iPad 2

You could play CoH from it via a VNC app.

O.o

Splashtop, for instance.

I'm disappointed by the lack of a new, better screen and the lack of a card slot, though to be honest I wasn't really expecting that anyway. If it had an upgraded screen, like a bigger "retina display" or one of those nice OLEDs the Sony NGP is using, I'd consider getting it. But there's not enough there for me to shell out 500 bucks yet.

Not the same. That's like saying you could drive a car with a brick on the accellerator and a couple ropes on the steering wheel.

Technically true, but it loses something in the translation.

Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.

Dude, you can play like that over a damn cellphone.

It's not the device running the program.

iPad is just a really big iPod/iPhone. That's all. It's not a computer.




-k

Or arguably, that's a hacked e-reader doing things it wasn't designed to do

Fair point, there is an e-reader that can do *some* of the things the iPad 2 can do, but it's not exactly the same thing, is it? For starters there's no camera, so no face to face comms with it, plus it's only running Android 2.1, so there's a lot fo things not going to work with it.

Not to mention that it needs hacking, something Joe and Jane Public aren't likely to do

Does look like a decent little machine though, would be tempted by it myself if the screen were a little bigger.

The thing is, it wasn't the overpiced part that amused me in your statement, it was the e-reader part, making it sound like that was all the iPad could do, when anyone can see otherwise. I definitely agree it's overpriced, said that right from the day they announced the first one, just like I argued with my daughter when she asked me for an iPod and an iPhone. Great machines but more expensive than they need to be. Plus, stupid proprietary format for mp3's is pointless and annoying.

I'd still love an iPad though

Tablets have the advantage that they can do lots of different things. Browse the web, view emails, browse photos and send them to a printer, integrate with social networking sites. These happen to be the tasks most of todays non-techie people do with their laptops.

They also provide a pretty-much idiot-proof interface for doing so, one that can be customized for each task. That's probably the biggest selling point to Mr Joe Luddite.

To me that's one of the greatest achievements of this generation of tablets (and where MS went badly wrong in the past), the interface for the iPad (and iPhone, and Android based devices) is pretty much idiot proof. There's no real tech knowledge needed for them at all (as Mr Tech Support Guy for my entire family and friends I know how badly luddites with laptops / desktops can be)

Is there total overhype in the tech media about them? Absolutely. Are the iPads overpriced. Absolutely. If you want a device mostly for a specific task, like an e-book reader, are there better options out there? Absolutely. Are they the next big thing? Well yes, they are, in terms of providing the sort of day-to-day things a lot of non-techie people do with their laptops / desktops in a non-scary interface.

I wouldn't buy one myself (we got given one as an Xmas pressie), they are way too expensive still and *I* do all of that via my phone or a laptop. But I'm not particularly the target market here, the mass-market who are still non-tech savvy are (although getting the trendy techie market also to buy them helps too).

I'd love a proper Kindle / Nook though (not sure which) although my android phone does the job at the moment for me on bus journeys (no way I'd bring an iPad on a bus myself).

At least this trend is more meaningful than the ******* "Web2.0" trend from a few years ago or the current trend for "cloud computing" which is horribly misused all over the place (iPads and smaller devices are actually something which could leverage "cloud computing" and thin client computing pretty well though).

*Edit : Note I'm not saying "Cass is wrong and I am right", more that for his own purposes Cass is bang on, he has no need of a tablet in any shape or form. Neither do I. But I do understand why they've generated so much buzz (there is of course the usual "The in-thing" reason too, people tend to snowball and go with whatever the rest of the tribe are doing).

Get her an Android phone with a decent SD card in it, they tend to be half the price of their iPhone counterparts. Plus she can nick her friends music far easier (iTunes is a total piece of dross and should be avoided at all costs).

Not that I condone piracy of course.

No. Technically it's still a computer.

It's just not the same general-purpose one we've been used to for the last 30 years. It's an instance of function following form.

Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.

Well, as a DJ, and former worker in a CD retail chain, no, neither am I

She never got the iPhone, I drew the line there, I got her a cheap iPod 3 and she's happy with that. With the exception of the camera on it, the iPod 4 wasn't that much different and she has a camera on her phone already. She's happy with her iPod though.

Myself, I have an Android phone, the awesome Xperia 10, I love it to bits, do so much on it, read books, check e-mails, go online, watch movies on the way to work on the bus, check Sky and set recordings via it for my Sky HD box at home, look at the night sky with it for constellations.....so much, I adore it and can't understand how I managed without it, tbh.

