We're talking about usability, not viruses. Try to stay on topic (that topic being the off-topic tangent).
Though it's funny as a "multi-touch interface" makes ME go wtf. I'm only imagining what the less computer illiterate are gonna do with it.
That whole thing about having 50 gestures or whatever...yeah, that doesn't really sound like an interface improvement to me. And regardless of their functionality (or lack thereof), I've always had ergonomics problems using Apple's keyboards and mice, especially that flat one
Though it's funny as a "multi-touch interface" makes ME go wtf. I'm only imagining what the less computer illiterate are gonna do with it.
The 80 million or so people already using it with the iPhone and iPod Touch seem to be getting on.
I was wondering where "80 million" came from, but looking at Wikipedia (if it's accurate), apparently they recently broke 70 million between the two models.
Well, yes, it is a rather ballsy advertising line.
But of course, common sense tells us that advertising is supposed to be great deal of lying mixed with embellishing the truth and then some degree of actual, unaltered truth. So that's okay.
This type of logic has always bothered me. There's a reason that we have truth in advertising laws.
And before anyone overreacts, I am NOT saying that Apple has broken any laws. My point is simply that shrugging off misleading rhetoric by saying "meh, it's advertising, it is supposed to be misleading" does a detriment to our fellow consumers who are less informed than ourselves.
You want to talk about poor design; without purchasing some kind of peripheral, the only way to type on an iPad is hunt and peck with one finger, while holding it with the other hand.
Or by setting it on your lap or your desk. I can't think of too many content-creation modes one can engage in during situations where you can't sit down. It's true that it's hardet to use the keyboard when riding on the subway; that's not usually when I'm doing work.
set it on your desk, and it will rock around unless you hold it steady.
Well, yes, it is a rather ballsy advertising line.
But of course, common sense tells us that advertising is supposed to be great deal of lying mixed with embellishing the truth and then some degree of actual, unaltered truth. So that's okay.
This type of logic has always bothered me. There's a reason that we have truth in advertising laws.
And before anyone overreacts, I am NOT saying that Apple has broken any laws. My point is simply that shrugging off misleading rhetoric by saying "meh, it's advertising, it is supposed to be misleading" does a detriment to our fellow consumers who are less informed than ourselves.
I do think it is detrimental. At the same time, it's so common that I'm not sure what to do about it.
You want to talk about poor design; without purchasing some kind of peripheral, the only way to type on an iPad is hunt and peck with one finger, while holding it with the other hand.
You want to talk about poor design; without purchasing some kind of peripheral, the only way to type on an iPad is hunt and peck with one finger, while holding it with the other hand.
How does that differ from any tablet PC?
Oh, if you want to know how the device differs from other tablet PCs, I can give you a long list.
You want to talk about poor design; without purchasing some kind of peripheral, the only way to type on an iPad is hunt and peck with one finger, while holding it with the other hand.
How does that differ from any tablet PC?
Oh, if you want to know how the device differs from other tablet PCs, I can give you a long list.
Should we start with USB?
Well yeah, it's got the Apple "looks > function" bullshit like the Mac Air had, but the issue in question isn't part of that.
Hunt-and-Peck and Arm-Strain-orama are pretty standard Tablet "perks".
You want to talk about poor design; without purchasing some kind of peripheral, the only way to type on an iPad is hunt and peck with one finger, while holding it with the other hand.
How does that differ from any tablet PC?
Oh, if you want to know how the device differs from other tablet PCs, I can give you a long list.
Should we start with USB?
Well yeah, it's got the Apple "looks > function" bullshit like the Mac Air had, but the issue in question isn't part of that.
Hunt-and-Peck and Arm-Strain-orama are pretty standard Tablet "perks".
sure
the difference, in my mind, is the advertised (directly and indirectly) usage
tablet PCs are generally expected to be used anywhere you use your laptop.
iPads have been passed off as being more mobile than a laptop, but they aren't actually designed to make typing any easier in any of those mobile locations.
You want to talk about poor design; without purchasing some kind of peripheral, the only way to type on an iPad is hunt and peck with one finger, while holding it with the other hand.
