPU in machine in front of me right now has a peak throughout of 200+ GFLOPS, or many, many times faster than the Crays which ruled computing 30 years ago, and the GPU is probably three times as fast. Supercomputers are now used solely for very specialized tasks requiring the ability to move huge amounts of data around for long periods of time, and most of what they did is now handled by desktop machines or clusters of cheap desktop machines.

None of us has any idea what the computer market will look like in 30 years, but we can all be sure it won't look a thing like it does today.

That said, within ten years the desktop machines we know and love, if they're still around, will have been relegated to the small niches which need their power. Considering that, in ten years, tablets--or whatever they've morphed into--will be much more powerful than my Mac Pro, it's conceivable that the desktop machine will be almost non-existent.

[Big Mac]

It's very optimistic to think that tablets will be as powerful as todays Mac Pros in ten years. Even if processor technology continues to develop at a pace to meet that level, battery technology isn't going to.

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by Big Mac 

It's very optimistic to think that tablets will be as powerful as todays Mac Pros in ten years. Even if processor technology continues to develop at a pace to meet that level, battery technology isn't going to.

To think that tablet technology can not advance beyond today's laptops in 10 years is overly pessimistic.

The only reason why I could see this happening is a major recession with a collapse of the world economy, which could cripple our ability to invent. Technology is not the limiting factor, resources and economy could be.
I personally *AM* that pessimistic, but I'm hardly the mainstream.

-t

[Big Mac]

I'll be very, very impressed if the tablets a decade from now match or exceed today's Mac Pros. Color me skeptical but I don't think that's realistic given the constraints of the tablet form factor.

[Spheric Harlot]

Originally Posted by Big Mac 

I'll be very, very impressed if the tablets a decade from now match or exceed today's Mac Pros.

They won't need to.

Specialized needs will still require specialized computers.

It's just that "normal" computers will be iPad-descended.

BTW:
The first-generation iPad is more than 30% faster* than the fastest Power Mac available ten years before its release (the G4 500 (7400) AGP graphics).

The Power Mac cost $3500.

*) according to Geekbench, 450 vs. 330. The iPhone 4 gets 370.

[voodoo]

Originally Posted by Big Mac 

I'll be very, very impressed if the tablets a decade from now match or exceed today's Mac Pros. Color me skeptical but I don't think that's realistic given the constraints of the tablet form factor.

The tablets of today don't match nor exceed Power Macs from 10 years ago. Which was the jan. 2001 733 MHz PowerPC 7450 (G4) also available in 533 MHz dual processor model, expandable to 1.5 GB RAM. 133 MHz frontside bus. I guess the GForce3 video card isn't as advanced as the 3D thing in the A5, but it had 64 MB of dedicated VRAM, of which the A5 has zero.

In all other aspects a 10 year old PowerMac meets or exceeds the latest tablet from Apple.

[mattyb]

Originally Posted by Don Pickett 

30 years ago almost no one had a computer in their home. Computing was done on mainframes, PDPs and dumb terminals. The idea that a desktop computer would one day relegate mainframes to a small, niche market, and completely destroy the minicomputer market, was unthinkable. Yet the CPU in machine in front of me right now has a peak throughout of 200+ GFLOPS, or many, many times faster than the Crays which ruled computing 30 years ago, and the GPU is probably three times as fast. Supercomputers are now used solely for very specialized tasks requiring the ability to move huge amounts of data around for long periods of time, and most of what they did is now handled by desktop machines or clusters of cheap desktop machines.

I don't like the comparison of Crays to mainframes. There were (and are) two type of large computing markets. Mainframes, 99% of the time running z/OS and 99% of the time running on IBM's hardware. These machines are for banks, insurance, large supermarket chains. They are (and I'm stealing this quote from elsewhere) the 18 wheelers of the computer world. IBM's mainframe sales are doing very well thankyouverymuch. Have search on IBM IMS and read the success stories.