Which is probably the reason I can appreciate how good the iPad is for what it can do. I've had that taste with my phone and now want it on a larger scale and ease of use! You hit the nail on the head there in your previous post, they are damn easy to use. I'm a tech geek and was impressed how fast my technophobe wife got the hang of using it in a shop demonstration! That's what make them so impressive to me.

Still, I can't afford one, it needs more memory and a memory card slot as well, then I'll be saving the pennies for it!!

it's definitely waayyyy more than an overpriced e-erader though

Exactly.

If anything it's a variant on a low-powered netbook, one with a "custom" operating system on it, something focused on viewing and consuming data in various ways as oppose to device geared towards both view and consuming data and allowing to to edit and generate data of your own.

An I/o device rather than an I/O device, if that makes sense.

Sort of makes sense, but I really don't care what it is, I just know I like mine.

I don't read books on my iPad, that's what I have a Kindle for; e-ink is where it's at, the Nook linked somewhere above isn't an e-reader, it's a cheap tablet.

I don't read PDFs and comics on the Kindle, or watch iPlayer, or sketch, or shop, or play silly games, or browse the interweb; it's either not something it does, or does very badly; I do all of that on my iPad.

I don't have an iPhone - or any kind of 'smart-phone' - and I gave my laptop to my wife after realising I hadn't turned it on since I got the iPad - I will never buy a laptop again; I may not buy another iPad, but I know my next convenience-PC will be some kind of tablet - a proper 10" one, not one of those apologetic 'big phone' things.

My only problem with them at the moment is they're under-powered and over-priced; but so were mobile phones, laptops, cars, washing machines, televisions - just about any new technology you can name, when they first arrived; I'm looking forward to seeing where they go.

This is an understatement. From what I've seen an iPad does everything better than a smart-phone, except for telephony (obviously), playing music, and GPS navigation. Email, games, web-browsing, most apps... these are categorically better on a large display. You lose portability, but you get much more functionality in return.

You don't need to believe Tablets are the Next Big Thing™ for it to be true... they are.

What I fear for is dedicated mobile gaming machines, like the 3DS and PSP. When almost everyone has a tablet and can buy Angry Birds for $5, who's going to to pay $35 for a DS cart or PSP whatever-it-is-they-play? If the quality of games for tablets was equal to the DS and PSP, I wouldn't care, but I don't think we're there yet. Pokemon would be nice on the iPad, though.

Yeah, Like i say, I have used one, the functionality is identical to the phones as incidentally is the hardware for the iphone 4/ipad apart from the screen and the ability to make cellphone network calls.

Don't kid your self, these are not some great innovation, that was all done with iOS on the first iphone

Considering that in 2000 I had a PC with less space and visual capabilities as the iPhone, I'd consider even the iPhone a computer.

Sony is at least already thinking along these lines, with their "Playstation Suite" software running on Android. It's basically the PSP operating system retooled to be used on Android phones/tablets. Right now they say it'll only do PS1 games, but that'll change eventually:

Xperia Playstation Phone Detailed
Playstation Games Coming to Android Phones

And as for the quality of tablet games as compared to DS and PSP, well... There are quite a lot of minigames for the DS, you know? But have you seen Infinity Blade or Need for Speed? Or if you skew more toward RPGS, how about Inotia? Or you could just jailbreak and run emulators.

These are interesting developments, but I hope someone keeps in mind the weird/old school/hardcore gamer in mind. I'm talking things like Etrian Odyssey, Advance Wars, Dark Spire, Knights in the Nightmare, SMT: Devil Survivor, FF Tactics (ok, that last one was none of those things, I just love strategy RPGs ). I imagine tablet game development would skew toward the casual, while most of the games I really like aren't.

If anything it'll reduce the amount of shovelware on the systems. The iPad simply can't play the type of DS and PSP games I like.

It's the structure and layout of the OS that I consider the dividing line, not the hardware specs.

I was all ready to buy an iPad when the rumors first started to fly around and people didn't know what kinda OS it had, that it might run a version of MacOS. I can hack, modify, and do stuff with MacOS that just isn't possible with the iPhone software. But then the official announcements came and I lost all interest.



-k

If I can program it, I consider it a computer. And I can create programs to run on my iPhone/iPad. What you can't?

There are other reasons besides hardware specs that people choose a tablet, and reasons besides trendiness that folks go for an iPad over an Android tablet.