How does that differ from any tablet PC?
You can plug a $4.99 standard-format usb keyboard into a tablet PC - or if you're rollin' with the big bucks and want it to be portable you can shell out for one of those roll-up flexible keyboards for the midas-ransoming sum of $24.99.
For some reason I suspect that if you want a keyboard to work with your iPad, you're looking at a fifty dollar investment to start with. This is just my prejudice though; I don't actually know anything about the iPad. It also neglects to take into consideration that the hypothetical expensive iPad keyboard is probably wireless or really very sexily designed or has some other unquantifiable value-add which everyone will assure me justifies the fact that it is fully ten times the cost of the perfectly functional keyboard I use every day.
I'm surprised, though, that there isn't some sort of "thumbboard-mode" that supports holding the ipad with two hands and typing with two thumbs, (maybe dividing the keyboard to the sides of the screen to make all the characters reachable?) because there are already plenty of people who can manage like 70wpm doing this on their iPhones.
You want to talk about poor design; without purchasing some kind of peripheral, the only way to type on an iPad is hunt and peck with one finger, while holding it with the other hand.
How does that differ from any tablet PC?
Other than the fact that one's an oversized PDA and the other is a full featured computer? I swear, redefining tablets as primarily PIDs and media players is the bigest problem I have with Apple at the moment.
But to answer the question, (other than the fact that the vast majority of tablet PCs have keyboards like regular laptops), 1. you're using a stylus instead of fingers, which is an order of magnitude more accurate. 2. there's also text recognition, both for sentences and indivual characters, which is actually pretty accurate. At least more accurate than trying to type on the iphone keypad (the ipad's actually isn't that bad, I'll admit, even though the ergonomics leave much to be desired)
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AtomikaLive fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered Userregular
For some reason I suspect that if you want a keyboard to work with your iPad, you're looking at a fifty dollar investment to start with. This is just my prejudice though; I don't actually know anything about the iPad. It also neglects to take into consideration that the hypothetical expensive iPad keyboard is probably wireless or really very sexily designed or has some other unquantifiable value-add which everyone will assure me justifies the fact that it is fully ten times the cost of the perfectly functional keyboard I use every day.
It uses bluetooth. Use whichever keyboard you like.
You want to talk about poor design; without purchasing some kind of peripheral, the only way to type on an iPad is hunt and peck with one finger, while holding it with the other hand.
How does that differ from any tablet PC?
Some tablets comprise of 2 parts, much like a laptop. The screen basically covers a full-size keyboard and swivels out when you want to use it. Don't know if the majority out there use a full touch screen, or a stylus, but there is a great deal of diversity out there when it comes to true tablets.
For some reason I suspect that if you want a keyboard to work with your iPad, you're looking at a fifty dollar investment to start with. This is just my prejudice though; I don't actually know anything about the iPad. It also neglects to take into consideration that the hypothetical expensive iPad keyboard is probably wireless or really very sexily designed or has some other unquantifiable value-add which everyone will assure me justifies the fact that it is fully ten times the cost of the perfectly functional keyboard I use every day.
It uses bluetooth. Use whichever keyboard you like.
Google tells me they start at $19.99.
I haven't been able to find one under 50.
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AtomikaLive fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered Userregular
For some reason I suspect that if you want a keyboard to work with your iPad, you're looking at a fifty dollar investment to start with. This is just my prejudice though; I don't actually know anything about the iPad. It also neglects to take into consideration that the hypothetical expensive iPad keyboard is probably wireless or really very sexily designed or has some other unquantifiable value-add which everyone will assure me justifies the fact that it is fully ten times the cost of the perfectly functional keyboard I use every day.
It uses bluetooth. Use whichever keyboard you like.
Google tells me they start at $19.99.
I haven't been able to find one under 50.
Like I said, go to Google.
Most of the nice ones are in the $50-ish range, granted.
If I want to type on a tablet, natively, how can I accomplish that task in any way other than the way I would do on an iPad, i.e. holding it with one hand and typing with the other?
