Why the iPad isn't for me • Hacker News Board

Re: Why the iPad isn't for me

#91

Post by slillibri » Tue, Apr 13, 2010, 10:03 PM UTC

VBprogrammer wrote: post #90

swannodette wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1263033 If you are creative person (musician, visual artist, designer, writer), the iPad might very well be the first usable digital sketchpad for your medium. I tire of people saying the iPad is primarily for consumption; it's simply not true. It may not appeal to the computer hacker, but it certain appeals to many other kinds of hackers.

I would contest that a visual artist will not be satisfied with the lack of pressure sensitivity, a designer unimpressed with the relatively small screen size, a musician with the lack of high quality audio outputs and I can't come up with a single reason a writer would prefer an iPad over a regular laptop. I think what the iPad will do is move touch interfaces into the main stream for a much larger class of devices.…

Here is a video of Yoshitoshi ABe sketching on the iPad. http://www.japanator.com/ipad-zomg-amazing-scribbles-by-yosh...

Re: Why the iPad isn't for me

#92

Post by roc » Tue, Apr 13, 2010, 10:16 PM UTC

conanite wrote: post #81

roc wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Clearly it should inform your purchase decision, but why should it be scary ? No one device is for all people to do all things. So why should a particular weakness inherent in this form-factor be scary ?

It doesn't scare me as a user - it scares me that yet another device encouraging passive consumerism may become immensely popular. It's sad to become used to hearing "I can't cook/sing/draw/dance/code/whatever" - I would rather live in a world where everyone is a producer of some sort, in a way that content and culture are not monopolised by Big Industry. Maybe 'scary' was a bit strong - I'm not exactly trembling und…

Even creators must consume most forms of Art. Musicians watch movies; woodcarvers leaf through photo-journals, dancers rarely compose their own music.

Ergo, the machine that a hundred creators are most likely to have in common, is one that consumes well. It seems the only thing we should logically expect is consumption and popularity to go hand in hand.

But what exactly about the iPad acts as a break on creation?

It isn't suited to composing and editing large blocks of text out-of-the-box; but only a couple forms of Art require that.

Notably, the iPad is an arguably better machine for the creation of every art you explicitly called out, save coding.

Does a cook need a keyboard and mouse in the kitchen? Seems a quick-reference that can sit in a recipe-book-holder and doesn't require putting down the butcher knife would be welcome.

Wouldn't a dancer be better off with a machine that is easily picked up, put down, carried through a routine at half-speed and can naturally scrub through an instructional video? (My wife has already used my iPad to do exactly this.)

Wouldn't a singer suitably benefit from an iPad on a music stand, showing instant pitch-feedback (via its microphone) and live-scrolling note chart?

And clearly drawing is more-easily done on a tablet than with a mouse.

As a big fan of creation, I'm downright excited that such a device has come to market that gets more cruft out of the way and brings computing to the natural habitats of other artists.

That only developers with serious tools can code for it, and only at Apple's pleasure certainly isn't ideal. But that isn't so huge a roadblock and the up-side is that we're enabling all these other arts.

Re: Why the iPad isn't for me

#93

Post by commieneko » Tue, Apr 13, 2010, 10:16 PM UTC

VBprogrammer wrote: post #90

swannodette wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1263033 If you are creative person (musician, visual artist, designer, writer), the iPad might very well be the first usable digital sketchpad for your medium. I tire of people saying the iPad is primarily for consumption; it's simply not true. It may not appeal to the computer hacker, but it certain appeals to many other kinds of hackers.

I would contest that a visual artist will not be satisfied with the lack of pressure sensitivity, a designer unimpressed with the relatively small screen size, a musician with the lack of high quality audio outputs and I can't come up with a single reason a writer would prefer an iPad over a regular laptop. I think what the iPad will do is move touch interfaces into the main stream for a much larger class of devices.…

I'm a visual artist, both digital and old school, charcoal and oil paint variety. 35+ years experience. I love drawing on my iPod Touch and expect to love the iPad even more. I can imagine better (always can) but short of sticking a 21 inch Cintiq into my back pack when I got out sketching or to life drawing session, the iPad will be the best bet for a while.

Re: Why the iPad isn't for me

#94

Post by Splines » Tue, Apr 13, 2010, 10:20 PM UTC

Psyonic wrote: post #79

briancooley wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My kid has a leapfrog, but that doesn't curb her curiosity about other devices. I don't know how it is with others, but my kid is fascinated with all my computers. My netbook, my MBP, my Droid, my Touch, and now my iPad. I don't discourage her curiosity. We had a VIC-20 when I was a kid and later a Commodore 64, and that's probably the reason I love programming to this day. What she wants most of all is for her paren…

I don't have kids, but I'd feel exactly the same about letting her explore and try out things. What I was saying was that if it was a disappointment for you, but your 3 year old loved it, it's probably not worth keeping. Child curiosity can be appeased for less than $500. Now if you loved it as well, it's a different story.

> Child curiosity can be appeased for less than $50

Definitely. My daughter loves play-acting with her toys (most of which are just cheap plastic things from Toys R Us). Pencils and crayons with reams of paper last for quite some time. Blocks, balls, and mini versions of adult things (e.g., toy phones, kitchen appliances) that let them play pretend, are all great hits.

In my experience, the specific toys (i.e., the ones that have clearly defined "play" scenarios) are the ones that get great attention for an hour, and then are left at the back of the closet until we get rid of them.

