Why The Holdouts Aren't Buying An iPad 3

I have an iPad 2 that I absolutely love. I really don't current have a need to upgrade my tablet. You might call me a pretty lightweight iPad user. I surf the web, check email, SSH to my systems, read books on the various eReader apps, play light games (like chess), and watch Netflix. Do I need an iPad 3? No. If someone handed me one, though, I certainly wouldn't turn it down :). I fed into the frenzy of iPad 2 and stupidly bought one with 3G because I had to have it yesterday. (They were out of the WiFi-only models.) Mind you, I've got free tethering on my 3G phone already... I just don't see myself getting all worked up over a device that pretty much does everything my current model already does, and does well, too.
 
I'm not buying one because I like to own what I purchase.

If I want to run an emulator or SCUMMVM, I shouldn't be forced to void my warranty to do so.
 
J So said:
Why do people start their post with the word "Wrong" It's so abrasive and uncouth.

Would you say that to someone's face?

Why not, "I think you're incorrect" or "I think you're mistaken" you might even go in another direction and say "Could you please provide the proof to your statement"
Click to expand...

Because this is the internet and we don't need false niceties here because you can't punch me in the face even if you wanted to.
 
wonderfield said:
You gentlemen are aware that x86 Windows tablets have been available for well over a decade, right?
Click to expand...

At the moment, there are two kinds of tablets. ARM and x86. It should be pretty obvious that the context of this thread is in the former. On the x86 side, we have no problems, convertibles and slates are just as capable as their desktop counterparts. Nobody is questioning that since we're all techies here and know what the x86 tablets can do. So the only real issue in this thread is the ARM side of the equation.

ARM are low power devices stretching to gain high end capabilities. x86 tech are high power hardware being stripped down to low power capabilities. It's two different approaches and really shouldn't be mixed up.
 
DenverBarr said:
Your just a Troll lol, there designs i dont think anyone will complain about there build quality is above par and the prices are starting to come down, and as i said earler it starts at 519$ and its not ment to be a phone thats why its called a "Tablet" I know many people who have either of the previous ipads(1,2) and still use and enjoy them on a regular basis.
Click to expand...

Wrong. :p Honest opinion based on experience.

The designs are unoriginal aluminium rounded squares for everything. Its pretty boring.

Rated as the 5th best laptop company on laptops lasting to their second year = mediocre build quality. In the last 6 months ive helped 5 people deal with failing macbooks (mostly drive/battery issues), 1 with a failing iphone. In the same time ive fixed 1 android charging cable and 1 netbook. I know more people with acer and asus too.

$800 = prices are going up.

It does the same stuff as a phone with a bigger screen, but is more limited as it lacks the call making part.

Use them as much as a PC or use them once a month to try out chop the vegetable? People I know get them (and other tablets) use them for a week or two, then get annoyed by the limitations (no keyboard) and unportability over their phones ad just don't use them anymore. These are people of different tech levels, ages and interests.

If they ever made a decent product, at a decent price that I couldn't get elsewhere bettere, I would have 1. But it all just seems to be more of the same tired expensive toys.
 
It's larger/heavier than the ipad2, which was already heavy enough that I wouldn't want to carry it around much.

And ditto the comments on the pricing increments.. $100 to go from 16 to 32 GB? Really? I own a 16GB iPhone 4S and my single biggest complaint about it is that I ran out of storage 30 minutes after getting the thing home from the store. Oops. But no way was I going to spend another $100 for another 16Gb of storage. I'm making do with the "base model" iPhone because I can, but I think trying to do the same with an iPad especially one that is begging to be stuffed full of high res media, just wouldn't work.

Drop the price increment dramatically to make the larger storage versions a LOT cheaper, and I'd consider it even with the added weight. Or bring down the price on the ipad2 so I can buy one of the "obsolete" models.
 
The build quality of the iPad is very good, and it is something that not many save the higher-priced products that the likes of Asus would dare to put out. I do think that Johnathan Ives is a capable industrial designer, and the workmanship goes beyond aesthetics. The work that Apple has put in in the tactile feel of their product is fine to the point that OEMs in Taiwan and China PRC had to manufacture those Aluminum slabs with hitherto unheard of mechanical tolerance for consumer-grade chassis.

That's something that I have to say in defense of Apple, to be fair.

That new screen on the iPad(3) is something that is worth lauding, although on this, I totally agree with DeathPrincess with the inflation on MSRP, even comparing to iPad2 when new. The profit margin on these units goes without saying.