The USB thing is a red herring. If you really want USB you can buy a camera connector for 29 bucks. Before you yell "THAT'S TOO EXPENSIVE" it also comes with an SD card reader which makes it a very good bargain in my opinion.
Could the iPad come with USB? No, because it is too thin for that.
If I want to type on a tablet, natively, how can I accomplish that task in any way other than the way I would do on an iPad, i.e. holding it with one hand and typing with the other?
I believe the idea of a split thumbboard was menthioned earlier.
My point was more that, you can't. So putting this device forward as anything other than it is is silly.
as for the USB dongle having an sd card reader, those are pretty standard on laptops these days too.
If I want to type on a tablet, natively, how can I accomplish that task in any way other than the way I would do on an iPad, i.e. holding it with one hand and typing with the other?
The USB thing is a red herring. If you really want USB you can buy a camera connector for 29 bucks. Before you yell "THAT'S TOO EXPENSIVE" it also comes with an SD card reader which makes it a very good bargain in my opinion.
Could the iPad come with USB? No, because it is too thin for that.
To each their own, I suppose, but software for handwriting recognition has gotten much better since the Newton and it seems more natural to hold a tablet in one hand and write with a stylus in the other than it is to bust out a bluetooth keyboard and find a nice place to set up, or to tap glass.
If I want to type on a tablet, natively, how can I accomplish that task in any way other than the way I would do on an iPad, i.e. holding it with one hand and typing with the other?
I believe the idea of a split thumbboard was menthioned earlier.
My point was more that, you can't. So putting this device forward as anything other than it is is silly.
as for the USB dongle having an sd card reader, those are pretty standard on laptops these days too.
To add to this, I use a tablet PC, it functions just as a laptop would, built in keyboard and everything, except my screen is touch sensitive. I use this thing all the time in my biochemistry studies and its great. It looks just like a laptop.
I don't think Apple themselves recognized the iPad as a tablet, they simply created a niche between tablet and netbook and convinced people that they needed their product.
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AtomikaLive fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered Userregular
Also, I'm pretty sure that having some kind of Stylus input, be it wacom or the more crappy resistive solutions, is a part of the Tablet PC spec
Now this I will heartily chide Apple about. The iPad seems for all intents a machine built insistently for stylus-based drawing and painting applications, yet it dodges any allusion to that fact at all times. Despite, even, the fact that several companies make very affordable styli that work to that purpose.
For some reason I suspect that if you want a keyboard to work with your iPad, you're looking at a fifty dollar investment to start with. This is just my prejudice though; I don't actually know anything about the iPad. It also neglects to take into consideration that the hypothetical expensive iPad keyboard is probably wireless or really very sexily designed or has some other unquantifiable value-add which everyone will assure me justifies the fact that it is fully ten times the cost of the perfectly functional keyboard I use every day.
It uses bluetooth. Use whichever keyboard you like.
Google tells me they start at $19.99.
Bluetooth keyboards are hella sexy. I was trying to find one on Newegg a few months back though and they didn't go under $50, which is actually why I quoted that particular number (without even knowing for sure that the iPad does bluetooth keyboards, so I must be psychic!) I suspect that if I were an iPad customer, I wouldn't be at all bothered by this limitation. But I still believe this is a very relevant distinction to make between the iPad and competing devices, not so much because of how hugely relevant it is to the consumer experience as for the operating philosophy that it indicates. Apple does not want their sleek, aesthetically pleasing device to be seen in coffee shops with unsightly usb cables all dangling off of it, and their customer base is by and large nonplussed by the fact.
Of course, the same decision (I'm making the inference here that the iPad either has USB but acts as a device instead of a host, or that it has no USB at all; I don't actually know :P ) which limits keyboards to bluetooth also cuts iPad users off from the thousands upon thousands of other USB devices which it might otherwise have been used with, like digital cameras. But this, too, is perfectly okay with the iPad's customers. This is because the iPad isn't being sold as a full-featured computer despite packing hardware that would have outclassed the desktop machines of less than a decade ago. It's sold as a "mobile internet device" or something to that extent, even though it costs as much as a full-function computer, because the iPad has other value-adding features than acting like a desktop computer which these customers find more valuable.