The other type of large scale computing is the stuff you hear about, the HPCs, the large clusters, the stuff for fluid dynamics, nuclear simulations, weather etc. This stuff isn't done on mainframes. The Top500 are these types of computers. Walmarts 12 mainframes in a Sysplex with god-knows how many tera behind it never get a mention - unless someone starts talking about database size.

I have no idea about the mini-computer market. We know that VMS and the wonderful Alpha have bitten the dust, but the AS400? I know at least one company that uses lots and lots.

[Eug]

The tablets of today do not exceed Power Macs from 10 years ago in raw computing power. This much is true, at least by some measures.

OTOH, tablets feel several times faster than Power Macs from 10 years ago for what they do, for modern OSes. Just try to run Safari on a G4 500 Power Mac. Sure, the Power Mac can't run iOS, but that's besides the point.

[voodoo]

Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot 

They won't need to.

Yes they will.

Specialized needs will still require specialized computers.

Like pocket calculators. More complicated is the new simple!

It's just that "normal" computers will be iPad-descended.

If Apple and Steve Jobs have their way, yes.

But the most egregious lie:

BTW:
The first-generation iPad is more than 30% faster* than the fastest Power Mac available ten years before its release (the G4 500 (7400) AGP graphics).

The Power Mac cost $3500.

*) according to Geekbench, 450 vs. 330. The iPhone 4 gets 370.

The dual 500 MHz G4 PowerMac of 2000 gets more than 3000 megaflops (see: here, it's italicized in the text, the new iPad 2 up to 420 megaflops (see: here). Picture that. A ten year old desktop CPU about 6x faster than the 'high end' offering of "cutting edge" tablets today.

The ARM is no G4. Simple as that. The iPad isn't some magical "super-thing" without massive tradeoff in performance, which is why it's incredibly optimized, running very special custom chips to achieve exactly the iPad experience and why most apps are indeed something like you'd find in the late 90s. People make small apps for it for a reason. It appears fast, which is great - but sell your lie somewhere else that it actually *is* fast, compared to even 10 year old towers. That simply doesn't hold water.

The iPad is fine and all, but it's not powerful. Today's PCs are damn powerful. The iPad brings us back to the 90s in computer performance (and then not even the high-end computers of the 1990s)

[Don Pickett]

Originally Posted by mattyb 

I have no idea about the mini-computer market. We know that VMS and the wonderful Alpha have bitten the dust, but the AS400? I know at least one company that uses lots and lots.

The mainframe market has shrunk, though. Yes, IBM still does good business selling their systems, but almost all of the other mainframe makers--UNIVAC, NCR, Unisys/Burroughs, Siemens--have either disappeared or moved on to making other things. Same with minis: the AS400 is about the last one standing, DEC and other having gone the way of the Dodo. Are they still around? Yes. Are there as many of them as their used to be? Not nearly.

One easy way to see the change is to look at scientific and engineering computing. 20 and 30 years ago it was dominated by mainframes and minis--lots and lots and lots of VAXs. Now it is dominated by fast desktops (a lot of OS X machines in the scientific world) and clusters of cheap desktops. My dad used to run FEA (finite element analysis) on big iron. Nowadays they have what he refers to as "cheap Unix machines"--a cluster--which does the same thing. I don't think they've rented time on anything big for a long time.

[Eug]

Originally Posted by voodoo 

The dual 500 MHz G4 PowerMac of 2000 gets more than 3000 megaflops (see: here, it's italicized in the text, the new iPad 2 up to 420 megaflops (see: here). Picture that. A ten year old desktop CPU about 6x faster than the 'high end' offering of "cutting edge" tablets today.

The ARM is no G4. Simple as that. The iPad isn't some magical "super-thing" without massive tradeoff in performance, which is why it's incredibly optimized, running very special custom chips to achieve exactly the iPad experience and why most apps are indeed something like you'd find in the late 90s. People make small apps for it for a reason. It appears fast, which is great - but sell your lie somewhere else that it actually *is* fast, compared to even 10 year old towers. That simply doesn't hold water.

