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Steve Jobs' Prescience (Or: Who Wants A Stylus?)

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Re: Steve Jobs' Prescience (Or: Who Wants A Stylus?)

#31

Post by Retric »

krschultz wrote: post #29
JMiao wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's better at most non-geeky things than your macbook pro. i know because i own both.

Is it $500 better? Compare a Macbook Pro to another laptop that is $500 cheaper. I'd argue there is $500 worth of value there. Is there $500 worth of value for the iPad over the Macbook Pro? I can think of a lot of things to do with $500 that would be better for me than buying an iPad.

A 700$ dell laptop + 500$ iPad costs less than a Apple's cheapest 15" laptop 1799$ (MacBook Pro) and Apple's 17" laptop is even more overpriced.

IMO, the best option for most people is to buy a cheap 17" laptop and an iPad. And for gamers a desktop + iPad is much more reasonable than a "gaming" laptop.

PS: When you consider how often the average users system is down (software/hardware/virus etc) having a simple independent device that lets them use email and most webpages is a huge advantage relative to spending 500$ for a better version on the same basic HW.

Re: Steve Jobs' Prescience (Or: Who Wants A Stylus?)

#32

Post by chollida1 »

joubert wrote: post #24
tibbon wrote: post #15

One of the better comments by Jobs, "It’s really true, if you’ve got a bunch of rich guys who can afford their third computer — you know, they’ve got a desktop, they’ve got a portable and now they’re gonna have one of these to read with… that’s your market!" I've got my iPhone, I've got my Macbook Pro, I've got my gaming systems (and we have a few Kindles floating around the house)... I need the iPad because?

A few kindles?

My family has a few Kindles.

If you were married to someone who read a lot then I think you'd understand. At night you just can't share the same Kindle to read 2 different books at the same time:)

Re: Steve Jobs' Prescience (Or: Who Wants A Stylus?)

#33

Post by roc »

krschultz wrote: post #29
JMiao wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's better at most non-geeky things than your macbook pro. i know because i own both.

Is it $500 better? Compare a Macbook Pro to another laptop that is $500 cheaper. I'd argue there is $500 worth of value there. Is there $500 worth of value for the iPad over the Macbook Pro? I can think of a lot of things to do with $500 that would be better for me than buying an iPad.

> "Is it $500 better?"

For me, sure.

I looked at all the things that a desktop is bad at, that the iPad is good at. Like reading on the couch, occupying the kids in the car, annotation and note-taking away from a traditional desk, reviewing a load of pictures in the field, diagramming or sketching.

I've spent more than $500 on an assortment of devices to meet those needs and none of them have been half as good as the iPad. So for me, it's absolutely worth it.

But my finding value in it certainly doesn't speak to whether you will or should. Maybe you don't have any of those needs.

Re: Steve Jobs' Prescience (Or: Who Wants A Stylus?)

#34

Post by notauser »

tibbon wrote: post #15

One of the better comments by Jobs, "It’s really true, if you’ve got a bunch of rich guys who can afford their third computer — you know, they’ve got a desktop, they’ve got a portable and now they’re gonna have one of these to read with… that’s your market!" I've got my iPhone, I've got my Macbook Pro, I've got my gaming systems (and we have a few Kindles floating around the house)... I need the iPad because?

It's no longer 2003.

A Macbook Pro equivalent back then was a lot more than $1800.

An iPhone equivalent would have been really expensive and it would have had a 10 minute battery life. Combined WiFi+GSM chip sets were still new back then. Wireless data plans were running at around £2 per megabyte (packet) or a max of ~50kbps (channel at 1.5c/min+).

Trying to build a useful tablet, with wireless capability, with the money left over in the electronics budget of the average consumer, after paying for a MBP and an iPhone? Not possible.

There would have been too many compromises for Apple at the time, whereas in 2010 they can do a pretty good job at it.

Re: Steve Jobs' Prescience (Or: Who Wants A Stylus?)