So I'll consider, in the cool light of sobriety, the actual extent of these features. First among them, in my (admittedly uneducated, since I've barely used the iPhone and never seen an iPad) view, is access to the spectacular variety of apps in the store. I know more than one person who uses an iPhone because of some unbelievably arcane profession-specific task that someone, somewhere, has solved with an excellent app, allowing the iPhone to perform tasks that would otherwise require some specialized piece of equipment (costing way more than the iPhone) to accomplish. Another is the multi-touch UI, which I haven't played with myself but have no difficulty believing is a completely revolutionary and wonderful thing. Supposedly the customer support is generally good, but my personal experience was unfortunately the opposite; still, I hear this regularly enough that they must be doing something right. The final element is the solid build quality & aesthetics, for which Apple has earned a well-deserved reputation.
What all of these "value-adds" except the app store have in common, which I find interesting, is that everyone is equally competent to evaluate them. Steven Fry can evaluate their utility, and Steve Jobs can evaluate their utility, and each of them are just as subjectively accurate in their assessments, because these things can only be assessed subjectively. But nerds like me typically focus on concrete performance; I can determine the duration of my battery's life by timing it, run benchmarks to establish the flops my cpu puts out or bytes of memory I have, but the solidity of a Macbook's keyboard is a tactile sensation which is difficult to add to a comparison of simple numerical values of flops and bytes. The app store, really, is the exception; in part as a result of the hardware and OS mandating a friendly, simple interface by virtue of technical limitations real and fabricated, and even more importantly by creating an easy way for programmers to sell their programs, they've established a backlog of genuinely useful programs. If you have a critical task accomplished by a relatively cheap iPhone program, then this can be an instant dealmaker. In this way the app store can (circumstantially) provide the concrete evidence of the iProduct's superiority that performance-focused users have frequently failed to assess favorably in other Apple offerings.
But this is also why nerds in particular are bothered by Apple's now increasingly tight controls over their app store ecosystem; even though they have always been restrictive, and inasmuch as it has mandated good UI design I believe this rigidity has added to the utility of the device, it sets a worrying precedent when Apple (in the course of pursuing an unrelated conflict with Adobe) shuts down some of the functionality of this ecosystem. Like the 1984 ebooks that Amazon remotely deleted, even though the case described in this thread does not itself represent a significant direct failure of the device, the policy which it seems to represent, wherein the functional qualities of the software marketplace whose merits sell an appreciable portion of Apple's devices are apt to be altered in the course of a turf war, is disturbing to some prospective customers. And this is where it's all tied together, bluetooth keyboards, this long rant, the topic from the OP, and the thread's present digression into a religious war about whether Apple's products are worth their premium pricing: if you buy Apple, or would, you probably already sympathize with the notion that more control for Apple will be better for Apple customers and their kickass $20 bluetooth keyboards. But the sort of person who is already skeptical of Apple's wide margins and unquantifiable value-adds is likely see this questionable restriction of the Great App Phenomenon's features as a hostile move that only the kool-aid-drinking luddite Apple customers would stand for.
It's sort of... polarized, but I'm not sure which side I'm on myself. On the one hand, I did love my Macbook Pro, and zooming in and out of maps on the iPhone is sweet. On the other hand, I'm increasingly certain that the terrifying cyberpunk dystopia I live out my senescence in will be dominated by companies who acted as shrewdly in their manipulation of the information market as Apple and Google have. Oh well. With any luck, when I die, I'll be resurrected as a Dragoon (beta) by Google. If I'm to become a terrifying abomination of steel and murder, I'd like to at least be able to view my own source code.
All this "value add" for an App on your iPhone assumes you can actually FIND the damn thing on the App Store.
Which is no easy task.
Again, seconded.
It's puzzling that when I input a search for "artists' reference," I have to wade through fifty unrelated games and gewgaws to get to the apps that are headlined, "Artists' reference."