To make matters more interesting, Apple does not really shoulder the costs of that Retina Display developmental costs, nor any hardware improvement themselves, which means that Apple only had to bear the full brunt on their inhouse integration and software in development, as opposed to the burden of say Samsung or LG, being that of everything on the hardware side along with integration headaches as they need to tailor to their carriers.

I am not going to buy this, since I got a Windows 7 X220T tablet PC, and a Galaxy 2 phone. A 'real' tablet PC is a far better investment productivity wise. I don't think I will ever buy another laptop that's not a Tablet PC ever again actually...







Now, about the bad.
 
(opps)
Tablet PCs don't have that high a pixel density that these newest of tablets have. It would be ideal for a Wacom Penabled tablet PC to field something of that caliber given what one can do with the stylus art wise. Samsung's Galaxy Note 10.1 hopefully will lead the way towards a screen with Wacom digitizer that can compete against the iPad3 screen, but that won't be coming right away.

In truth, I'd actually seriously think of iPad(3) if Wacom is available with it. Taking the best of this iPad and Galaxy Note 10.1 would lead to my dream 'fun' tablet..
 
Now I know this is an anti-apple forum but the specs of the ipad 3 are very nice. It is expensive, so I can't justify purchasing one, but that doesn't mean I don't ... really ... really ... want one.
 
I saw the new iPad 3 specs and overall, I approve of the hardware (aside from not upgrading to a quad-core SOC CPU despite the quad-core GPU-part that I assume is basically a Tegra3 competitor). I don't really approve of the price, especially of the 4G model, but the main reason I can't see myself getting an iPad 3 is... it is an Apple product and is locked down in the most foolish of ways.

Apple products work very well so long as you use them "The Apple Way" and are willing to pay out the ass to do so. Trying to use them any other way, rates from "day ruining pain in the ass" to "completely bloody impossible". For instance, media consumption. Most of my music is in FLAC (with some Ogg here and there), and most of my videos are 720p or 1080p and reside in .mp4 , .mkv, .ogm or other container file formats that include X264/H.264 video encodes in high profiles, and everything from MP3/AAC/FLAC/AC3/DTS etc..audio, with either .srt/.ssa etc... multiple subtitle formats.

All of which, Apple doesn't bloody support. The simplest thing, since the days of the original iPhone, has been FLAC support. Its a totally free, lossless, open source audio codec. Cheap, fast to implement, doesn't take much processing power to encode or decode and gives great audio quality at great compression. Apple could EASILY have included FLAC support at any point during or after the launch of the original iPhone. But they haven't. Why? Because that's not "The Apple Way". Apple has its proprietary Apple Lossless Audio Codec and nothing else exists to them. If MP3s, a patent-encumbered codec that was needed to be licensed for every bloody device/OS sold, weren't such a staple of pre-iPhone music, I can guarantee they would have cut out MP3 support and simply went with only AAC for their initial loss. This means that to date, every bloody piece of music I'd want on my phone would need to be transcoded. For no good reason but Apple hubris.

This is compounded by a tablet, on which I'd want to watch my existing on-network media that is generally BluRay and HDTV (some international) rips encoded as I cite above, both directly copied onto my device and "streamed" if you will from my Samba+NFS server box on my home network (A la how my WDTV works). Hell, for the price of the tablet and hardware inside I'd expect to be able to not only do the above, but to be able to connect it easily to any HDTV in the house to do so. Can I plug in a miniHDMI >HDMI cable and do so? Certainly not, there's a proprietary dock connector and I need to buy a proprietary, likely expensive Apple Digital AV Connector to do that. Sure, it can mirror/stream to an AppleTV, but what if I don't want it to do that because I have another device? No, sorry... you have a crappy hacked together solution if one at all

In addition, since it is a tablet I'd be using an iPad3 as my E-reader. Again, the Apple Way is all consuming. In fact, it appears that the iPad3 is not even focusing on eBooks because it doesn't list what formats its iBooks and Newstand apps support. Most of my digital reading is either in 1) PDF format, a bitch to convert properly to anything else. iBooks for some reason, at least last I checked does NOT support PDF formats. 2) EPub format, the most open and powerful of ebook formats, but not supported by all readers. Thankfully, iBooks supports it finally (Kindle, does not). I also have Mobi, but thanks to the awesome open source Calibre program conversion and library management isn't difficult. and 3) Manga. That is to say, comics, including full color versions. Often these are both a series of scanned pages into a PDF, a series of picture formats in a folder (ie jpgs), or best of all in a compressed format like CBR or CBZ. Does iBooks support reading directly from a CBR archive? I'm thinking not. Now, I know some would say "If you don't like iBooks, there are other readers on the AppStore why can't you just pick up those...".

