The Apple iPad

[alexjlopez]

I'm with you, everything was going so well until they brought AT&T into the mix. WTF.

I deal with AT&T connectivity every single day--work phone and personal phone. I'd love to switch my personal phone, but with everyone in my family living in another state and all of them being on AT&T, I'm kind of stuck. I hate it--sound quality is horrible. And for the longest time I never had the "dropped calls" issue, and suddenly in the last few months it's like every other day I lose someone in mid-conversation. Pure crap.

[Chris]

Should have been ubiquitous internet out of the box for all models. You pay $130 extra JUST TO HAVE THE 3G, that's not counting the data plan! OUCH!

[hiphopcr]

This is close, with the exception of the AT&T reliability issues and cost.

Yep. $30 a month for unlimited data. For AT&T reliability.

[alexjlopez]

Should have been ubiquitous internet out of the box for all models. You pay $130 extra JUST TO HAVE THE 3G, that's not counting the data plan! OUCH!

That's a good point--I paid what I felt was a premium for my Kindle (for what it is) because the connectivity was included. Considering they are charging so much more just for the ability to connect to 3G, they should have thrown at least a year of 3G in for free or something.

[Nous Anima]

I expected it to be a bit cheaper to begin with, so the price will have to come down to $299 before sales "explode". A very sweet device nonetheless and definitely has huge potential. It's a start, like the iPhone when it came out it was deemed a luxury "only for the rich fanboys" but look at it now being a mass market product.

I'll have to see one up close and "play with it" a little before I can express an opinion though, and I am not yet sure about the specs (performance wise). The screen being 1024 x 768 and 100% backward compatibility with the iPhone are definitely the stand-out features for me right now.

Not sure what the deal is with the AT&T contract - isn't it a rolling contract (you can cancel anytime you like). Is it even required?

[alexjlopez]

The more I think about it (and the more I talk to Womp hehe), the more flaws I see in this thing.

Womp brought up battery life, which is my biggest gripe with my Touch. With the bigger screen and additional power, the 10 hour battery life can't be for real if your running 3D games or constantly on Wifi/3G.

As far as movies go, I realized two things. First, no HDMI out--even the new Zune has that. Not the end of the world, I suppose. But what's with the 4:3 screen? Coming from anyone else, this would have been flamed left and right, but coming from Apple, all is forgiven.

No multitasking is pretty much a dealbreaker--can't listen to music while surfing the web? Can't keep IM running while reading a book? Stupid.

No Flash support? Even the Wii browser supports flash, geez...

I like the idea here, but the implementation seems off. I'll wait for a Windows 7 netbook tablet knock-off instead hehe.

[Nous Anima]

The more I think about it (and the more I talk to Womp hehe), the more flaws I see in this thing.

Womp brought up battery life, which is my biggest gripe with my Touch. With the bigger screen and additional power, the 10 hour battery life can't be for real if your running 3D games or constantly on Wifi/3G.

As far as movies go, I realized two things. First, no HDMI out--even the new Zune has that. Not the end of the world, I suppose. But what's with the 4:3 screen? Coming from anyone else, this would have been flamed left and right, but coming from Apple, all is forgiven.

No multitasking is pretty much a dealbreaker--can't listen to music while surfing the web? Can't keep IM running while reading a book? Stupid.

No Flash support? Even the Wii browser supports flash, geez...

I like the idea here, but the implementation seems off. I'll wait for a Windows 7 netbook tablet knock-off instead hehe.

I think battery life won't be an issue, 10 hours or thereabout is probably not unrealistic at all. We'll soon find out but don't dismiss it as an impossibility (actually, go ahead and do that because then you will only be pleasantly surprised )

No HDMI out, I agree. But it's certainly not a deal breaker with that kind of screen. 4:3 would be a problem if it was something crappy like 640 x 480. It's 1024 x 768, they could have gone widescreen by adopting the netbook standard 1024 x 600 -- but then you'd have LESS pixels on screen. By having the same horizontal res you can display 1024 x 600 widescreen *anyway*, without sacrificing the other tasks such as web browsing on the full screen! I don't see this as a problem simply because of the high overall resolution.

You can of course listen to music while surfing (why can't you??). Keeping IM running while reading a book, I agree; the only way to do that with the current OS version is to use "push" and switch back and forth between IM and book reading (carrying on from where you left off - you get notified when you get a new message) but I agree, it's not the perfect scenario -- then again, multitasking DOES tend to compromise battery life more than anything else on these devices. It's a compromise, but arguably the lesser of two evils? Maybe not, we'll see.

No flash support is the biggest issue though, and that HAS to be addressed with a firmware update on all three of them (iphone/ipod/ipad).

[Nous Anima]

So, is it a rolling contract deal, and is it even necessary to go with AT&T even when you only plan to use wifi??

[Flare]

Also... no OLED display? Poor choice. That would've helped the battery life.

[Nous Anima]

Also... no OLED display? Poor choice. That would've helped the battery life.

That's assuming there is a battery life issue to begin with. I honestly don't think there is but we'll find out. The screen does look awesome though, but I'll have to see one in the flesh before expressing any personal opinions.