Apple iPad

That name makes me cringe.  I thought they were gonna call it the iSlate.  That would've been so much better.

or a feminine hygiene product . its really funny

I agree with these posts.

That is hilarious.

"I even get my age wrong sometimes."  -CheesyBread

Hahaha that is hilarious!

Apple iFailure, Appropriately, I was thinking about this on the shitter (it was a bad one too), and I'm clueless how they think it's revolutionary (of course they had to say that, to build the hype). It's a big ipod, period. There's nothing special or different about it, it's just larger. I bet people are thrilled about wanting to spend $500 on another round of docks for their home.

Everything they said wasa absurd. Like I'm going to use it as my digital photo frame, pick it up and dock into the kitchen to cook dinner, then take it into my room as an alarm clock. This reminds me of the nokia gaming taco they had. I want to see someone put the iPad up to their ear like it's a big iphone.

And the USB can pretty much only be used to upload photos from a digital camera...

I'm waiting on Jasoco to chime in and tell us what we're missing out on

Dude... The AppleTV rocks because I can set it on top of my Xbox 360, and then it can do the same thing my Xbox 360 does, all I have to do is switch inputs...

Yeah, pretty useless device.

So basically, it's bigger than my iPhone, yet has half as many features... Why don't I just put my iPhone under a magnifying glass.

What cracks me up are the guys that are saying "flash sucks, HTML5 is the future" blah blah blah, if flash fucking sucks so bad, why is it on every website you fucking go to?

I don't care if it sucks, and if it drains power, point is, everyone uses it, so make it compatible.

That's like saying IE sucks, so we're not going to make it work with it. Well, you can do it, but unfortunately 98% of the internet uses it. So the 2% you're looking for, maybe 0.02% will find you.

Congrats, you just won 2 internet points.

B T dub, Internet Explorer doesn't even have 60% usage anymore:

"I even get my age wrong sometimes."  -CheesyBread

Ugly, pointless, epic fail. They could have at least made it an actual computer. What I've heard is that it's basically an iPod touch blown up. Whatever happened to that MacBook wheel they hyped last year?

Pathetic.

Yup. And as far as e-book readers go, I'd rather get a Kindle.

"I even get my age wrong sometimes."  -CheesyBread

http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1928558

college humor making fun of the iPad by parodying the apple videos that are always released with their new products.

I wouldn't go so far as to say it's a failure. It's actually more well known than the AppleTV, and it's only a week old and hasn't even come out yet. I was in an Apple Store the other day and on the way out actually heard a customer asking if they had them yet. This thing will probably, in all likeliness, succeed more than you think.

I mean look at the iPod. 2001. It comes out and everyone says "What's the point?" Now look at it!
A thread from release day: http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=500

Or the iPhone. Here's some amusing snippets from the media from 2007...

I think it will carve itself a niche. And it will really help push a new paradigm in "couch computing" since 2010 seems to be the year everyone is releasing a tablet of some sort.

“One of the most prominent icons of modern day Christianity, the Crocoduck is capable of dispelling all arguments in favor of Atheism and Darwinism simply by not existing. Its sworn enemy is the platypus, which, in harsh contrast, is capable of proving god does not exist by existing.”

The problem with not supporting Flash is this. Apple states that it is power hungry, may slow down the system, blah blah blah.

Okay, that's fine. So does playing a 3D game.

If I want to turn the Flash off, how about an option for it? If I decide to browse with Flash, I know it's going to kill the battery, but so what.

There's nothing wrong with pushing technology, and while all of us fully understand that we're not seeing Flash on purpose, I have plenty of people with iPhones that are always asking why things are missing on the websites they go to. They don't understand why it's just not there.

A couple of years is a very long time to wait for developing technology, on something you're releasing now. It'd be like Ford producing a sports car that is going to be super fast, but right now you can only buy the car with a four cylinder, come back in a couple years, and we'll upgrade you to the V8 then.

That's how most people see this. With the iPhone it hasn't been so bad for the most part, because almost all YouTube videos were converted over to be able to be played on the iPhone. Problem is, most people still watch YouTube on their computers, which all support Flash.

I had a Motorola Q a couple years ago, and while overall it was a pretty horrible experience, I could browse on over to YouTube with it and watch all the Flash videos I wanted, and they played pretty damn well. Now, did it kill my battery life, bog down the phone, and usually end up with me restarting it, yes, it did.

However, the iPhone is a hell of a lot more powerful than the Q was, and by not allowing multitasking, it's not going to be a Windows Mobile 5 experience where instead of just having the browser open, you have seven other things running in the background.