Well, because again the Apple Way prevents me. Sure, I can download those apps, or even jailbreak and install from a hacked repository of my choosing. But, we have a problem. Likely, one of the biggest, if not THE biggest problem with Apple and iOS - Directories aren't mountable and browseable in any way that makes sense.

Even before realizing my FLACs wouldn't work, my FIRST issue with the iPhone (original!) was to find that iTunes was needed for everything; infected by The Apple Way. I couldn't just simply connect it and mount it as a standard drive, copy and paste my media to a folder somewhere and have the music player detect it, even in formats that it was deigned to understand by the grace of Jobs. Unlike nearly EVERY OTHER FUCKING MOBILE DEVICE ON THE PLANET, including Android phones to come, the thing didn't even have a mass storage mode. Only the camera's pictures are able to be browsed. No, you needed a proprietary way to Sync. Even on Android I can read through the folders and see what's going where more or less, but on Apple, even defeating all the hidden file protection and everything is buried in numbered folders that tell little of its function. I couldn't even copy and paste my folders of media in; no, Apple HAD to form what amounted to a data base of its own, putting album art in one place and relying on tags for everything. This was bloody infuriating. I had already organized things as I wanted them, with a system of files and folders and tags; embedded and locally stored album art etc.... but NO. Sorry, my way of doing things wasn't The Apple Way.

The lack of direct interaction and simple standards is the most infuriating thing about working with Apple and iOS devices, especially for someone like myself who prefers the Linux operating system family. I find iTunes appalling in just about every way, yet it is "required". Years ago after the original iPod "classic" family came out, eventually people worked out the hoops necessary to jump through syncing to Apple devices and their moronic database scheme, allowing some 3rd party programs like Winamp and MediaMonkey to transfer SOME media to Apple devices (often with transcoding necessary because of the crappy format support). What did Apple do when the iPhone and iPod Touch arrived? Encrypt the damn database and change the way it is accessed to make sure that nobody but iTunes could work with these devices. Since then it has been an arms race of a sort and where there are hacks and proprietary dances here and there... its all too much bloody work for something that should be a non-issue in the first place.

That's the story of Apple. Think Different amounts to "Let Us Think For You", turn over your money, and venerate us to the high heavens. Things are made intentionally obtuse so that you come completely into their walled garden and submit to their control of your user experience; there can be no other explanation. Your preferences mean nothing; the smallest conveniences that even companies running on shoestring budgets provide for options, from $25 China-made audio devices and on, have no place in The Apple Way. The worst thing is that Apple does have some great implementations, especially with respect to hardware and design at times, that it is embarrassing to see how little they do with them that benefits the user. They could easily add all the things I've talked about above and turn Apple devices into geek-hacker dreams, without compromising the experience for the regular folk who don't mind doing what they're told, have no other experience or preference, but instead they require all to become Apple Faithful.

I hope some things have changed since the iPhone and 3G times, but it appears that the principles of lockdown, choice as an enemy, and user control are still what Apple makes their bastion. Unless that changes, I don't see how I could ever think to get an iOS device ever again.
 
I have an iPad 1 and have used it every single day from the day of purchase, I was as big a cynic as most but my wife got one first and I was intrigued by it, now if it's not close to hand I break out in the sweats. I have a laptop for work and a gaming pc yet it sees more of my leisure time than both put together. It's my defacto internet access/entertainment/communication gadget.I'd love an iPad 3 but my ability to purchase the one I have came from a job the likes of which I'm unlikely to see again but If it died I'd find the money for another for sure
 
Sly said:
On the x86 side, we have no problems, convertibles and slates are just as capable as their desktop counterparts. Nobody is questioning that since we're all techies here and know what the x86 tablets can do. So the only real issue in this thread is the ARM side of the equation.
Click to expand...
So what excites you about Windows on ARM tablets? Increased battery life compared to their x86 equivalents? Even knowing what it is you lose versus x86 Windows?
 
Xaeos said:
I saw the new iPad 3 specs and overall, I approve of the hardware (aside from not upgrading to a quad-core SOC CPU despite the quad-core GPU-part that I assume is basically a Tegra3 competitor). I don't really approve of the price, especially of the 4G model, but the main reason I can't see myself getting an iPad 3 is... it is an Apple product and is locked down in the most foolish of ways.

Apple products work very well so long as you use them "The Apple Way" and are willing to pay out the ass to do so. Trying to use them any other way, rates from "day ruining pain in the ass" to "completely bloody impossible". For instance, media consumption. Most of my music is in FLAC (with some Ogg here and there), and most of my videos are 720p or 1080p and reside in .mp4 , .mkv, .ogm or other container file formats that include X264/H.264 video encodes in high profiles, and everything from MP3/AAC/FLAC/AC3/DTS etc..audio, with either .srt/.ssa etc... multiple subtitle formats.