You want to talk about poor design; without purchasing some kind of peripheral, the only way to type on an iPad is hunt and peck with one finger, while holding it with the other hand.
How does that differ from any tablet PC?
Most Tablet PCs are convertibles and hybrids, which come with a keyboard. The reason they represent the majority of the market is because they have a keyboard.
You want to talk about poor design; without purchasing some kind of peripheral, the only way to type on an iPad is hunt and peck with one finger, while holding it with the other hand.
How does that differ from any tablet PC?
Most Tablet PCs are convertibles and hybrids, which come with a keyboard. The reason they represent the majority of the market is because they have a keyboard.
Bingo. It's a laptop with additional functions, not an iPhone losing the thing which makes it useful (small size).
And checking the weight of tablets against the iPad, it isn't too bad, about another 9 ounces.
I don't know if you're being sarcastic here, but 9 ounces is 255 grams and it's a lot.
Half a pound isn't a lot to me, but I can understand if it is a dealbreaker for others.
With those kind of numbers, I'd probably be more worried about the actual shape of the product and other concerns.
They are certainly thicker, since the keyboard is built in.
I am, personally, of the firm opinion that at a certain point, thinness is no longer useful (and indeed, is a liability in terms of cost and actual hardware).
Which is one of the reasons I did not get the MacBook Air at all. I could only see that being a novelty, same with any other really, really thin notebooks. Apple or any other company can't avoid the simple laws of reality, so screen size is directly tied to the size of the notebook. And at that point, since being able to carry a notebook in a manila envelope isn't really a useful feature, a netbook just seems so much more practical.
Really, it made no sense to me, beyond novelty value. Same goes for the Dell and Mitsubishi models that did the same thing. There is such a thing as too thick, but there is also too thin, unless your intended purpose for the laptop is to have it sit in one place, connected to the rest of the hardware you need.
And checking the weight of tablets against the iPad, it isn't too bad, about another 9 ounces.
I don't know if you're being sarcastic here, but 9 ounces is 255 grams and it's a lot.
Half a pound isn't a lot to me, but I can understand if it is a dealbreaker for others.
With those kind of numbers, I'd probably be more worried about the actual shape of the product and other concerns.
They are certainly thicker, since the keyboard is built in.
I am, personally, of the firm opinion that at a certain point, thinness is no longer useful (and indeed, is a liability in terms of cost and actual hardware).
Which is one of the reasons I did not get the MacBook Air at all. I could only see that being a novelty, same with any other really, really thin notebooks. Apple or any other company can't avoid the simple laws of reality, so screen size is directly tied to the size of the notebook. And at that point, since being able to carry a notebook in a manila envelope isn't really a useful feature, a netbook just seems so much more practical.
Really, it made no sense to me, beyond novelty value. Same goes for the Dell and Mitsubishi models that did the same thing. There is such a thing as too thick, but there is also too thin, unless your intended purpose for the laptop is to have it sit in one place, connected to the rest of the hardware you need.
I could see thin being useful for a single purpose device that does not need to connect to any thing else ever. A dedicated e-Reader that is the width of a magazine, for instance. The moment that you start to make the device convergent, you are sacrificing features for width, though, and at that point, things start to get absurd. Make it a little wider, and give it USB ports, a camera, whathaveyou.
And checking the weight of tablets against the iPad, it isn't too bad, about another 9 ounces.
I don't know if you're being sarcastic here, but 9 ounces is 255 grams and it's a lot.
Half a pound isn't a lot to me, but I can understand if it is a dealbreaker for others.
With those kind of numbers, I'd probably be more worried about the actual shape of the product and other concerns.
They are certainly thicker, since the keyboard is built in.
I am, personally, of the firm opinion that at a certain point, thinness is no longer useful (and indeed, is a liability in terms of cost and actual hardware).
Which is one of the reasons I did not get the MacBook Air at all. I could only see that being a novelty, same with any other really, really thin notebooks. Apple or any other company can't avoid the simple laws of reality, so screen size is directly tied to the size of the notebook. And at that point, since being able to carry a notebook in a manila envelope isn't really a useful feature, a netbook just seems so much more practical.