I'M TYPING IN ALL CAPS BECAUSE IT'S LIKE ME YELLING AT YOU AND NOT BEING ABLE TO UNDERSTAND ANYTHING YOU'RE SAYING BECAUSE YOU'RE WRONG AND I'M RIGHT AND I WANT FLASH AND IT DOESN'T MATTER IF APPLE AND ADOBE CAN'T GET THEIR FUCK ON I STILL WANT FLASH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH I CAN'T HEAR YOU.

I kid, I kid.

I'm assuming that the iPad is coming out sooner than in a few years. Right now, you need Flash to use/enjoy most websites.

"I even get my age wrong sometimes."  -CheesyBread

Flash is overrated these days and people only defend it because it's been around for so long. I have FlashBlocker installed and the only times I encounter it as part of the main site is on video sites. 98% of the time otherwise it's an advertisement. Apple has the right idea pushing Flash to the curb. It's old technology that was used in the olden days of HTML4 as a crutch to make cool things happen that web code couldn't do.

But with HTML5, the web can do cool shit right out of the box without Flash. As long as you don't use Internet Explorer because MS is so hell bent on pushing Silverlight (Which Apple has no qualms with and MS is porting for the iPhone OS and doesn't actually suck on OS X either.) and blatantly refuses to support all the cool stuff CSS3 and HTML5 can do.

These sites have some really cool things to play with if you use Chrome, Firefox 3.1+ or Safari and sometimes Opera:
http://www.chromeexperiments.com/
http://www.canvasdemos.com/
http://html5demos.com/

Some recommendations:
Wolfenstein style 3D engine: http://www.canvasdemos.com/2009/03/22/p … ng-part-2/
Cloth simuation: http://www.chromeexperiments.com/detail … imulation/
Physics drawing simulation: http://www.chromeexperiments.com/detail/physicsketch/
Google's home page... oops: http://www.chromeexperiments.com/detail/gravity/

And this stuff can be done on the iPhone/iPod touch and now iPad because of WebKit's built-in HTML5 and CSS3 enhancements, as well as the stuff Apple uses for themselves to make web apps look as nice as regular apps on their touch devices.

What sites use Flash other than video sites? Most of the good Flash games get ported to iPhone OS anyway, and even Adobe's Flash authoring program has the ability to save Flash animations as iPhone apps for submission to the App Store. Flash on the internet is not as big a deal as people make it out to be.

Flash on OS X is a memory and resource hogging buggy piece of shit that causes most crashes in OS X. Literally. And Adobe, instead of getting their act together and fixing the problem, would rather defend themselves instead of doing some recoding. It's no wonder Apple wants to get that shit out of the way. It's terrible that a page with Flash pushes my CPU usage to nearly 100%. And it's no wonder that Chrome and now Safari have been designed to run Flash as separate threads so if Flash crashes, and it will, it won't take your browser down anymore.

Slowly the web will either move away from Flash, or offer alternatives (based on HTML5 and the VIDEO/AUDIO elements, JavaScript and CSS3) for people with iPhone OS devices. Because they have to. It's about time someone pushed the non-standard Flash (Flash is NOT a web standard, no matter what anyone thinks. It's just a plug-in that happens to take advantage of a standard page element and has been around for a long time.) to the side. Let's let the web itself shine again instead of being shadowed behind a plug-in designed as a crutch. Remember when everyone had a Flash navigation bar because no browser could do :hover effects? Now everyone can do it and no one uses Flash for that anymore. Now Videos can be embedded in pages standardly (As opposed to the old Embed/Object method) so there's really no need for Flash video players anymore. It'll just take a little time to get everyone on board. But the major people are there already.

Now, the VIDEO/AUDIO element's do have their problems. I'll admit that. Firefox is going with the open-source, but not quite sure if it's royalty-free or not OGG VORBIS while WebKit (Safari and Chrome) use H.264/AAC. Firefox won't use H.264 because of licenses. Apple won't use OGG/VORBIS because they don't know about any hidden license owners that might come out of the woodwork one day and say "Hey! You're using my codec! Pay me money!" So they go with a standard they know they can use. Firefox can't because they're an open-source community without the huge bank Apple has so they go with something that can be implemented without paying royalties... But that's not a big problem as long as you use both H.264/AAC and OGG/VORBIS formatted video or audio in your pages. OGG for Firefox, H.264 for Safari/Chrome. If done right, you can make your video player look and act exactly like Flash would...

http://www.youtube.com/html5
http://www.dailymotion.com/openvideodemo

There's nothing left that Flash can do that HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript can't anymore. Even 3D is possible right in the browser. I honestly see Flash becoming less and less used in the coming years.