All of which, Apple doesn't bloody support. The simplest thing, since the days of the original iPhone, has been FLAC support. Its a totally free, lossless, open source audio codec. Cheap, fast to implement, doesn't take much processing power to encode or decode and gives great audio quality at great compression. Apple could EASILY have included FLAC support at any point during or after the launch of the original iPhone. But they haven't. Why? Because that's not "The Apple Way". Apple has its proprietary Apple Lossless Audio Codec and nothing else exists to them. If MP3s, a patent-encumbered codec that was needed to be licensed for every bloody device/OS sold, weren't such a staple of pre-iPhone music, I can guarantee they would have cut out MP3 support and simply went with only AAC for their initial loss. This means that to date, every bloody piece of music I'd want on my phone would need to be transcoded. For no good reason but Apple hubris.

This is compounded by a tablet, on which I'd want to watch my existing on-network media that is generally BluRay and HDTV (some international) rips encoded as I cite above, both directly copied onto my device and "streamed" if you will from my Samba+NFS server box on my home network (A la how my WDTV works). Hell, for the price of the tablet and hardware inside I'd expect to be able to not only do the above, but to be able to connect it easily to any HDTV in the house to do so. Can I plug in a miniHDMI >HDMI cable and do so? Certainly not, there's a proprietary dock connector and I need to buy a proprietary, likely expensive Apple Digital AV Connector to do that. Sure, it can mirror/stream to an AppleTV, but what if I don't want it to do that because I have another device? No, sorry... you have a crappy hacked together solution if one at all

In addition, since it is a tablet I'd be using an iPad3 as my E-reader. Again, the Apple Way is all consuming. In fact, it appears that the iPad3 is not even focusing on eBooks because it doesn't list what formats its iBooks and Newstand apps support. Most of my digital reading is either in 1) PDF format, a bitch to convert properly to anything else. iBooks for some reason, at least last I checked does NOT support PDF formats. 2) EPub format, the most open and powerful of ebook formats, but not supported by all readers. Thankfully, iBooks supports it finally (Kindle, does not). I also have Mobi, but thanks to the awesome open source Calibre program conversion and library management isn't difficult. and 3) Manga. That is to say, comics, including full color versions. Often these are both a series of scanned pages into a PDF, a series of picture formats in a folder (ie jpgs), or best of all in a compressed format like CBR or CBZ. Does iBooks support reading directly from a CBR archive? I'm thinking not. Now, I know some would say "If you don't like iBooks, there are other readers on the AppStore why can't you just pick up those...".

Well, because again the Apple Way prevents me. Sure, I can download those apps, or even jailbreak and install from a hacked repository of my choosing. But, we have a problem. Likely, one of the biggest, if not THE biggest problem with Apple and iOS - Directories aren't mountable and browseable in any way that makes sense.

Even before realizing my FLACs wouldn't work, my FIRST issue with the iPhone (original!) was to find that iTunes was needed for everything; infected by The Apple Way. I couldn't just simply connect it and mount it as a standard drive, copy and paste my media to a folder somewhere and have the music player detect it, even in formats that it was deigned to understand by the grace of Jobs. Unlike nearly EVERY OTHER FUCKING MOBILE DEVICE ON THE PLANET, including Android phones to come, the thing didn't even have a mass storage mode. Only the camera's pictures are able to be browsed. No, you needed a proprietary way to Sync. Even on Android I can read through the folders and see what's going where more or less, but on Apple, even defeating all the hidden file protection and everything is buried in numbered folders that tell little of its function. I couldn't even copy and paste my folders of media in; no, Apple HAD to form what amounted to a data base of its own, putting album art in one place and relying on tags for everything. This was bloody infuriating. I had already organized things as I wanted them, with a system of files and folders and tags; embedded and locally stored album art etc.... but NO. Sorry, my way of doing things wasn't The Apple Way.

The lack of direct interaction and simple standards is the most infuriating thing about working with Apple and iOS devices, especially for someone like myself who prefers the Linux operating system family. I find iTunes appalling in just about every way, yet it is "required". Years ago after the original iPod "classic" family came out, eventually people worked out the hoops necessary to jump through syncing to Apple devices and their moronic database scheme, allowing some 3rd party programs like Winamp and MediaMonkey to transfer SOME media to Apple devices (often with transcoding necessary because of the crappy format support). What did Apple do when the iPhone and iPod Touch arrived? Encrypt the damn database and change the way it is accessed to make sure that nobody but iTunes could work with these devices. Since then it has been an arms race of a sort and where there are hacks and proprietary dances here and there... its all too much bloody work for something that should be a non-issue in the first place.

