Lawt chance to guess the price, you geex.

Guess #1: $999, Guess #2: $1199

Rumor on the streets is $899

LaPorte has tolerable live vid.

Althouse says it can't even use the 3G network. Then she says "Bleh."

Here it is...

Starts $499....

Still not sure it's a compelling product

Physical keyboard! YAY!

Normally I'm a total Machead, but I'm not sure I can think of why I'd want this. Then again, I was all ready to buy an iPhone until I played with one. I didn't like the lack of tactile input on the texting screen.

It looks cool, and I guess if I were going to buy an eReader I might just go for this, because of the extra functions.

But the name...sheesh! Comments comparing it to feminine hygiene products are already all over the web. LOL

Thanks for that comment Ann... It doesn't seem to have a killer app. It's probably the best tablet ever, but that's not good enough to establish a market segment.

Yeah, I spent thirty seconds trying to come up with a maxipad joke

Apparently no camera(s)

I saw one somewhere asking if it was going to come with wings. *snicker*

Last chance to guess: What's the "One last thing"?

It comes in a box of Cracker Jacks?

I want a cheap one, wifi only, for starbucks. Once.

I may have to go play with one of these at my local Mac store when they come out, just to see.

NPR says Apple is "in negotiation" with publishers, offering them very favorable terms, which they haven't been able to get heretofore. This was presented as a positive development, and maybe it is for publishers, but "favorable terms" sounds like higher consumer prices.

Althouse's husband Meade: "Is it a Mini or a Maxi?"

And what's with the no multitasking? I think they blew that one.

And let's hope the negotiations with publishers means there will be cheap books for all. I'd be up for that.

> no multitasking? I think they blew that

WOrd

I'd be up for cheap books, too, but that's not what these negotiations are about. Apple is offering to pay publishers "substantially" more than the current going rate paid by Amazon and B&N, and if the cost to Apple is higher, the cost to us is not going to be lower.

$499...remember how pissed the first iphone buyers were when they dropped the price?

Yeah, I definitely won't be going for the first generation on this one. Better to wait and see how they end up tweaking it down the road.

And if they make the books more expensive, I don't see the point in having one.

Yeah... They learned some lessons.

Listen, if it can browse the web, who needs media/publishing support? The word is full of good things to read for free. With wifi, you can load up two weeks worth of good reading in a 10-minute visit to Starbucks or whatever. I don't think people are going to want to buy access to the New York Times, especially not during a recession, and especially not during the recession of 2010

Not bad for a first iteration. It will get better and it will drive others to innovate. Good things really.
Am I going to rush out to get one? No. The last product I did that for was the first iPod Nano.

It doesn't seem that compelling to me. The entourage edge can do more, has a more hackable OS and costs $9 less.

It looks like the bastard lovechild of the iPhone and a netbook.

> It will get better and it will drive
> others to innovate.

I dunno... Again, there's nothing new and magical. No browser flash support, no camera. It doesn't really innovate... It does everything a tablet can do, and nothing that other tablets don't do already. (Microsoft has had these for years, my doctor's office uses them.) People were counting on Steve to show us a warp in the time-space continuum through which he could bring the fulfillment of needs that we didn't know we had, and this product doesn't do that. It's a big Ipod touch. Nice price, though.

My biggest Applehead friend is pissed. He's got a hundred meg of Itunes music that won't fit on it.

Per the twitter feed, this planet is going to be one huge snickering tampon joke until at least dusk

Meh, its a supersized iphone/ipod touch apparently without much in the way of data ports, at twice the price of a netbook or kindle. I also don't get the what, 5-6 different models/sku's they're going to offer. Make it wifi vs wifi/3G with a couple of memory sizes if the cost affects it that much.

Wise words BlogDog. Good general rule to follow but pretty much necessary with Apple products.

Virginia Postrel tweeted something that geekier types haven't mentioned: Who needs a tablet that you can't write on?

Oh, snap! That's a good point!

I'm going to pick up the $499 version.

It'll be nice to have around the house for checking email while watching TV and web browsing/reading and video in bed. I can
give my Macbook and iphone a rest for that.