The iPad is fine and all, but it's not powerful. Today's PCs are damn powerful. The iPad brings us back to the 90s in computer performance (and then not even the high-end computers of the 1990s)

I'm replacing a iBook G4 1.07 GHz with an iPad 2... because the iBook G4 is too slow.

Over the past two years Apple has been quite successful in paying off content providers (YouTube) and leveraging their high iPhone and increasing iPad installed base to get those content providers to stream Flash-less H.264.

Unfortunately, Safari on an iBook G4 requires Flash to play back these same videos from the same content providers, but Flash on the iBook G4 is too slow. What about just fooling the content providers and faking an iPad user agent? Well, that wouldn't work either because H.264 on a G4 sucks. The A4 and A5 have been optimized for H.264 playback.

Note however, that we still have modern PCs and Macs. There will be some content that doesn't play on the iPad (and that's still quite annoying in 2011), but then again it doesn't play on the iBook either, so we still need the modern laptop/desktop as a fallback, and for real work.

I agree that laptops and desktops are going to be around in the mainstream for a long while. But to argue that the iPad 2 is not a compute demon is missing the very important point that for basic usage, the change in the internet has been enormous, and the iPad 2 is specifically geared for that. In fact, I too underestimated the shift. I was expecting the shift to go slower, and had predicted I might buy the iPad 3 in 2012 (or late 2011), when the internet supported these tablets better. Well, here we are in early 2011 and I'm waiting to get my iPad 2 when it goes on sale in Canada... to replace a 1 GHz G4 multi-Gigaflop computer. I thought the original iPad was too slow too (and didn't buy one), but judging by the specs and the reports, the iPad 2 is an enormous leap forward in perceived and real-world performance.

[turtle777]

LOL, we're back at arguing about iPad dick size processing power.

Nobody fricking cares. For 95% of the users, it will not matter at all how a tablet stacks up in computing power to past desktop or laptop computers.

-t

[Phileas]

We just picked up iPads Gen1 iPads for all our staff. We'd been thinking about it for a while, the recent drop in price made it possible.

Gen1 is fine for what they'll be used for.

[Eug]

Originally Posted by Phileas 

We just picked up iPads Gen1 iPads for all our staff. We'd been thinking about it for a while, the recent drop in price made it possible.

Gen1 is fine for what they'll be used for.

If you're free to answer... what will they be used for?

BTW, back last year I argued the iPad was too expensive for what it did. I said it should be priced more like, $300, and a $500 machine should be much faster. Well, today the iPad is $350, and the $500 machine is twice as fast. Not bad

Originally Posted by turtle777 

LOL, we're back at arguing about iPad dick size processing power.

Nobody fricking cares. For 95% of the users, it will not matter at all how a tablet stacks up in computing power to past desktop or laptop computers.

Actually it does. The iPad with iOS has superior computing power in the real world for H.264 playback, as compared to a G4 Mac of a decade ago armed with OS X 10.5. This makes a big, big difference in the surfing experience and watching downloaded videos.

[turtle777]

You actually confirmed that raw computing power does NOT matter.
A sophisticated OS is what makes thing work and "magical" in the eyes of most users.

-t

[mattyb]

Originally Posted by Don Pickett 

The mainframe market has shrunk, though. Yes, IBM still does good business selling their systems, but almost all of the other mainframe makers--UNIVAC, NCR, Unisys/Burroughs, Siemens--have either disappeared or moved on to making other things. Same with minis: the AS400 is about the last one standing, DEC and other having gone the way of the Dodo. Are they still around? Yes. Are there as many of them as their used to be? Not nearly.

True, but while there may be less machines, apparently the MIPS sold is going through the roof. Linux running on top of z/VM running in a mainframe LPAR is proving very popular.

From my understanding IBM did everythign they could to push HDS/Amdahl out of the mainframe market. But there was probably also some business decisions behind their withdrawl as well.