That's the story of Apple. Think Different amounts to "Let Us Think For You", turn over your money, and venerate us to the high heavens. Things are made intentionally obtuse so that you come completely into their walled garden and submit to their control of your user experience; there can be no other explanation. Your preferences mean nothing; the smallest conveniences that even companies running on shoestring budgets provide for options, from $25 China-made audio devices and on, have no place in The Apple Way. The worst thing is that Apple does have some great implementations, especially with respect to hardware and design at times, that it is embarrassing to see how little they do with them that benefits the user. They could easily add all the things I've talked about above and turn Apple devices into geek-hacker dreams, without compromising the experience for the regular folk who don't mind doing what they're told, have no other experience or preference, but instead they require all to become Apple Faithful.

I hope some things have changed since the iPhone and 3G times, but it appears that the principles of lockdown, choice as an enemy, and user control are still what Apple makes their bastion. Unless that changes, I don't see how I could ever think to get an iOS device ever again.
Click to expand...

Tell me about it.

This is what's always kept me from using Apple's mobile devices. Instead of realizing that everyone is fine with plain old copy and paste, Apple feels the need to implement a proprietary way just to do something as simple as transferring media from your PC to their device. It's utterly infuriating that you can't even do something as simple as mounting the device as external storage to transfer media. No, you have to install proprietary software just to get it recognized by the device. Stupid.
 
wonderfield said:
You gentlemen are aware that x86 Windows tablets have been available for well over a decade, right?
Click to expand...

Yeah, but current windows UI has not been ideal for tablet style interfaces.

A medfield based or similar x86 tablet with a Windows 8 operating system combining desktop functionality with a good mobile touch interface could really be the first interesting tablet to hit.

Should be able to run any existing x86 software (albeit some of it slowly)
 
Xaeos said:
I saw the new iPad 3 specs and overall, I approve of the hardware (aside from not upgrading to a quad-core SOC CPU despite the quad-core GPU-part that I assume is basically a Tegra3 competitor). I don't really approve of the price, especially of the 4G model, but the main reason I can't see myself getting an iPad 3 is... it is an Apple product and is locked down in the most foolish of ways.

Apple products work very well so long as you use them "The Apple Way" and are willing to pay out the ass to do so. Trying to use them any other way, rates from "day ruining pain in the ass" to "completely bloody impossible". For instance, media consumption. Most of my music is in FLAC (with some Ogg here and there), and most of my videos are 720p or 1080p and reside in .mp4 , .mkv, .ogm or other container file formats that include X264/H.264 video encodes in high profiles, and everything from MP3/AAC/FLAC/AC3/DTS etc..audio, with either .srt/.ssa etc... multiple subtitle formats.

All of which, Apple doesn't bloody support. The simplest thing, since the days of the original iPhone, has been FLAC support. Its a totally free, lossless, open source audio codec. Cheap, fast to implement, doesn't take much processing power to encode or decode and gives great audio quality at great compression. Apple could EASILY have included FLAC support at any point during or after the launch of the original iPhone. But they haven't. Why? Because that's not "The Apple Way". Apple has its proprietary Apple Lossless Audio Codec and nothing else exists to them. If MP3s, a patent-encumbered codec that was needed to be licensed for every bloody device/OS sold, weren't such a staple of pre-iPhone music, I can guarantee they would have cut out MP3 support and simply went with only AAC for their initial loss. This means that to date, every bloody piece of music I'd want on my phone would need to be transcoded. For no good reason but Apple hubris.

This is compounded by a tablet, on which I'd want to watch my existing on-network media that is generally BluRay and HDTV (some international) rips encoded as I cite above, both directly copied onto my device and "streamed" if you will from my Samba+NFS server box on my home network (A la how my WDTV works). Hell, for the price of the tablet and hardware inside I'd expect to be able to not only do the above, but to be able to connect it easily to any HDTV in the house to do so. Can I plug in a miniHDMI >HDMI cable and do so? Certainly not, there's a proprietary dock connector and I need to buy a proprietary, likely expensive Apple Digital AV Connector to do that. Sure, it can mirror/stream to an AppleTV, but what if I don't want it to do that because I have another device? No, sorry... you have a crappy hacked together solution if one at all