I wish it had some kind of attached cover though. A sleek aluminum hinged one like the Macbooks maybe. Of course I'm sure we'll get deluged with "accessories" including covers for a "slight" additional charge.

I'm sure I'll upgrade to version 2.0 when it comes out and the old one will still be OK for around the house or I'll give it away as a gift to someone.

Of course I dumped nearly all of my stock positions a few years ago and piled into AAPL with a cost basis of just under $100 so I don't feel so bad splurging on AAPL products.

And I'd never owned an AAPL product until 5-6 years ago.

Disclaimer: I drank the Flavor Aid about two years ago when I bought my first iPod. Since then, I've gotten a MacBook, an iPhone, a Magic Mouse, and two more iPods.

I kinda like the iPad. Don't know if I'd buy one, however. Not yet.

It's not innovative in that it doesn't fill and unfilled need. It does what existing products do, but with a little more sizzle. If I actually decided to buy a Kindle or a Nook, I'd probably opt for this instead - I figure the color display and the ability to play music and movies would make up for the higher cost.

It needs a stylus for written input. Otherwise, it's an overgrown iPod Touch. Imagine trying to type on a non-tactile keyboard while holding something the size of a of magazine in your hand. You'd have to set it down to type or hunt-and-peck with one finger.

It's amazing how much people don't change when they talk about Apple products. I heard the same thing when {pick Apple product} came out. How many times have we heard that Apple's going broke?

They will sell every one of these things they can build. Clearly, you haven't noticed how many iPods there are, despite repeated assertions by assorted people there are other things to buy.

"Multitasking" was once a thing handled by applications, not the OS. Cooperative multitasking need only be replaced by the pre-emptive kind, enforced by the OS when third-party programs don't conform to guides set by a manufacturer. In case you haven't noticed, Apple has those guidelines for certified apps, and is now citing the number of available apps as a selling point - exactly what the PC world claims as its biggest advantage!

MS is now advertising "a world without walls". Nonsense. Virus and spyware barriers, and assorted firewall schemes are damned sure "walls", all paid for by individuals as the real cost of an "open" architecture. This is somehow superior to a system from one vendor that literally does everything? Play with numbers some more. You still pay.

I have a Gateway notebook and an IBM 8113 desktop at the house. They're cheap, and they do less until I invest time in them. What's your time worth? When you're done making your machine capable, how much of your satisfaction is really pride in your savvy?

You want to use a stylus on this thing, go ahead. Flick pictures, movies, TV episodes, other documents to your neighbor, go ahead. Control your TV, dial your friends, shift iTunes libraries to and from a nearby wireless server, call data from your .mac account or other on-line storage... you have to carry a hard disk now?

Geez, it's like you've never seen an iPhone wielded skillfully. Come to PeachMac in Augusta, GA and get a demo of what an iPhone can do, and I don't think you'll have anything to complain about that you didn't make up on the spot.

You'll do more out of the box with the iPad than you have with anything else you own.

I mean, gee, a MacBook will run OS X, Windows XP and 7 and Ubuntu... but why would you want to?

Yeah, games. Then what?

Sweet! Now in a year of so the version that comes out from Asus will do more and be cheaper, while not being quite as cool. Or maybe LG will make it a convergence tool...

Photoshop. Audacity. Flash video. Photography. .

Golly, you can't use a stylus (apparently), but that's OK, because the virtual keyboard doesn't have haptic feedback, either.

Once again, Steve has delivered a product for his own rarefied, assistant-laden life. He's got little people to handle all the chose you and I might want a computer for.

Pasadena.

Shoulda been chores, not chose, and it was for Raddy....

I dunno. Seems to me that if the iPhone's e-reader app is good enough, what's the point of this bad boy?

Don't understand why people are gritching about it not having a camera. I assume we're talking webcam, and not "cellphone camera?"

How geeky would you look holding up your tablet to snap a photo? I would laugh and point at you.

Looks cool, but not being able to scribe on it is kind of a deal breaker. Not quite the cool "Avatar" digital VR clipboard we were all hoping for, eh?

The target market of this device is the people who really want a netbook, but realized that they pretty much suck.