Really, it made no sense to me, beyond novelty value. Same goes for the Dell and Mitsubishi models that did the same thing. There is such a thing as too thick, but there is also too thin, unless your intended purpose for the laptop is to have it sit in one place, connected to the rest of the hardware you need.
I could see thin being useful for a single purpose device that does not need to connect to any thing else ever. A dedicated e-Reader that is the width of a magazine, for instance. The moment that you start to make the device convergent, you are sacrificing features for width, though, and at that point, things start to get absurd. Make it a little wider, and give it USB ports, a camera, whathaveyou.
E-Readers are, at least in my mind, a different product, and thus, come with different expectations. Thickness is of added importance.
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That whole thing about having 50 gestures or whatever...yeah, that doesn't really sound like an interface improvement to me. And regardless of their functionality (or lack thereof), I've always had ergonomics problems using Apple's keyboards and mice, especially that flat one
I was wondering where "80 million" came from, but looking at Wikipedia (if it's accurate), apparently they recently broke 70 million between the two models.
That's a lot of units.
Completely different interface.
Your mouse is not the monitor.
This type of logic has always bothered me. There's a reason that we have truth in advertising laws.
And before anyone overreacts, I am NOT saying that Apple has broken any laws. My point is simply that shrugging off misleading rhetoric by saying "meh, it's advertising, it is supposed to be misleading" does a detriment to our fellow consumers who are less informed than ourselves.
set it on your desk, and it will rock around unless you hold it steady.
no macheads have made comments about PCs and viruses in five years?
Really?
I do think it is detrimental. At the same time, it's so common that I'm not sure what to do about it.
How does that differ from any tablet PC?
Oh, if you want to know how the device differs from other tablet PCs, I can give you a long list.
Should we start with USB?
Well yeah, it's got the Apple "looks > function" bullshit like the Mac Air had, but the issue in question isn't part of that.
Hunt-and-Peck and Arm-Strain-orama are pretty standard Tablet "perks".
sure
the difference, in my mind, is the advertised (directly and indirectly) usage
tablet PCs are generally expected to be used anywhere you use your laptop.
iPads have been passed off as being more mobile than a laptop, but they aren't actually designed to make typing any easier in any of those mobile locations.
You can plug a $4.99 standard-format usb keyboard into a tablet PC - or if you're rollin' with the big bucks and want it to be portable you can shell out for one of those roll-up flexible keyboards for the midas-ransoming sum of $24.99.
For some reason I suspect that if you want a keyboard to work with your iPad, you're looking at a fifty dollar investment to start with. This is just my prejudice though; I don't actually know anything about the iPad. It also neglects to take into consideration that the hypothetical expensive iPad keyboard is probably wireless or really very sexily designed or has some other unquantifiable value-add which everyone will assure me justifies the fact that it is fully ten times the cost of the perfectly functional keyboard I use every day.
I'm surprised, though, that there isn't some sort of "thumbboard-mode" that supports holding the ipad with two hands and typing with two thumbs, (maybe dividing the keyboard to the sides of the screen to make all the characters reachable?) because there are already plenty of people who can manage like 70wpm doing this on their iPhones.
Other than the fact that one's an oversized PDA and the other is a full featured computer? I swear, redefining tablets as primarily PIDs and media players is the bigest problem I have with Apple at the moment.
But to answer the question, (other than the fact that the vast majority of tablet PCs have keyboards like regular laptops), 1. you're using a stylus instead of fingers, which is an order of magnitude more accurate. 2. there's also text recognition, both for sentences and indivual characters, which is actually pretty accurate. At least more accurate than trying to type on the iphone keypad (the ipad's actually isn't that bad, I'll admit, even though the ergonomics leave much to be desired)
It uses bluetooth. Use whichever keyboard you like.
Google tells me they start at $19.99.
Some tablets comprise of 2 parts, much like a laptop. The screen basically covers a full-size keyboard and swivels out when you want to use it. Don't know if the majority out there use a full touch screen, or a stylus, but there is a great deal of diversity out there when it comes to true tablets.
Like I said, go to Google.