“One of the most prominent icons of modern day Christianity, the Crocoduck is capable of dispelling all arguments in favor of Atheism and Darwinism simply by not existing. Its sworn enemy is the platypus, which, in harsh contrast, is capable of proving god does not exist by existing.”

tl;dr

but the links you posted to the chrome experiments were really cool I'm still checking them out.

also I did read your post.

Flash is everywhere. You can't deny it. You know what else is on the way out? Memory in portable devices that isn't solid state. But Apple still has the iPod Classic line. Why? Because people want tons of storage and don't mind the sluggishness and added weight of conventional hard drives. Realizing this, Apple keeps the device around, though the tech is on the way out.

The fact that my fucking phone which I know has the processing power to run flash and doesn't annoys me. The fact that Apple is advertising their new piece of crap product with the word "magical" (http://www.apple.com/) and it doesn't run Flash annoys me more.

Admit it Jason...Apple can make mistakes. I'm not even talking about Flash any more. I'm talking about the flawed product that is the iPad. It may not be marketed as a laptop replacement but basically that's what they're implying. But it doesn't surf the web better than a notebook or receive email better than a notebook because if one key thing: No physical keyboard. The keyboard adapter forces you to be sitting on some sort of table while using the device which defeats the purpose of having a portable tablet shaped device in the first place.

Also, the tablet design lends itself nicely to actually being used like a device to right on (think Newton). Apple had good handwriting recognition on that device even though it was a failure yet they don't implement it here. There are styluses that can be used with capacitive screens.

This device is the definition of a company half-assing a product. Was the hype unbelievably huge? Yes...it's Apple. But somewhere deep past all your blind fanboyism you have to see that this is a product that is not worth the purchase. Give me a scenario where it would be better fit than a macbook or an iphone.

I've been wrong about products before. Somewhere on this site is a post by me saying the Nintendo DS would fail. I was completely wrong. But here's a prediction: This product, outside of being purchased by douches that line up outside the Apple store, will fail. It's not revolutionary, it's not even evolutionary. I'm probably going to be wrong due to Apple's insane ability to market, but mark my words: I would never be caught dead using one. If I received one as a gift or won it, I would sell it. Why? I have a smart phone and a laptop.

I'm not really taking any shots at Alex because technically he does work for Apple.

No, most sites aren't completely Flash-based, but nearly any time posts a video or song/audio clip, you have to have Flash to play it. Hell, all the videos we post on GeekPub would be unavailable to you on an iPad. And many use Flash for various elements of their sites: ESPN, Last.fm, CNET, etc.

Also, it is completely ridiculous that you keep dismissing video sites and game sites as part of the discussion.

I must also say that Dpark owns an iPhone, and I own an iPod and am using iTunes as we speak. I'm not an Apple hater. But Steve Jobs, as well as the rest of the company, can be overwhelmingly arrogant, and the iPad is an underwhelming, over-hyped product.

"I even get my age wrong sometimes."  -CheesyBread

Okay, you're clearly delusional, and I'm just wasting my time.

"I even get my age wrong sometimes."  -CheesyBread

Silly Clark. I didn't mean perfect as in all amazing nothing wrong. I mean perfect as in "Apple perfect" as in "If it doesn't work the Apple way, we will not release it." Which is why they didn't just slap a multi-touch screen on a MacBook, cut off the keyboard and release that. Because a regular OS isn't really designed for the touch paradigm. It's designed for the mouse paradigm. A real touch interface needs to be built with touch in mind from the start. Not taken from an existing UI.

“One of the most prominent icons of modern day Christianity, the Crocoduck is capable of dispelling all arguments in favor of Atheism and Darwinism simply by not existing. Its sworn enemy is the platypus, which, in harsh contrast, is capable of proving god does not exist by existing.”

But without a proper push, it will never happen. See? Someone has to make the first move. It's like space colonies. If we don't get working on the technology required to live on the moon, it will never happen. And while it won't still happen for centuries, the longer you put it off, due to laziness or whatever, the longer it actually takes to happen. See also, hybrid/electric cars. What if the electric car had taken off in the 80's? Or Hybrid technology had been perfected sooner? We might all be driving much less fuel guzzling cars right now. We became too reliant on foreign oils, just like we became reliant on Flash.

Someone need to take the stand. Or else it never happens. Understand where I am going?