Does apple still make a 12" MacBook? They would have been better served making a tablet/convertible out of that with the full OSX experience.

> How geeky would you look holding
> up your tablet to snap a photo? I
> would laugh and point at you.

The biggest geeks want the option of being laughed at. That's what Laporte did at the keynote yesterday, was hold up his laptop from the audience to put the video on his network. (He said Steve gave him a couple snotty glimpses.)

These things are supposed to be getting better. Thirty years ago, cars didn't have great stereos, but now they usually do. Features get added and expectations go up. A camera on the front would have been good for conferencing and so forth. The cameras on cell phones can read bar codes.

Just before a trip last month, I lost my 3-year-old cell phone. Soon enough someone will release the smartphone of my dreams, an Android with a really good keyboard... But it's not available yet, so ought bought an old POS flip-phone cheap, just to carry me through the springtime. (It has an extending antenna! It gets a cute little phone-boner.) I use it as an alarm clock, but it only has one alarm; the newer model which it replaced, had THREE alarms. Three is better than one because it's harder to sleep through.

So we can critique these things on any criteria we want. The features we want are what we want, and we expected Steve to know. Hell, we expected him to know the things we didn't or couldn't articulate, like I was saying earlier. This guy has seen into the future four times: Apple II, Mac, Ipod & Iphone, and a lot of us were hoping this was going to be a similar game-changer. This machine is nicely tooled, but it's missing something, and a camera's as good a guess as anything. (As is haptic feedback, or flash video support, more memory, or stronger app support.)

I mean, gee, a MacBook will run OS X, Windows XP and 7 and Ubuntu... but why would you want to?

Because some operating systems do things better than others. If you want to do an video/audio/photo editing, Linux works the best. If you have an older computer that can't run the newer Microsoft OS, Linux will run it. I support Windows servers (primarily) at work, and most new web applications are migrating over, so Windows is here to stay in a professional environment. And although MACs are very cool for a small subset of tasks, their compatibility into an existing infrastructure is clumsy at best.

A person runs different operating systems to utilize the strengths of each one without being hamstrung by the weaknesses. But that is something that the average computer user will not do, mostly because s/he doesn't clearly understand those benefits and problems and doesn't have the knowledge to do anything about it.

Will I buy the IPad? I doubt it because I have no need for it. I'm not a gadget hound and refuse to pay $500 for something that I will use on rare occasions. I would rather spend my time 'out in the world' relating to other humans. I can have my nose in a computer the other 12 hours per day.

-Julie

I wonder how much Jobs rushed this thing through production, especially if the occasional rumors you hear about his health are true. Maybe he wanted one more big thing before he shuffled off this mortal coil.

Worth a thought, anyway.

The iPad will have monthly communication issues, which can be fixed by downloading the "I SWEAR I love you" app. However, the parameters of the app change constandly, so repeated downloads will be required.

> I wonder how much Jobs rushed this thing
> through production, especially if the
> occasional rumors you hear about his
> health are true

Good point. He'll never be my favorite figure in the most exciting industry of my lifetime, but let's give Jobs his props... He's created a lot of wealth and delighted a lot of people. Even if this isn't a breakout success like some of his other products, and he passes very soon, I won't begrudge him (or his reputation) this failed effort.

(It's much easier to be patient when you're not a stockholder.)

(Seriously- He gives us a tablet the user can't write to? Who does he think he is, Moses?)

Jobs deserves more credit than just the work done at Apple.
He's forced everyone in the tech business to up their game.
Imagine the crap Microsoft would be putting out if AAPL wasn't nipping at their heels.
I read a story in the WSJ I think that claimed to quote company insiders who said that AAPL is still working on trying to fit more hardware features into the final IPAD product that gets delivered in 2 months.
That would be sweet if they could fit in a web cam in version 1.0.

Meh, they're gonna have to add a lot to really justify it. It is a glorified magazine/book reader with internet options that with decent options costs twice that of a netbook with far far better data storage/communication ports installed.

16gb for $499? Thats not going to hold much of anything. How are you going to transfer data to it? wifi all the time?

