[OSX-Users] Re: ipad?

[Leslie Carr]

On 28 Jan 2010, at 15:25, Nick Gibbins wrote:

> Neither fish nor fowl nor good red meat.
but something in a strong apple sauce :-)

> It isn't a laptop replacement, it isn't an iPhone/iPod Touch replacement, it isn't a netbook replacement, and it isn't a replacement for ebook readers (like the Sony PRS505/700 or Kindle) at the size it is.

I call you out on the whole Kindle replacement thing. On a trip to washington the other day I saw two people using Kindles in public and I had to stop myself staring. And laughing. And not in a good way. Kindles are fugly (have they been constructed from lego?) and seem to have really appalling contrast ratio (dark grey text on light grey backgrounds) that make them look like literary Etch-a-Sketches. I want to do what people do with Kindles (read! download books instantly!) but I would like a better-designed one. Oh yes, and one that worked in the UK.

> It may be that my singular lack of imagination is blinding me to to obvious purpose for this device, but I'm finding it hard to think of anything it does that isn't done better by something else.
That's the problem with General Purpose Computers. At least the iPhone provided a new set of communication functions to distinguish it from a laptop.

> Most of all, I'm disappointed that they've kept with the closed platform/AppStore model. I shouldn't have to resort to jailbreaking to make a computer do what it's capable of.
It's getting really embarrassing that a device/software platform that encourages so much software development (and such a big software market) gets labelled "closed". Jonathan Zittrain managed to pull that off in the days before the SDK and the App Store, but I think it's an argument that is past its best now. Sure it's controlled, but exactly what is closed about this platform?
--
Les