Computer software is similar - my son loves any building/open world type game (simcity, bridge builder, the sims, harvest moon), but usually loses interest at games that have very specific goals (most platform type games, although mario and the lego games seem to be exceptions).

Re: Why the iPad isn't for me

#95

Post by commieneko » Tue, Apr 13, 2010, 10:23 PM UTC

slillibri wrote: post #91

VBprogrammer wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would contest that a visual artist will not be satisfied with the lack of pressure sensitivity, a designer unimpressed with the relatively small screen size, a musician with the lack of high quality audio outputs and I can't come up with a single reason a writer would prefer an iPad over a regular laptop. I think what the iPad will do is move touch interfaces into the main stream for a much larger class of devices.…

Here is a video of Yoshitoshi ABe sketching on the iPad. http://www.japanator.com/ipad-zomg-amazing-scribbles-by-yosh...

Fantastic! ABe is a classically trained artist and an incredible draftsman. For years I've been trying to find examples of his non-anime/manga work, which I've read is _very_ good.

Re: Why the iPad isn't for me

#96

Post by pyre » Tue, Apr 13, 2010, 10:31 PM UTC

roc wrote: post #83

crux_ wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That the iPad is consistently classified as a media consumption device seems an attempt to trivialize its significance by people who consider themselves power users. Not really. It comes from an idealism that technology (especially the internet) would, speaking broadly, shift our society away from a centralized model where the many are beholden to the few and towards something more distributed and egalitarian. If y…

I'd think if you truly cherish that goal (as I do) you'd have noticed by now that no single device or technology represents a step of any significance in any direction. It wasn't the existence of the internet that changed the creator:consumer ratio for the better. It was the use of the internet as such. And that use exploded thanks to any number of consumption-focused technologies along the way. Consider that even if…

> its net effect has been positive for entire classes of software that are as-of-yet implausible via the internet.

I'm curious as to what you're referring to here.

Re: Why the iPad isn't for me

#97

Post by paul9290 » Tue, Apr 13, 2010, 10:31 PM UTC

Apple should have forgotten about the iPad and focused on Apple TV. Selling an Internet box with a Boxee like interface and all the content from the studios we seek. Sell various subscriptions. That would be revolutionary and yet will take a years to get there due to the studios getting huge wads of their revenue via cable TV. Who the majority of us hate our cable company and long for substitute like the Apple TV mentioned here.

Re: Why the iPad isn't for me

#98

Post by illumin8 » Tue, Apr 13, 2010, 10:32 PM UTC

akadien wrote: post #6

Neither is it for me. I'm sending mine back. Things I don't like: (a) Eye strain, (b)It doesn't provide enough utility for me to justify another device in my life, and I don't want another media consumption device. In short, it's another toy. (c) An awkward device angle when touch-typing and trying to read what I'm typing.

Sell it on eBay. They seem to be going for around $575+ for the 16GB model. It's not really a bad profit: getting paid $75 to play with a new toy for a week.

Re: Why the iPad isn't for me

#99

Post by illumin8 » Tue, Apr 13, 2010, 10:34 PM UTC

VBprogrammer wrote: post #89

troystribling wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That the iPad is consistently classified as a media consumption device seems an attempt to trivialize its significance by people who consider themselves power users. I agree that currently the use cases of most applications fall into this category, that it is expensive and I doubt you will ever do application development on a device of its form factor, but it is clearly not just a media consumption device. A few exam…

I would caution against using the music creation applications as good examples of iPad applications. Firstly, musicians rarely skim on their gear, if an iPad and a $10 App will do the same job as a bit of hardware costing twice the price more than half of them will buy the hardware. I've not used a synth very much but I doubt a touch screen provides an adequate replacement for the musical keyboard, nevermind the more…

For music instruments, multitouch is an amazing revolution. For too long, we've been restricted to either very expensive control surfaces with physical knobs and faders, or software solutions which required a mouse and only let us move one virtual fader or knob at a time.

Now, I can turn a 10" screen into any imaginable control surface, including using all 10 fingers to move multiple objects at the same time. It's heaven. The iPad does what you would have had to spend $thousands for previously in the recording/mixing world.

Re: Why the iPad isn't for me

#100

Post by commieneko » Tue, Apr 13, 2010, 10:35 PM UTC

kenjackson wrote: post #76

necubi wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you've actually used the iPad to browse the web. Personally, I block flash on my desktop and rarely find reason to unblock it, so the lack of flash doesn't bother me. Meanwhile, surfing on the iPad is in general so nice that I've been doing it even when near my computer.

It's a great experience for browsing a web page. But here's something I had to do when I had my iPad, which sucked with it, but is great on desktop: We have a wiki and I needed to move a bunch of comments to work items in our bug database. So on my desktop I would have just have two instances of the browser open and would literally read from the wiki and create new work items in the bug database. On the iPad this was…

The side by side issue for windows, especially browsers is intrinsic in the small screen size. For now, the desktop is the place for activity like that.

However ... Remember all those Star Trek episodes with people sitting at a desk with _several_ pad like devices spread out in front of them; like a paper covered desk? Now imagine a similar situation with several tablet devices that have some type of screen bridging/device linking software. I can easily imagine scenarios where this will be useful. Now imagine combining that _with_ a desktop display.

Frankly, I think there is a big future in tablet and multi-screen devices as adjunct input and manipulation platforms. Dig up a copy of a short anime called _Pale Cocoon_ and watch what the people are doing with the computer interfaces in that show. Whether or not the UI concepts would actually work in real life, the ideas presented are _very_ much worth thinking about.