Most of the nice ones are in the $50-ish range, granted.
If I want to type on a tablet, natively, how can I accomplish that task in any way other than the way I would do on an iPad, i.e. holding it with one hand and typing with the other?
The USB thing is a red herring. If you really want USB you can buy a camera connector for 29 bucks. Before you yell "THAT'S TOO EXPENSIVE" it also comes with an SD card reader which makes it a very good bargain in my opinion.
Could the iPad come with USB? No, because it is too thin for that.
I believe the idea of a split thumbboard was menthioned earlier.
My point was more that, you can't. So putting this device forward as anything other than it is is silly.
as for the USB dongle having an sd card reader, those are pretty standard on laptops these days too.
To each their own, I suppose, but software for handwriting recognition has gotten much better since the Newton and it seems more natural to hold a tablet in one hand and write with a stylus in the other than it is to bust out a bluetooth keyboard and find a nice place to set up, or to tap glass.
To add to this, I use a tablet PC, it functions just as a laptop would, built in keyboard and everything, except my screen is touch sensitive. I use this thing all the time in my biochemistry studies and its great. It looks just like a laptop.
Now this I will heartily chide Apple about. The iPad seems for all intents a machine built insistently for stylus-based drawing and painting applications, yet it dodges any allusion to that fact at all times. Despite, even, the fact that several companies make very affordable styli that work to that purpose.
If by "100% DRM-free" you mean "except for all that stuff you already bought," then sure.
Bluetooth keyboards are hella sexy. I was trying to find one on Newegg a few months back though and they didn't go under $50, which is actually why I quoted that particular number (without even knowing for sure that the iPad does bluetooth keyboards, so I must be psychic!) I suspect that if I were an iPad customer, I wouldn't be at all bothered by this limitation. But I still believe this is a very relevant distinction to make between the iPad and competing devices, not so much because of how hugely relevant it is to the consumer experience as for the operating philosophy that it indicates. Apple does not want their sleek, aesthetically pleasing device to be seen in coffee shops with unsightly usb cables all dangling off of it, and their customer base is by and large nonplussed by the fact.
Of course, the same decision (I'm making the inference here that the iPad either has USB but acts as a device instead of a host, or that it has no USB at all; I don't actually know :P ) which limits keyboards to bluetooth also cuts iPad users off from the thousands upon thousands of other USB devices which it might otherwise have been used with, like digital cameras. But this, too, is perfectly okay with the iPad's customers. This is because the iPad isn't being sold as a full-featured computer despite packing hardware that would have outclassed the desktop machines of less than a decade ago. It's sold as a "mobile internet device" or something to that extent, even though it costs as much as a full-function computer, because the iPad has other value-adding features than acting like a desktop computer which these customers find more valuable.
So I'll consider, in the cool light of sobriety, the actual extent of these features. First among them, in my (admittedly uneducated, since I've barely used the iPhone and never seen an iPad) view, is access to the spectacular variety of apps in the store. I know more than one person who uses an iPhone because of some unbelievably arcane profession-specific task that someone, somewhere, has solved with an excellent app, allowing the iPhone to perform tasks that would otherwise require some specialized piece of equipment (costing way more than the iPhone) to accomplish. Another is the multi-touch UI, which I haven't played with myself but have no difficulty believing is a completely revolutionary and wonderful thing. Supposedly the customer support is generally good, but my personal experience was unfortunately the opposite; still, I hear this regularly enough that they must be doing something right. The final element is the solid build quality & aesthetics, for which Apple has earned a well-deserved reputation.