In addition, since it is a tablet I'd be using an iPad3 as my E-reader. Again, the Apple Way is all consuming. In fact, it appears that the iPad3 is not even focusing on eBooks because it doesn't list what formats its iBooks and Newstand apps support. Most of my digital reading is either in 1) PDF format, a bitch to convert properly to anything else. iBooks for some reason, at least last I checked does NOT support PDF formats. 2) EPub format, the most open and powerful of ebook formats, but not supported by all readers. Thankfully, iBooks supports it finally (Kindle, does not). I also have Mobi, but thanks to the awesome open source Calibre program conversion and library management isn't difficult. and 3) Manga. That is to say, comics, including full color versions. Often these are both a series of scanned pages into a PDF, a series of picture formats in a folder (ie jpgs), or best of all in a compressed format like CBR or CBZ. Does iBooks support reading directly from a CBR archive? I'm thinking not. Now, I know some would say "If you don't like iBooks, there are other readers on the AppStore why can't you just pick up those...".

Well, because again the Apple Way prevents me. Sure, I can download those apps, or even jailbreak and install from a hacked repository of my choosing. But, we have a problem. Likely, one of the biggest, if not THE biggest problem with Apple and iOS - Directories aren't mountable and browseable in any way that makes sense.

Even before realizing my FLACs wouldn't work, my FIRST issue with the iPhone (original!) was to find that iTunes was needed for everything; infected by The Apple Way. I couldn't just simply connect it and mount it as a standard drive, copy and paste my media to a folder somewhere and have the music player detect it, even in formats that it was deigned to understand by the grace of Jobs. Unlike nearly EVERY OTHER FUCKING MOBILE DEVICE ON THE PLANET, including Android phones to come, the thing didn't even have a mass storage mode. Only the camera's pictures are able to be browsed. No, you needed a proprietary way to Sync. Even on Android I can read through the folders and see what's going where more or less, but on Apple, even defeating all the hidden file protection and everything is buried in numbered folders that tell little of its function. I couldn't even copy and paste my folders of media in; no, Apple HAD to form what amounted to a data base of its own, putting album art in one place and relying on tags for everything. This was bloody infuriating. I had already organized things as I wanted them, with a system of files and folders and tags; embedded and locally stored album art etc.... but NO. Sorry, my way of doing things wasn't The Apple Way.

The lack of direct interaction and simple standards is the most infuriating thing about working with Apple and iOS devices, especially for someone like myself who prefers the Linux operating system family. I find iTunes appalling in just about every way, yet it is "required". Years ago after the original iPod "classic" family came out, eventually people worked out the hoops necessary to jump through syncing to Apple devices and their moronic database scheme, allowing some 3rd party programs like Winamp and MediaMonkey to transfer SOME media to Apple devices (often with transcoding necessary because of the crappy format support). What did Apple do when the iPhone and iPod Touch arrived? Encrypt the damn database and change the way it is accessed to make sure that nobody but iTunes could work with these devices. Since then it has been an arms race of a sort and where there are hacks and proprietary dances here and there... its all too much bloody work for something that should be a non-issue in the first place.

That's the story of Apple. Think Different amounts to "Let Us Think For You", turn over your money, and venerate us to the high heavens. Things are made intentionally obtuse so that you come completely into their walled garden and submit to their control of your user experience; there can be no other explanation. Your preferences mean nothing; the smallest conveniences that even companies running on shoestring budgets provide for options, from $25 China-made audio devices and on, have no place in The Apple Way. The worst thing is that Apple does have some great implementations, especially with respect to hardware and design at times, that it is embarrassing to see how little they do with them that benefits the user. They could easily add all the things I've talked about above and turn Apple devices into geek-hacker dreams, without compromising the experience for the regular folk who don't mind doing what they're told, have no other experience or preference, but instead they require all to become Apple Faithful.

I hope some things have changed since the iPhone and 3G times, but it appears that the principles of lockdown, choice as an enemy, and user control are still what Apple makes their bastion. Unless that changes, I don't see how I could ever think to get an iOS device ever again.
Click to expand...

Pretty much exactly as I feel (except for your love of lossless codec's which I consider a waste of disk space, but either way that choice should be yours, not Apple's.)

You do realize that their walled garden is there to try to funnel people into buying content over iTunes. The IOS devices main purpose is to funnel money into iTunes media. This is - surprisingly considering how overpriced their devices are - where the money is.

This is why Apple makes it as hard as possible for you to have it your own way. When you have it your own way you are less likely to buy stuff from the iTunes store. They are perfectly happy to inconvenience their entire user base in order to funnel more money into iTunes. And as long as the reality distortion field and blind fandom exists, they will continue to get away with it.

As unfortunate as it is, there is more money to be made from funneling the sheep-like masses into iTunes than there is to create a geeks dream of a device.
 