#35

Post by roc »

stcredzero wrote: post #22
froo wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can get stylus' for apple's touch devices, I recently ordered one for my iPad. It's called a Pogo Sketch I plan to use my iPad for doodling and whatnot of a night time in bed, aswell as reading and general media consumption - its really my "bed time" screen device.

The Pogo sketch works pretty well with the ArtStudio app. I can even get some "brush" effect. (No pressure sensitivity. I think it's all a software trick.)

Art Studio tapers from the start and to the end of a stroke over time of the stroke. So a faster stroke looks thinner, as more of it is drawn within the tapered times. Quite a few line strokes look quite pleasing due the effect. It's very neat.

Re: Steve Jobs' Prescience (Or: Who Wants A Stylus?)

#36

Post by astine »

Handwriting has at least one advantage over a full qwerty keyboard: It's easier for one-handed text input. I remember taking notes on a small (almost netbook small) laptop years ago during a serious of walking tours of Rome and elsewhere in Italy. I ended up turning my backpack around and placing the laptop on it so that I could type. An actual pen and paper notebook would have been easier to use, but I wanted my notes on my computer. A tablet with good handwriting recognition would have been exactly what I needed then, and I can think of other instances where people might prefer it to a keyboard. It's exactly what would be useful for taking notes while standing or walking.

Re: Steve Jobs' Prescience (Or: Who Wants A Stylus?)

#37

Post by glhaynes »

krschultz wrote: post #29
JMiao wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's better at most non-geeky things than your macbook pro. i know because i own both.

Is it $500 better? Compare a Macbook Pro to another laptop that is $500 cheaper. I'd argue there is $500 worth of value there. Is there $500 worth of value for the iPad over the Macbook Pro? I can think of a lot of things to do with $500 that would be better for me than buying an iPad.

For me, no question. I spent over $1000 to upgrade to a newer MBP just a few weeks before the iPad was announced. Beautiful machine, does just what I wanted; I still regret it. Since getting my iPad, most evenings it doesn't even get opened.

Re: Steve Jobs' Prescience (Or: Who Wants A Stylus?)

#38

Post by yequalsx »

lutorm wrote: post #12
yequalsx wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would love it if it had digital ink. Handwriting recognition means nothing to me but the ability to digitally add handwritten notes would make me buy the iPad. I was disappointed with the cancellation of the Courier. If the iPad had digital ink and the ability to digitally markup documents with ink it would be the killer educational device.

You can do handwritten notes on the iPad, I've seen it done. A coworker uses iAnnotate and a stylus to make handwritten annotations in pdf files. Looks like it works pretty well. The thing is that typing works fine for text. But as soon as you want to draw a diagram or a formula or whatever, you're way better off freehand.

I'll have to check this out. My first reaction is that since it isn't part of the operating system like digital ink is with Windows Tablet PC Edition then it's not as flexible or as usable as I'd like. Thanks for letting me know about this app.

Re: Steve Jobs' Prescience (Or: Who Wants A Stylus?)

#39

Post by Shorel »

Writing normal letters is very slow, sure. And making the system recognize ugly handwriting like mine is a torture for me and for the developers.

But, there's this thing called shorthand, used by secretaries who needed to write faster than her boss could speak.

It is still amazingly fast. The lack of proof of concept implementations of shorthand recognition is to me a failure in tablet user interface history.

You can't say it is not a good method without having tried it, and a computerized interface would convert the symbols to normal words in a second, providing instant feedback.

Re: Steve Jobs' Prescience (Or: Who Wants A Stylus?)

#40

Post by rortian »

sethg wrote: post #10
Yaggo wrote: post #3

Fully agree with Jobs. Hand writing recognization may have sounded fine idea, and is rather easy to properly implement, but the thing is that hand-writing is dying skill. Although I learnt to hand-write in childhood and did it for 15 years, nowdays I absolutely prefer typewriting (keyboard). My one-yeard-old daughter will be native typewriter. Speed recognization doesn't currently work (good enough), and if it did, s…

Do handwriting interfaces have more traction in China, Japan, and Korea?

I know they don't in Korea. Hangul lends itself to typing.
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