People who listen to the podcast may have heard that, pretty much every week, there is some discussion on the Jesus machine itself, the iPad, and what we generally say is quite contradictory on the matter. One week, we like some of its features and the other week we are terrifically opposed by the shiny bandit. I thought it would be my place to speak on what we like and what we dislike about the iPad and why we probably wont buy one.
First of all, I think we should talk about its merits rather than its pitfalls. First of all, the iPad is a beautiful piece of technology. It looks good in your hands and its animations – while not exactly, “magical” – are a refreshing take on user interface. Interacting with the device also seems appealing and the keyboard and multi-touch features really make this device what it is. (well, that being a tablet)
We also find it nice to see that the features of iOS have been expanded to be a little bit more responsive for the big screen; iPod looks like a proper jukebox application and apps such as iPhoto have been upscaled nicely for the big screen. Speaking of screens, the 9.56*7.47 inch display works nicely when reading from it, which is a real problem I in particular have with computer screens, and displays movie with relative clarity.
However, what stops us from buying this device is that we fear that if we do we will never truly own it. The device is very locked down and Apple have made a lot of the decisions for the user without offering them recompense. I find it a little bit remarkable that Apple has the authority to ban software the user wants to run from its device; the AppStore rejections and software management system coupled with the recent banning of Flash are just a few examples.
Also, you are forced to run Microsoft Windows or Mac OS X if you want to even sync the iPad with a computer. Apple purposefully make it difficult to use the device elsewhere apart from their approved, proprietary, platforms. Speaking of proprietary, Apple only allow MPEG LA patented codecs to run on the iPad. Are we likely to see WebM (which most of YouTube will soon run on) on the iPad anytime soon? Not if Apple’s reception to Ogg Theora is to be believed. In fact, the only way I can ever see it happening is if YouTube stop its MP4 streaming and replace it with WebM; even then it wouldn’t surprise me if Jobs bans YouTube as well.
Finally, we are brought very suddenly to the price. As previously stated before, when we heard Apple were going to sell these machines at an, ‘unbelievable’, price we were wrongly optimistic that translated to, ‘a reasonable’, price. Instead, we are met by a £429 price tag for the basic version; a price that you could probably pick up a reasonable laptop or netbook for.
To sum up: sorry Apple, we ain’t buying it until you let us do what we want with it – and maybe lower the price a little while you’re at it. 
It's not quite 'on' it, and there are obvious control limitations, but think of the possibilities...Go on, THINK
OK, not quite “appears”, but using some “cloud” based technology, game designer Dave Perry, co-founder of future game streaming service Gakai, has put a photo up on his personal blog of World of Warcraft running on an iPad…well, streaming over their office’s Wi-Fi connection.
Put simply, Gakai is similar to On Live, allowing you to stream games from their network onto a variety of games onto a variety of devices. Whilst obviously, there may be some issues to overcome on actually controlling the game on touch screen based system, such as the iPad, they were impressed at how well it ran (what is essentially video) onto it from their servers.
It could perhaps offer a an alternative to the way apps are traditionally distributed through systems, especially if they are over a Wi-Fi connection and memory space on the device is an issue. Either way, it’s cool stuff, but we’ll have to speculate on what the possibilities for these live services are.
For those of you wishing to find a way of passing half an hour, as I was, this presentation by Carnegie Mellon University Professor, Jesse Schell, about the future of video games is well worth checking out. From the DICE 2010 event back in February he discusses what it is that makes Wii, Wii Fit, Guitar Hero, Farmville and Club the Penguin as successful as they are; as well as briefly explaining why everyone hates the iPad and the possible future of games.
This week on Ignition: Josh discusses the latest releases including the much anticipated Mass Effect 2; the team discuss MAG after having all played it in the past week; Stevie runs through the greatest firefox extensions; we give our first impressions of Google Wave after being invited to join the preview build; then we finish things off with 1 minute, 5000 questions where this week Matt tries to pitch the iPad to Josh and Stevie.
Duration: 65 minutes
Hey, guess what. If you have an RSS feed, be it linked up to your favourite cookery sites, you’ll most likely of seen news about this. Apple unveiled the iPad today, like a bigger version of a iPhone, smaller version of a netbook. Check out Matt’s post on his impressions of the iPad. I’m going to keep my views under-wraps till this weekend’s Ignition, it’s for the best. Trust me.
But, seeing as everything on the internet has been taken over by it today, and the fact, it does, I admit, look pretty slick, the iPad gets the video of the day spot.
This image finally marks the end of months of insane hype surrounding the Apple Tablet
The biggest question being asked leading up to today’s Apple Event was not if they would be announcing a tablet computer, but what it would be called. So congratulations to everyone who put there money on ‘iPad’ however, I’m a little unconvinced by the name as I don’t think the idea of the latest tech being a ‘pad’ is necessarily that exciting. However, what most of us are concerned with are the actual features of the product, so allow me to give you a quick overview.