Let me see, you still only get 16GB for base MODEL, WTF?!?!?!?!?!?!? :confused:
Retina display and you have to hold it like 15" from your face I hear, no thanks I'll keep the iPad2 for a while.
 
Zarathustra[H];1038470921 said:
Pretty much exactly as I feel (except for your love of lossless codec's which I consider a waste of disk space, but either way that choice should be yours, not Apple's.)

You do realize that their walled garden is there to try to funnel people into buying content over iTunes. The IOS devices main purpose is to funnel money into iTunes media. This is - surprisingly considering how overpriced their devices are - where the money is.

This is why Apple makes it as hard as possible for you to have it your own way. When you have it your own way you are less likely to buy stuff from the iTunes store. They are perfectly happy to inconvenience their entire user base in order to funnel more money into iTunes. And as long as the reality distortion field and blind fandom exists, they will continue to get away with it.

As unfortunate as it is, there is more money to be made from funneling the sheep-like masses into iTunes than there is to create a geeks dream of a device.
Click to expand...

I have Apple devices, I don't buy music from iTunes. Hell, I pretty much only use the free apps, and get some apps when I need to. I'm perfectly fine with how iOS is, I'll wait until Android software becomes better, to match their hardware.
 
Zarathustra[H];1038470861 said:
A medfield based or similar x86 tablet with a Windows 8 operating system combining desktop functionality with a good mobile touch interface could really be the first interesting tablet to hit.
Click to expand...
Yet the desktop interface has not significantly changed from Windows 7. That's not to say that what Metro adds to the standard Explorer desktop for touch isn't an improvement, but it's not a significant improvement. Microsoft expects for users to spend much of their time within the confines of the Metro interface with Metro apps, and they really haven't made any significant enhancements to Explorer to facilitate touch interaction.

This is the fundamental problem with Microsoft's approach: the power users who expect to do great and wonderful things with their x86 or ARM tablets won't be spending most of their time with Metro apps — where Microsoft focused their touch interface efforts — but within the standard Explorer interface where Microsoft has made few improvements for touch. If you instead decide to spend most of your time with Metro apps, you're going to run into the same limitations you'd find on an iPad with respect to the extent of functionality, and probably many more due to limited app availability compared to iOS. Just like Windows 7, it's a win-lose scenario, not a win-win.
 
wonderfield said:
So what excites you about Windows on ARM tablets? Increased battery life compared to their x86 equivalents? Even knowing what it is you lose versus x86 Windows?
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I actually wrote a pretty long post explaining my computer habits involving my transition from the desktop, to netbook and, potentially, to tablets. Along with the pains and benefits of moving my work to each (particularly to the netbook) as well as experimenting with using a tablet (Asus Trasformer is a Tablet+Dock so it's close to a netbook, problems are inherent to the Android OS itself). But then i re-read your question and the critical part was the last part in that quote.

What do you mean by losing? What do you expect to lose when you move from an x86 Windows tablet, to an ARM Windows tablet?
 
wonderfield said:
Yet the desktop interface has not significantly changed from Windows 7. That's not to say that what Metro adds to the standard Explorer desktop for touch isn't an improvement, but it's not a significant improvement. Microsoft expects for users to spend much of their time within the confines of the Metro interface with Metro apps, and they really haven't made any significant enhancements to Explorer to facilitate touch interaction.

This is the fundamental problem with Microsoft's approach: the power users who expect to do great and wonderful things with their x86 or ARM tablets won't be spending most of their time with Metro apps — where Microsoft focused their touch interface efforts — but within the standard Explorer interface where Microsoft has made few improvements for touch. If you instead decide to spend most of your time with Metro apps, you're going to run into the same limitations you'd find on an iPad with respect to the extent of functionality, and probably many more due to limited app availability compared to iOS. Just like Windows 7, it's a win-lose scenario, not a win-win.
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I see that, and I wish they had done things differently as well, but at the very least, with a medfield based x86 tablet running Windows 8 I will have the option to use the metro interface when I am sitting on the couch watching TV and reading wikipedia, but also be able to switch to full desktop mode (and put up with its non-ideal GUI for touch) when I want to run a full fledged desktop app.

On an IOS device I don't have this liberty. I'm stuck in IOS touch land all the time, and even if I weren't it's all ARM based so none of the widespread x86 software would work anyway.
 
Sly said:
What do you mean by losing? What do you expect to lose when you move from an x86 Windows tablet, to an ARM Windows tablet?
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On Android you lose nothing going from x86 to ARM. In fact ARM will be better than x86 due to power consumption and application compatibility.

