iPad dangerous precedent ?

I'm wondering if the iPad signals a direction for Apple in the future. Clearly Apple has identified the fact that it is much more profitable for them to be the exclusive provider of all content, books, music, video, and now even Apps all have to go through Apple.

My concern is that in the near future that Apple will introduce the App store feature to OSX. Probably in three stages. Stage one will be to include a new Apple store that has OSX apps that simply allows you to download installers for software from one place. Stage 2 will be that the OSX App store automatically installs the software in such a way that new features can only be used by signed apps that come via the App store making regular apps second class citizens on your Mac, being sold as exciting new features for App store apps. The third and final stage would be for Apple to completely abandon support for regular applications to be installed and even starting to lock down the OS to make it harder for you to install your own apps.

Do people actually use Macs?

I thought they were just ornaments/fashion accessories. The only people I know that own one and want to, you know, do anything useful with it, run windows on theirs...

Get back under your bridge, troll.

Ok, whatever.

I so wanted to get excited but I was left somewhat unimpressed. Ok so now we have a big iPod with a new Apple chip, lower screen resolution than the iPhone, no camera, no multi-tasking and again no flash. The home screen is quite a shock - it doesn't look right, tiny icons with big gaps?!? If Apple are setting a precedent I don't see my self buying into it - OSX on a Macbook Air will remain my preferred mobile platform.

Defective by Design. I'm not sure that it's a precedent as Apple has already gone quite a way down this path of restricting what you can do with your own computer. Quite ironic if you remember the Apple 1984-style TV advert.

It doesn't really worry me, because this is very much a choice-driven restriction. If you buy into the Apple way of life then you have these restrictions, but you don't have to buy into it in the first place. The growth of Open Source, and the support from - of all people - IBM is a boon to the rest of us. If you're not the sort who needs to pop down to the Apple Store every few months for this quarter's gadget, and can manage with out the hand-holding "geniuses", the outlook for computing is very bright. At the same time that Apple are increasingly ring-fencing their devices, Sony - for example - are opening their devices up more and more to the free and open alternatives. Get an iPad and you'll be able to read (flickery) books that Apple deign to allow you to - get a Sony eBook reader and the world is your oyster. I've got 170 books on my reader currently, and they were all free!

One of these days people will start waking up to the Apple dictatorship and their number will be up - unless they come to their senses in the meantime.

I was hoping that it WAS all hype and filibuster and that they only introduced a new Desktop Mac

Am completely lost on why anyone would want a tablet.

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In reply to a post by nonymouse:

Am completely lost on why anyone would want a tablet.

Do you mean 'anyone like you', or 'anyone you know' or 'anyone in the world'?

Don't write it off so soon. I probably don't have a use for one myself, but I can think of a few examples of people who might want, or even need, an iPad. Here are a few off the top of my head.

1. My wife is a total technophobe. She doesn't like computers. But if she could be convinced that the iPad is not a "computer" that needs to be dealt with in an alien tongue, I suspect she could get huge mileage out of recording stuff on it and surfing the web and looking at photos and reading magazines and ....

2. My father probably couldn't use a keyboard. He is in his nineties and fairly arthritic, and I have never felt it would be productive to try to get him into computing. But I bet he could use an iPad for web surfing.

3. With the election coming up, I imagine we'll all be doorstepped by canvassers. An iPad would be a shoe-in for that task. Anywhere a clipboard and pencil is used today is a ripe target for an iPad.

4. Referring to notes or presentation material on an iPad at a meeting would be easier than using an iPhone, and more friendly to the other participants than opening a laptop in front of you.

People who have reported after having played with the thing for a few minutes are raving about the natural feel of it - plus its performance. I have a suspicion that just touching one will be enough to make a lot of people want it.

In reply to a post by AlanH:

Do you mean 'anyone like you', or 'anyone you know' or 'anyone in the world'?

Apologies for not making my completely personal and opinionated post easier to spot!!!


My wife is technophobe too, and struggles with trackpad on new Macbook...can't see the iPad being any different.

My father (in 70s) won't accept me buying him a Mac even though I'm sure he'd find it easier than struggling on with a Dell!

The political party who wastes donations, giving their activists an iPad will lose my vote.

Flipping the lid fully open will be the same at presentations and you have a built in docking station/ keyboard on a Laptop

Actually someone I was with today said he might get one, but he's single* and always has the latest gadget. But I'm ignoring his opinion.



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* the single reference refers to disposible income!! I'm a SITCOM

how many mac users play windows games on their machines?

how many windows users play mac games on their machines?

I won't be getting an ipad, bought into iphone 3g last April, in 3 mth I can UPGRADE to anything else.

Most restrictive and frustrating piece of candy to hit any market, cant take a memory card out to get files have to use Golden Delicious itunes for everything