“One of the most prominent icons of modern day Christianity, the Crocoduck is capable of dispelling all arguments in favor of Atheism and Darwinism simply by not existing. Its sworn enemy is the platypus, which, in harsh contrast, is capable of proving god does not exist by existing.”

But we don't give a fuck where people are going two years from now.

I hope we get a better alternative to flash, also, but right now, we don't have one, and if you're going to deliver a device at the moment that gives the "full web experience" then it ought to offer fucking Flash.

If everyone had that attitude "We're living now, not tomorrow", nothing would get done.

It's the reason gas prices are so high. We didn't want to change 25 years ago, so now we're stuck waiting.

Living on the moon? Won't happen if everyone thinks "Well I won't be able to live there in my lifetime, so why bother?"

The digital switch is another example of doing it now to better the future. They put it off for years because people kept complaining that it was going to be an inconvenience. But they finally FINALLY pulled the trigger.

Humanity gets too used to things and just doesn't want to wait for better stuff. If it isn't available now, why bother? Right? I hate that line of thinking. At least some companies are willing to take the risks.

“One of the most prominent icons of modern day Christianity, the Crocoduck is capable of dispelling all arguments in favor of Atheism and Darwinism simply by not existing. Its sworn enemy is the platypus, which, in harsh contrast, is capable of proving god does not exist by existing.”

It is. And yes, it is safe, but I still think it's a good thing to leave Flash off for many reasons. The major one being Adobe's ineptitude to create a non-sucky Mac program that is as good as their Windows counterparts.

Though in all reality, Apple could create their own Flash Player since Flash is open. Flash writers and players can be created by anyone license free. I'm kind of surprised some third party OS X app creator hasn't created a better Flash to replace the shitty Flash. But whatever.

I just hope Apple does not burn their bridge. They have a habit of becoming arrogant when it comes to their biggest supporters. Microsoft who creates Office and Adobe who creates Creative Suite. Fuck around too much and they could pull their respective plugs. But they don't, yet, because their apps do bring in money. But you sometimes wonder how thick the string is that keeps them anchored to the Mac platform.

“One of the most prominent icons of modern day Christianity, the Crocoduck is capable of dispelling all arguments in favor of Atheism and Darwinism simply by not existing. Its sworn enemy is the platypus, which, in harsh contrast, is capable of proving god does not exist by existing.”

I'm by no means "too used to Flash" to switch. I want it replaced ASAP. I've always hated Flash. I'm going to keep using it until an alternative is actually available, though.

"I even get my age wrong sometimes."  -CheesyBread

Everyone should be pushing it. Down with proprietary bullshit.

"I even get my age wrong sometimes."  -CheesyBread

My name is Evan.

And please don't get me wrong.  I'm a fanboy if there ever was one.  I just think tablets are a bad idea all around...but as you pointed out earlier...that is irrelevant.  No one thought the iPod or iPhone would take off and they are insanely popular. You may be right, the iPad could take off and become huge.  The problem I have with it is that no matter what the other tablets do, if I were to buy one I would trust Apple to make the best.  That doesn't matter, though.  What I saw was a boring keynote.  Every keynote I watched so far made me think that Steve Jobs was awesome and Apple was the best company ever...this one stood out as boring and that leads me to believe that I will think the iPad is boring if I own one because NOTHING dazzled me.  Then again I'm not the target market for tablets.

But it was boring and very un-revolutionary was my point.  I just think tablets are a failure to begin with.

What happened to the Macbook Wheel Jason?  You'd know.

Heh, it worked well on me I guess.

Sweet iPad avatar, Evan.

"I even get my age wrong sometimes."  -CheesyBread

Speaking of which, I really miss getting to play guitar on stage. Anyone wanna start a band? I can do whatever, but my drumming is a bit lackluster.

I don't know any instruments but I could learn or do vocals. I'm cool with destroying my voice box for chicks.

Me and Alex play guitar, Evan and Clark play drums. I could learn to play bass and I'm sure one of us could sing so we'd have something going. But we don't need two drummers so we'd have to figure something out.

lol That's the beauty of jamming, it should always be free. And your plans with Clark deeply disturb me... haha

I love drumming, and don't get me wrong, I'm not bad at it, I just have less experience on it than anything else.

I've done lead and rhythm electric guitar though, acoustic, piano, keyboard, bass, percussion (all the non-set stuff) mandolin, etc. Bass is actually a lot of fun, but I'd say lead electric is my personal favorite. Bass after that and keys after bass.

I call triangle.

But who will play the cowbell? And we definitely need a vibraslap. Hands down.

Nice.

I have 4 electric guitars which I don't know how to play lol.

I call bagpipes.