On theupcoming Windows 8 you lose TONS.

The biggest one is probably compatibility with desktop windows applications.

A x86 tablet running Win8 could run full versions of Word/Excel/Powerpoint, all my business apps, citrix, Flash, My Nikon capture NX2 (RAW Camera file software), Adobe Photoshop, etc. etc. etc.

There is no reason it couldn't do everything a Windows laptop can do, but then I can switch to the Metro interface and plop down on the couch and use the Web-device functions like an Android or IOS device when I please.

The all-in-one prospects are HUGE.
 
I'm not buying one because it's not a big jump over my iPad 2.

Siri? Meh.
LTE? I have wifi everywhere.
Retina display? Not worth $500.

All I use my iPad for is internet browsing and TV shows, and it's great for that purpose.
 
Sly said:
What do you mean by losing? What do you expect to lose when you move from an x86 Windows tablet, to an ARM Windows tablet?
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As Zara mentioned, you lose the ability to run third-party desktop applications. Windows on ARM will not support them.

It's possible that eventually it may be supported in a future Windows release, but it won't be supported (or even possible) with Windows 8.
 
Omerta said:
-------------------

When it comes to commas and periods, though, logic doesn't enter into the equation, at least not in the United States. Universal American usage places commas and periods inside the quotation marks, regardless of logic.

~"Diane," she said, "put the book down and go outside for a little while."

~"I will in a minute," she replied, "as soon as I finish this chapter."

This rule applies even when the unit enclosed at the end of the sentence is just a single word rather than an actual quotation:

~To get to the next page, just press the little button marked "Enter."

The only exception is when that last little item enclosed in quotation marks is just a letter or a number, in which case the period or comma will go outside the closing quotation marks:

~The buried treasure was marked on the map with a large "X".

~The only grade that will satisfy her is an "A".

~On this scale, the highest ranking is a "1", not a "10".
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I'm a proponent of using proper spelling, grammar and punctuation, but that's a little bit too anal even for me.

He was typing on an Internet forum, not writing an essay.
 
I still want an OS with true file management. I want to be able to save things to and from the device and manage them without having to result to kludgy 3rd party programs and tricking iTunes.
 
arentol said:
Because I can pay half the price for a superior Android device.
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Zarathustra[H];1038471693 said:
I don't believe their performance claims from Wednesday for a second.

I'm thinking that realistically the A5X soc will be a rough tie with a Tegra3.
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Which Android device is superior?
 
rflcptr said:
Which Android device is superior?
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We don't know yet. The iPad 3 isn't even officially benchmarked yet. Thus far all we have are Apple propaganda numbers.

Also, it depends on what you mean by superior. Sure IOS devices are very sleek, and if that is all you care about, then an Apple product may be better for you, but if you consider the drawbacks of Apple's walled garden and benefits of a more open platform as so eloquently explained by Xaeos above then the conclusion might be completely different.
 
Zarathustra[H];1038471904 said:
We don't know yet. The iPad 3 isn't even officially benchmarked yet. Thus far all we have are Apple propaganda numbers.

Also, it depends on what you mean by superior. Sure IOS devices are very sleek, and if that is all you care about, then an Apple product may be better for you, but if you consider the drawbacks of Apple's walled garden and benefits of a more open platform as so eloquently explained by Xaeos above then the conclusion might be completely different.
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That being said, the Asus Transformer Prime seems pretty cool!
 
The cost is keeping me from ever buying another tablet. The $150 Touchpad was worth it but much more than that and they aren't. I love mine and use it daily...it's much easier to use for simple things than a laptop but past $200 and the value per dollar starts to fade fast.

Oh, and iTunes is why I won't buy an iPad.
 
Zarathustra[H];1038471716 said:
I'm a proponent of using proper spelling, grammar and punctuation, but that's a little bit too anal even for me.

He was typing on an Internet forum, not writing an essay.
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I don't get annoyed by many grammatical mistakes. That's the only one. And that's only because I even see a lot of academics making the same type of mistake.
 
I don't have any use for one. I don't really ever see myself surfing the internet away from my home.
If I need to I can always bring up whatever I need on my Droid.
 
Zarathustra[H];1038471904 said:
We don't know yet. The iPad 3 isn't even officially benchmarked yet. Thus far all we have are Apple propaganda numbers.

Also, it depends on what you mean by superior. Sure IOS devices are very sleek, and if that is all you care about, then an Apple product may be better for you, but if you consider the drawbacks of Apple's walled garden and benefits of a more open platform as so eloquently explained by Xaeos above then the conclusion might be completely different.
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Making brevity of your post, there's no superior Android device?
 
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