> Imagine the crap Microsoft would
> be putting out

It's entirely possible that no one has made more money from the Macintosh –and Apple viewed whole– than Bill Gates.

First, the Cupertino enterprise has been a handsome, oversized fig leaf whenever the SEC comes sniffing around for antitrust prosecutions. Microsoft has always been able to pretend that with those sharp, goatee'd, mock-turtlenecked kids in California making such strides, the microcomputer industry was terribly competitive... And all the smartass advertising and all the crazyshit Apple customer-bots gave credence to this argument.

Second, do you remember Lotus Jazz? Almost no one does, but it was one of the most anticipated software releases of all time... and it tanked. Microsoft Excel was released later, yet first (though none too soon) on the Macintosh, and only then on the Wintel platform. The Macintosh would not have survived without this software from Microsoft. Not only did the Redmond applications allow hipsters across the land to convince their financial officers that Apple computers were about more than vegetarian recipes and smoking dope... Microsoft made a fucking mint off the price of those office suites. And the somewhat delayed but tremendously successful product did much to rebut the accusation that Gates ruled the world through vaporware marketing: Excel was both late and worth waiting for.

(Never forget the head-in-hands guy at 31:04.)

16gb for $499? Thats not going to hold much of anything. How are you going to transfer data to it?

****

The same way I do with my iphone. Sometimes wifi, sometimes 3g,
often times by syncing with Itunes.

I would expect that once a book is finished it will remain in the itunes library and not on the I-pad.

16G is pretty good to read books, email, surf the web, photos + some music. No doubt version 2 will step this up though.

That would be sweet if they could fit in a web cam in version 1.0.

Perhaps this one can have a Web cam facing the user, so it could be part of an interactive chat session.

Well, I can't imagine why you guys don't all have Fujitsu tablet PCs. They've been out for years. In typical government agency fashion, we officially think computers are for typing, twenty years after Apple invented desktop publishing. And I'm literally in our version of the document publishing division!

And Linux, for audio processing? You still have to deal with audio drivers, which were/are the bane of the PC architecture. That isn't me talking, it's what I read in Maximum PC. Maybe you should look at Logic Studio.

I bet you've never used Garageband.

There is a solid market for products that do not require the consumer to fiddle with the device, to make it work. To make it do what they want.

Just read the covers of the enthusiast magazines. Windows mags still cover their front pages with articles entitled, "Make Your OS Do What You Want". This is madness. It's just nuts to mistake fiddling with your computer for productive work.

Dude. ProTools on Windows.

Nuff said.

Dude - I know M-Audio writes for Windows. I have a sound card of theirs in my 10-year-old G4 to import from LPs.

And I know about workarounds. I'm forced to use Notes 8.5 at work, which, with its "Eclipse" operating environment, hung my IBM 8811 D1U repeatedly until I got the IT people to tell me how to turn it off and let XP draw to the screen. That cost us taxpayers about $60 for the one service call, and, again, fiddling with the computer is not productive.

You just have to fiddle more to get what you want on your PC. It is your call, and I am pleased to see you succeed. Time is money.

Hey, an anecdote! I just found out that plugging the mouse into the "wrong" USB port causes a slowdown in Call of Duty 4. Wow, is that a wonderful feature!

I'm not running an antivirus now. I don't have to. You?

This isn't a nerd-vs-nerd thing. Do a real ROI analysis, so you don't have to listen to me.

This is much a like an executive at Ford or Chrysler telling a San Fernando Valley teenager that he doesn't NEED to tune up his sports car, because by golly, OUR new products are plenty sporty enough right off the lot! Or the old joke about the Model T: Any color you want, as long as it's black.

Raddy is essentially saying do it Steve's way or your wasting your time. I think this credits Jobs with much more excellence and insight than he's actually demonstrated.

> This isn't a nerd-vs-nerd thing. Do a real
> ROI analysis

Christ, you're a smug little fucker. Like Amy at her worst. 'Don't you understand? I'm being perfectly RATIONAL... This is all about SCIENCE....'

Remember above, when I said Apple will sell every one of these they build?

Right, again.

Crid. Go ahead and do it. It's your money and time.