However, it is known that Steve himself was not a fan of the home button, so who knows.

Also, to fit a larger screen on 'iPhone 5,' and keep the same size phone, getting rid of the home button would be a necessity.

Who wants to hold one of those giant Android semi-tablets up to your ear?

I have seen ads for it. It looks very award as a phone in the ad when it is up to your ear. It has to take up alot of space in your pocket. I don't see much of a market for it.

The Chinese company is trying to pursue them here, but will fail.

Enjoy...

Fewer possibly, since Apple's product design and development happens stateside.

Well done.

So there wouldn't be "fewer possibly" because ... "stateside" is not the only place design and development happens.

As it stands now Apple and Apple product consumers are responsible for the most modern slavery on the planet.

No.

Without Apple, China would cease to exist.

Attention OWS.

Lenovo has stopped selling netbooks through its website and hasn't decided if it will start selling them again there in the future, the company said on Friday.

The netbook models that were available have sold out and are "not being replaced in the near future," Lenovo spokesman Ray Gorman said via email. He didn't say if Lenovo will continue selling netbooks at retail.

"We are having solid success with our IdeaPad Tablet K1 and IdeaPad Tablet A1, and are generating good traffic on our website for those," Gorman said.

Lenovo's decision is the latest indicator that consumers are shunning netbooks in favor of tablets and low-cost laptops. Dell has stopped offering netbooks and Hewlett-Packard and Acer have scaled back their offerings.

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9224605/Lenovo_stops_selling_netbooks_online

and the keyboard were somehow attached to the tablet so it wouldn't get lost, and the tablet portion could be propped up at whatever angle you wanted without having to hold it there, and you could attach a printer to it, or other useful peripheral devices.

The only real problem is that Mac OS X is not really good on a screen that small. My friend bought one and she took it back. The screen had to high a pixel density on it to be useful.

They need to come up with something like a MacBook Air that runs iOS.

iOS is built from OS X, but iOS's UI is moving full steam into OS X.

My gut says that only one identity will survive.

The problem is that the interface of iOS is actually very crappy in that there are no standards across apps as to what to do.

A cluttered screen of icons is really not that great.

I have the original iPad and the battery life is OK and probably better than most laptops, but sucks compared to an iPhone. A faster processor will likely eat up more battery.

must have shiny thing.

I mean to say, cooler and edgier?

Or will I just be another faceless submissive in the crowd?

I've heard from reputable sources that iPhones emit a nearly silent subliminal message to their owners that says "buy more apple... buy more apple... buy more apple... ve have vays of making you buy more apple..." That's why I'll never put one to my ear.

Just fine.

You must have missed my feeble attempt to be funny and, typical of Apple fanatics, got all defensive and stuff at the thought of someone insulting your favorite brand. Goodness...

My log told me.

a giant invisible man in the sky would get angry and send me to a lake of fire for eternity...



so I don't know. People will believe all sorts of ridiculous shit.

I've been waiting, this will be my first tablet. My wife will be jealous

And I picked up a Clear WiMAX Spot to try out. I've been getting between 4 and 10Mbps all around Philly. Plus I can connect my MBP and up to 8 users to it.

No contract. No data limits.

I don't expect AT&T or Verizon to temp me away.

Apple is a mainstream brand.

You're stuck in 1995.

she tried my friends iPad and said, "this is so easy".

So such a technophobe, she still has trouble with copy/paste. I kid you not.

The iPad is perfect for her.

Not really finding the right word, but 'less-intimidating' is pretty accurate.

Feels like a book. Everyone gets the familiarity of a book.

I hate to admit it, but I was skeptical when Steve introduced the thing.

I had an 'uh-oh' moment that Apple had misstepped.

Now the iPad is the brandnomer for that space, adapted quicker than the iPhone.

People don't want a tablet, they want an iPad.

They probably had to work for days straight to get this new product ready.

your comment here on DU.

but I still don't see how an ipad would be helpful to me. I type 85+ wpm and I hate being limited on what programs I can run. So that's why I prefer fully functional laptops (running windows) for now. Recently a relative was talking about how much she loved her ipad, so I asked her what she loved about it. She showed me the built in webcam-she thought the special effects it could do were unique. Of course, my built in cam does the same exact thing, but I didn't mention that.

My MacBook Pro will still fill that space.

But the iPad will fulfill 85% of my casual computing. And it's thin and light enought to go with me to more places than my laptop.

As I indicated unthread, iPad are driving netbooks out of the market, and for a reason.

Next you'll be crediting Apple with the fall of the Roman Empire.

Thinking people realize that folks are not going to buy a gimped computer when they can get a fully functional laptop for the same cost as a useless netbook.

oh ouch!

I kid I kid...

Sorry couldn't resist!

I have a wifi only first gen and a 3G 2nd gen.

I wound up buying a 250 MB per month plan from AT&T for $14.95 a month and never have used more than 170 MB. At that rate, why bother? As you note, WiFi is pretty much everywhere.

I completely agree. The use to which you're putting it is a great example of why it is handy to have 3 or 4G. I use mine only to get email while traveling light. I can also do that on my iPhone.

Our company bought a few 3G second gens and we all like them a lot, but just don't use the 3G very much. In fact, neither of my partners have even activated a 3G account on theirs! Others, however, have. The last few we bought are second gen wifi only. We use then for some field work we need to do.

I bought a Macbook Pro about 3 weeks ago, $1200. I had a Macbook for three years. Within 10 days, I had trouble with the Pro charging and with it getting stuck in the wheel of death, and then not being able to turn it off and then back on. I sent it back and got a full refund. Piece of Chinese crap, you couldn't pay me to buy the new I-Pad. I don't understand why people need the newest and shiniest. Apple's new products are nowhere as good as the Made in America ones they used to make.

Now the days and weeks of whole hours wasted on unmemorable nothings will be leaner of waits and fatter with waste. We shall define individualism as our desire to possess a mass-marketed bauble, and happiness as cessation of the pains we feel in lacking the latest of its kind. Again we are made whole by that which we would never miss had it never existed.

I pine for the good old days, when entertainment consisted of dodging sabre-toothed tigers, fashioning crude toys out of rocks, watching your 20something parents die of rickets, and trying to keep the communal fire from burning out.



...sigh.

Just, yuck.

(And yes, the tablet fad will die in a few years, to be replaced with VR and AR.)

But I'll take one of these in the meantime:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/tablet-pc-samsung-windows-slate,3079.html

And they'll be sold for a fraction of what Apple sells the iPad for.

And of course, they'll be superior in every way (no vendor lock-in, part replacement). And then maybe these same people will not be happy with the practices of the manufacturers or "turn a blind eye" to it.

VR tech probably isn't until 2015-2016 or later.

Last edited Wed Feb 29, 2012, 10:48 AM - Edit history (2)

And yes, I said iPads, because consumers don't want tablets, they want iPads.

'iPad' has become the brandnomer for this space. Even Samsung admitted that this week.

Tablets on Star Trek were used because they didn't want to disconnect the viewers from the actors. If all the actors wore Geordi La Forge-like visors, no one would be able to connect with them. Ubiquitous VR glasses will become fashionable in due course.

I hope they've borrowed the bezel-swipe gestures from the Blackberry Playbook. You don't have to press any buttons to use the Playbook.

At least one tech journalist, who would know, says so.

I don't see enough benefit for me right now. When I do buy another computer it will be another laptop, because the one I'm using now is showing signs of winding down and the laptop makes my life easier and more productive in ways that a tablet wouldn't. Nothing against tablets, of course--they just don't really fill a gap for me, between the laptop which I need and the smart phone that works for much of what I would use a tablet for.