What all of these "value-adds" except the app store have in common, which I find interesting, is that everyone is equally competent to evaluate them. Steven Fry can evaluate their utility, and Steve Jobs can evaluate their utility, and each of them are just as subjectively accurate in their assessments, because these things can only be assessed subjectively. But nerds like me typically focus on concrete performance; I can determine the duration of my battery's life by timing it, run benchmarks to establish the flops my cpu puts out or bytes of memory I have, but the solidity of a Macbook's keyboard is a tactile sensation which is difficult to add to a comparison of simple numerical values of flops and bytes. The app store, really, is the exception; in part as a result of the hardware and OS mandating a friendly, simple interface by virtue of technical limitations real and fabricated, and even more importantly by creating an easy way for programmers to sell their programs, they've established a backlog of genuinely useful programs. If you have a critical task accomplished by a relatively cheap iPhone program, then this can be an instant dealmaker. In this way the app store can (circumstantially) provide the concrete evidence of the iProduct's superiority that performance-focused users have frequently failed to assess favorably in other Apple offerings.
But this is also why nerds in particular are bothered by Apple's now increasingly tight controls over their app store ecosystem; even though they have always been restrictive, and inasmuch as it has mandated good UI design I believe this rigidity has added to the utility of the device, it sets a worrying precedent when Apple (in the course of pursuing an unrelated conflict with Adobe) shuts down some of the functionality of this ecosystem. Like the 1984 ebooks that Amazon remotely deleted, even though the case described in this thread does not itself represent a significant direct failure of the device, the policy which it seems to represent, wherein the functional qualities of the software marketplace whose merits sell an appreciable portion of Apple's devices are apt to be altered in the course of a turf war, is disturbing to some prospective customers. And this is where it's all tied together, bluetooth keyboards, this long rant, the topic from the OP, and the thread's present digression into a religious war about whether Apple's products are worth their premium pricing: if you buy Apple, or would, you probably already sympathize with the notion that more control for Apple will be better for Apple customers and their kickass $20 bluetooth keyboards. But the sort of person who is already skeptical of Apple's wide margins and unquantifiable value-adds is likely see this questionable restriction of the Great App Phenomenon's features as a hostile move that only the kool-aid-drinking luddite Apple customers would stand for.
It's sort of... polarized, but I'm not sure which side I'm on myself. On the one hand, I did love my Macbook Pro, and zooming in and out of maps on the iPhone is sweet. On the other hand, I'm increasingly certain that the terrifying cyberpunk dystopia I live out my senescence in will be dominated by companies who acted as shrewdly in their manipulation of the information market as Apple and Google have. Oh well. With any luck, when I die, I'll be resurrected as a Dragoon (beta) by Google. If I'm to become a terrifying abomination of steel and murder, I'd like to at least be able to view my own source code.
Which is no easy task.
Again, seconded.
It's puzzling that when I input a search for "artists' reference," I have to wade through fifty unrelated games and gewgaws to get to the apps that are headlined, "Artists' reference."
Bingo. It's a laptop with additional functions, not an iPhone losing the thing which makes it useful (small size).
Which is compared like 4 or 5 years ago.
So yea.
I don't know if you're being sarcastic here, but 9 ounces is 255 grams and it's a lot.
Half a pound isn't a lot to me, but I can understand if it is a dealbreaker for others.
With those kind of numbers, I'd probably be more worried about the actual shape of the product and other concerns.
They are certainly thicker, since the keyboard is built in.
I am, personally, of the firm opinion that at a certain point, thinness is no longer useful (and indeed, is a liability in terms of cost and actual hardware).
Which is one of the reasons I did not get the MacBook Air at all. I could only see that being a novelty, same with any other really, really thin notebooks. Apple or any other company can't avoid the simple laws of reality, so screen size is directly tied to the size of the notebook. And at that point, since being able to carry a notebook in a manila envelope isn't really a useful feature, a netbook just seems so much more practical.
Really, it made no sense to me, beyond novelty value. Same goes for the Dell and Mitsubishi models that did the same thing. There is such a thing as too thick, but there is also too thin, unless your intended purpose for the laptop is to have it sit in one place, connected to the rest of the hardware you need.
I could see thin being useful for a single purpose device that does not need to connect to any thing else ever. A dedicated e-Reader that is the width of a magazine, for instance. The moment that you start to make the device convergent, you are sacrificing features for width, though, and at that point, things start to get absurd. Make it a little wider, and give it USB ports, a camera, whathaveyou.
E-Readers are, at least in my mind, a different product, and thus, come with different expectations. Thickness is of added importance.