Originally Posted by Don Pickett 

One easy way to see the change is to look at scientific and engineering computing. 20 and 30 years ago it was dominated by mainframes and minis--lots and lots and lots of VAXs. Now it is dominated by fast desktops (a lot of OS X machines in the scientific world) and clusters of cheap desktops. My dad used to run FEA (finite element analysis) on big iron. Nowadays they have what he refers to as "cheap Unix machines"--a cluster--which does the same thing. I don't think they've rented time on anything big for a long time.

I think that it was Catia that used to run on mainframes. When I started being a sysprog, SGI workstations were the thing to have for the engineering types. Then the FEA and CAD and whatnot software houses started to release Windows versions - bye bye SGI. Pity, I always thought purple was a nice colour for a computer.

[Eug]

Originally Posted by turtle777 

You actually confirmed that raw computing power does NOT matter.
A sophisticated OS is what makes thing work and "magical" in the eyes of most users.

Actually no. The raw computing power of the iPad 2 for this purpose is actually much higher than a decade old G4 Power Mac, because the iPad 2's ARM chip was specifically designed for it.

Back in 2005 when the G4 and G5 were king, we did some testing. The only way people could get 720p HD H.264 to play back smoothly was to have a dual 1 GHz G4 or a single 1.6 GHz G5. Both my 1 GHz G4 iBook and my 1.7 GHz G4 Cube (with 100 MHz bus) stuttered badly, with a frame rate of around 12 fps.

Even if you could put iOS on an old G4 Power Mac, it would perform more slowly than an A5 for H.264 playback, meaning that 720p H.264 still would not work properly because the G4's raw compute performance for this task is too low. To put it another way, if you installed a slim version of Linux on a G4, you're still gonna have major problems with H.264 playback.

[Don Pickett]

Originally Posted by Eug 

If you're free to answer... what will they be used for?

Please say world domination. Please say world domination.

[Don Pickett]

Originally Posted by mattyb 

I think that it was Catia that used to run on mainframes. When I started being a sysprog, SGI workstations were the thing to have for the engineering types. Then the FEA and CAD and whatnot software houses started to release Windows versions - bye bye SGI. Pity, I always thought purple was a nice colour for a computer.

It's gotten to the point where my dad has actually written some of his own FEA software, to run under Windows on his desktop.

[voodoo]

Originally Posted by Eug 

I'm replacing a iBook G4 1.07 GHz with an iPad 2... because the iBook G4 is too slow.

Yeah, it's too slow for "basic" things today, though it is mostly the graphics performance. Granted that's what counts more - since that's what we perceive and in fact use very much. I mean, my pathetic 2004 Ericsson DB2011@100MHz based SE K700i (512 kB RAM) cell phone had *way* better 3D support and color depth than most computers of 1994 (10 years earlier) granted on a way smaller screen, the phone could play MP3s, use pretty decent 3D textures at high framerate and whatnot... much more impressive than a 1994 computer! (which was at Doom 1 at the time)

All I see is history repeating and the people who went all gooey-eyed over mobile phones have discovered mobile phones with a big touch screen now. And pads. In fact this discussion of post-PC devices is reminiscent of the "consoles vs. computers" discussion of the 90s/early 2000. Until consoles basically became computers. Until then they were smaller than most computers and highly optimized (yet really low performers in general computing)

Been there, done that. Have the T-shirt. Computers are still here.

[voodoo]

Originally Posted by turtle777 

LOL, we're back at arguing about iPad dick size processing power.

Nobody fricking cares. For 95% of the users, it will not matter at all how a tablet stacks up in computing power to past desktop or laptop computers.

-t

That's the sales pitch and it's sort of correct - in the sense that people use tablets and such in the same way as cell phones.

i.e. not computer replacements, but rather "add-ons" or gadgets. People (I dare say) don't care about the MHz of their cell phone. But then, they don't use it as they'd use their PC. As soon as people actually have to *do* something on their 'gadget', speed (along with all the appropriate geekery) becomes important.

And that's one of the many limitations of the tablets/smartphones. And it's also one of the many reasons they are in fact not "post-PC" devices.

That's just sales talk.