Necrotron

I cannot agree with you. There are so many use cases where multitasking is absolutely required for your productivity and your sanity. Please, hear me out; I don't want to flame at you, I want you to understand where I'm coming from.

Take a read of this man's article.

Now, this argument is largely moot with multitasking coming in the fall, but please; don't underestimate how necessary this is.

I implore you to read the whole article with an open mind. This man loves Macs, but his problem is that there is no real need for or good use of the device. Not if you already have a laptop.

The second generation iPad may be different, with other features that are sorely lacking on this iteration, but we aren't there yet.

My neck hurts.

Agreed. It still makes me frown, though. Thankfully, Android seems to be growing at a frankly meteoric pace, if you correlate the number of apps created per month with marketshare, so this isn't going to be a one-horse iPod race.

Back on topic, the iPad won't get the new iPhone OS update until "Fall". Frankly, I find this to be ridiculous, launching a whole new category of devices, announcing Major Huge Features a mere 5 days later after it has already done all of the world's press, then saying these Major Huge Features won't arrive for many months. In my limited anecdotal evidence, iPad lovers and haters alike agree that this is incredibly annoying.

Yes! That's genius. Make something with HTML5 up the wazoo. That's how Google have managed to get their unapproved apps on the iPhone, you just go to the web site in question and add the bookmark to your home screen. No developer license, no approval from Apple, no cost.

SuckerPunch's planner definitely seems more appropriate than a port of Mid's. The possibilities intrigue me.

This should also work on competing handsets, depending on what resolutions the UI supported.

On that note, the iPad is incapable of saving PDFs for later viewing. Well, iPad Safari is, anyway. I'm not sure if you'd be able to transfer them over by iTunes or whatever.

I agree with what you say, and yet I disagree on a fundamental level. You're right in that the iPad is creating a new platform, a new and completely independent category of devices to live alongside a smartphone and a computer or Mac, but I do not believe that this category is long for this world.

I can insult the iPhone until my lungs are worn out, my cheeks are blue, and my brain is frazzled (and I frequently do) but I cannot deny the success Apple had in completely reinventing the smartphone as we know it. They managed to totally change people's conceptions on what a phone could be. No amount of debating will take that away from them. Even Android, my platform of choice, takes many cues from the interface paradigms that Apple created.

But the iPad feels too arbitrary. The iPhone came into a market previously dominated by Blackberry, Nokia's symbian phones, and the jungle of Windows Mobile phones, all of which were categorically a nightmare. Blackberries were generally the more polished of the lot, but I still don't believe ease of use was a concern. With the post-iPhone market, Palm, Google, and Microsoft are now chasing Apple.

But the iPad is going up against laptops; netbooks, notebooks, and even Macbooks. It's undoubtedly very slim (and rather attractive), but at 12", it competes against far tougher game for space in my laptop bag. And here, of course, is another problem; Even if you take absolutely no accessories with you, including the charger (which may be possible given the battery) and you use only the included case, you will still be putting it in a bag. I can't imagine myself walking through town, on a train, in my car, or in university carrying around the iPad all on its own. I will have a bag for it, and I will take it out as needed. In this, it is no longer living alongside my laptop - it is competing directly with it.

In contrast, there is the smartphone. This competes with nothing but other phones. It is, by default, in your pocket. There is a supreme level of convenience here. You don't have to think about which phone you bring with you; you just take your phone and go. It lives in harmony with your laptop or computer. In contrast, if I had an iPad, there would be very little chance of me taking it out of the house if I had a laptop (or Macbook) to choose from.

This is a problem with all tablet devices. I simply do not believe that this category of device is going to take off.



I've been keeping an eye on the World's Press about the iPhone, and there seems to be one universal criticism: No multitasking. I'm not very good with words, so I shall quote someone else.

Again, I'm not here to be inflammatory. I just want my opinion on this heard.

Agreed.

This may be fixable, assuming that it is due to heat, but in all likelihood you will need a new graphics card.

What we can only assume is happening is that some data is being corrupted in your RAM, either due to a GPU error or a bad chunk of RAM; this leads to a single artefact in the game, rather than consistent artefacts that would be seen if all the RAM was playing up.

Give the card a clean, use GPU-Z to check out what temperature it's running at. If you cannot fix the issue by cleaning it, then I'm confident we can help you pick a new GPU at the right price.

On a related note, I recall one man whose GPU heatsink got so hot that it partially melted; the fan was actually dangling off the graphics card, held on only by the little power cable.


One other thing. I'm pretty sure you haven't actually told us what your graphics card is.

All completely true. Also, realise that I had no idea that I'd be getting a 22" widescreen monitor at the time. I knew that it would hammer my GPU something fierce, but went for it anyway. But I'll fully admit I bought the 320MB card with a 1280x1024 monitor in mind.

You were wrong on one count, though; I could have afforded a 640MB version. That £30 difference was well within reach. Yes, I am a numpty.

I do indeed keep my texture detail in control, and I can get playable framerates in most games if I keep the texture detail low; but as you pointed out, it can get very noticeable. I'm actually rather happy that Aliens vs Predator runs on my graphics card at all.

Personally I'm getting revved up for the GeForce 400 launch in two weeks, so I can get myself a 5850 in confidence.

I'm a visual man, who is all about the metaphors and the real examples, so let me make that live for you.

I'm running an 8800GTS 320MB. There is an otherwise identical GPU with double the RAM, at 640MB. At the time, when I had a 19" LCD monitor and with the games that were out those years ago, it was a better buy than the 640MB, even though there was only £30 in it. There was no real-world performance difference between the two outside of a big fat 2560x1600 widescreen monitor.

So. I saved £30, got a GPU with half the memory, and it was just as fast. Gravy.

Skip ahead a year. Now I find my GPU to be straining. But it's an 8800, and it still shoops woops.

A few months later I get myself a 22" widescreen LCD. Now cracks start appearing in the paintwork. Games that are otherwise modest start to take far too much of a toll. I look on a few benchmarks, like the Toms Hardware charts, and...

...the 640MB card is now twice as fast as my measly 320MB thing in every modern game.

Today, my GPU is a joke. Game developers have generally accepted 512MB as a minimum for that class of card, and mine doesn't meet that. I cannot run antialiasing on a new game, even Batman, which has special nVidia wizadry that allows AA to go like the clappers on the Unreal Engine-powered beast. (Aside: deferred rendering doesn't play well with AA, apart from when seen in Batman: Arkham Asylum.)

So there you have it. If I had spent £30 more at the time, my GPU would be twice as fast. All due to the RAM.

Man, I love you right now.

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