Apple Sues HTC for Patent Infringement

The iPod touch's greatest weakness is its small size. Eliminate that and you have something you can really use for ebooks and video (and for that matter, an ebook reader and 10" portable DVD player duct-taped together already cost as much an iPad even before you throw in the digital picture frame). But having a larger landscape for multitouch apps represents a lot of potential.

The greatest weaknesses of a PC are its complexity and its UI. A PC is complex enough that a novice user can either completely fuck it up or is terrified to try doing more than a limited number of tasks with it. And that's an inclusive or.

PG, in 2001:

"When you own a desktop computer, you end up learning a lot more than you wanted to know about what's happening inside it. ... My mother has a computer that she uses for email and for keeping accounts. About a year ago she was alarmed to receive a letter from Apple, offering her a discount on a new version of the operating system. There's something wrong when a sixty-five year old woman who wants to use a computer for email and accounts has to think about installing new operating sytems. Ordinary users shouldn't even know the words "operating system," much less "device driver" or "patch."" http://www.paulgraham.com/road.html

Even if you're accessing web apps, people still have to wrangle with the operating system a good deal. People need a limited device that gets out of the way and doesn't need them to administer it. And it turns out that a limited device can also make some security guarantees about running native apps, as well.

The keyboard/mouse UI is pretty nice, but still a weakness in some respects. Keyboards are fast and mice let you do spacial things with a screen. Unfortunately, keyboards in most contexts have somewhat arbitrary effects ("/" means search, "command-z" means undo) so people don't use them outside of entering text, and mice are not especially fast. Both devices are also rather indirect. Multitouching a handheld device is about as fast as a keyboard and probably even more intuitive than a mouse. And the directness is unmatched. It can even reproduce maybe 70% of a keyboard just by pushing a keyboard up onto the screen. This seems obvious in retrospect now that we've had iPhones for years, but once again--the weakness of the iPhone and iPod touch is the small screen size.

And in the laptop context, the keyboard and trackpad physically get in your way. Why have a touchpad which indirectly controls a cursor when you can just touch the screen? The keyboard has more use, but when you take the tradeoff of eliminating it, you can get a lot closer to the screen and carry it around in a usable state far more easily. I've spent a lot of time carrying around open laptops, and it's pretty unwieldy.

I don't think the iPad will be revolutionary until it doesn't require a PC to sync to. It would also help if it was cheaper--cheap enough that you could have one in each room, at least. And I'm not completely convinced myself. But there are enough signs that they're onto something that I'm intrigued.

I'm in the same boat. I think Apple should consider adopting that bullshit "Don't be evil" mantra.

You're stating it's not useful to you. You're not the target market for the iPad. I personally don't have much of an interest in the iPad, but I'm not willing to go out and say that nobody else will.

You could care less. But you know better than to download malware. Most people don't, and I'm sure you know that if you've ever had to fix someone's computer over the holidays.

As for netbooks? Triad them. Screen's too small for the elderly. Apple lets you zoom up things you can't see. I have horrible vision, and I have an ipod touch and a netbook. Guess which one I surf on? It ain't the netbook.

I really think they're targeting people who don't want a computer who want the Internet for entertainment, and nothing more. It's a good sized market. Time will tell if I'm wrong.

FWIW, I may buy an iPad to play with. But here's the crutial point - I can't see it being useful to my kids, or my mum, who are most certainly in the market you describe.

My mum has a macbook, which serves her fine. My kids have Netbooks with Ubuntu netbook remix which also is great for browsing the web.

I just don't see how the form factor makes sense. I can just see the write-ups now - highly irritating to use for long periods, aching hand/neck, too easy to drop, etc etc

Yeah but that's your family. In my house, Kid #1 slings a macbook and a netbook with no problem. Kid #2 is 2. She loves looking at pictures on the iPod. Kid #2 will be hacking soon enough. But that's the environment I created, and I guess it's just like yours.

Kid #1's friends have computers, but they don't use them like we use them. They use email and Facebook. (Yes, I know, I already covered Flash games previously, so we'll need to see on that one.)

They don't know or care how their computer works, they use Internet Explorer cos it's there, and they don't download software because they've had to pay so much to have it removed by GeekSquad.

This is a smart move by Apple. It'd be smarter if they'd just make Flash work, put a couple of USB ports on the thing, and let it be a master for an ipod.

The fact that you need a win or mac box with iTunes to get music on this thing could very well be the one thing that keeps it out of the reach of the everyman. In that case, you and I are in total agreement.