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Well, the browser has tabs (at least, the iPhone Mobile Safari does, so it's no stretch to think this does as well). The lack of a camera is, I agree, silly. R

Well, the browser has tabs (at least, the iPhone Mobile Safari does, so it's no stretch to think this does as well). The lack of a camera is, I agree, silly. Rather than rebut the rest of his "points" directly, I'll focus on "multitasking". Frankly, the iPhone and iPad do multitask, in the ways that are important to (most) people. Multitasking in an end user product really means "I can do more than one thing at once", not "The computer runs many processes". The iPhone OS currently accomplishes exactly this, via saved state. In any well behaved iPhone app, if you quit, the state of the UI and your data is persisted, so that when you return, it's like you never left. The UI for this multitasking is a bit clunky - hit "Home" then pick the app - but for most people, this works fine. There are only two situations when this doesn't - when the app does something interesting in the background, and when the "stack" of application interactions collapses - if I click a mailto: link to open Mail, quitting that doesn't return me to Safari - I have to go there again manually. The two cases of "Does something interesting in the background" that really people want are audio streaming and notification of some event, and they're real problems. However, Apple's persistently said they're trying to protect the user experience (stability, battery life etc) by denying background apps. I've no reason to believe this isn't the case (I'm mean really, what are they gaining except geek ire by restricting this?). The audio case is annoying and needs a solution - the notification case is slightly better since push was rolled out. Outside of these cases, the iPhone multitasks well enough for 99% of the world. His reading case, catching up on the news etc all are handled - you just have a slightly painful app switch process (i.e. you press two buttons rather than just one). The only case that isn't is background movies/music from 3rd party apps - and really, the only sensible case out of that is music (Do you really watch a movie and browse at the same time on a 10" screen?). Regardless, I suspect the point will be moot soon enough - OS 4.0 seems very likely to bring some notion of background processes. The geek anti-iPad ire really confuses me. What did we expect, other than what we got? It was never going to run OS X - the user experience would have been awful without major changes that broke all 3rd party OS X apps (and then, what's the point?). The hardware, modulo camera, seems entirely reasonable at a price that's damn good - who realistically expected anything more from an affordable tablet machine at this point in technology? The "walled garden" is a real issue, but I think we have, as a group, gained far more than we've lost with the App store. All these people saying "I could never have been a tinkerer with an iPad" - poppycock. Download the SDK for free, develop all you want. Pay a nominal fee to deploy to 100 other devices without ever giving Apple a look at your app. Or hell, just jailbreak it if the limits of the SDK are so onerous. Alternatively, just don't buy it. Having chosen this please, stop filling up HN/Reddit/The Internet with "The iPad doesn't raise the dead, make me a billionaire and cure cancer, so all my dreams are shattered and Apple is awful".

jsz0 17y ago
Apple is changing the way massive numbers of people use technology. For any revolution there's going to be some group of people who prefer the old way of doing things because they see the new way as some type of threat to what they're comfortable with. Personally I think these people are upset that the "coolness" factor of technology is no longer limited to technical bullet points and has expanded well past it's geeky roots. They really don't like technology being designed for a big mainstream audience because it weakens whatever part of their identity they have built around being a geek if anyone can walk into a store and buy something that is functional and get, basically, the same results as the geek who spends hours customizing a system to work exactly as they want it to. I think they feel left out when technology skips the geeky early adopter market.
yuvi 17y ago
Develop all you want for free: as long as you only want to run your application on a simulated iPhone. You can't load apps onto your own device without paying $100/year or jailbreaking. Heck, you can't even use XCode to compile an app for the iPhone (not simulator) without a license. Anyway, an additional multitasking use-case is IRC and other apps where you're in constant contact with a server. With Colloquy, for instance, right now you need to setup a server to bounce off of or else you leave all channels every time you switch apps. Of course, this class of uses is one that you don't want running when the device is off or else the battery drains quickly. I've always felt that Apple was waiting both for their hardware to become powerful enough (the original iPod touch consistently ran out of RAM with 2 open webpages + music for instance, and page rendering wasn't exactly snappy) and also to come up with a good way of limiting the number of background processes without user involvement. You don't want every other app you launch hanging around so that when you run out of resources, the OS kills the music player which you actually wanted open.

jsz0 17y ago

Apple is changing the way massive numbers of people use technology. For any revolution there's going to be some group of people who prefer the old way of doing things because they see the new way as some type of threat to what they're comfortable with. Personally I think these people are upset that the "coolness" factor of technology is no longer limited to technical bullet points and has expanded well past it's geeky roots. They really don't like technology being designed for a big mainstream audience because it weakens whatever part of their identity they have built around being a geek if anyone can walk into a store and buy something that is functional and get, basically, the same results as the geek who spends hours customizing a system to work exactly as they want it to. I think they feel left out when technology skips the geeky early adopter market.

yuvi 17y ago

Develop all you want for free: as long as you only want to run your application on a simulated iPhone. You can't load apps onto your own device without paying $100/year or jailbreaking. Heck, you can't even use XCode to compile an app for the iPhone (not simulator) without a license. Anyway, an additional multitasking use-case is IRC and other apps where you're in constant contact with a server. With Colloquy, for instance, right now you need to setup a server to bounce off of or else you leave all channels every time you switch apps. Of course, this class of uses is one that you don't want running when the device is off or else the battery drains quickly. I've always felt that Apple was waiting both for their hardware to become powerful enough (the original iPod touch consistently ran out of RAM with 2 open webpages + music for instance, and page rendering wasn't exactly snappy) and also to come up with a good way of limiting the number of background processes without user involvement. You don't want every other app you launch hanging around so that when you run out of resources, the OS kills the music player which you actually wanted open.