Re: The Apple iPad
 

Anybody else realize that their share price went down $8.59 since the release of the iPad? Ouch.

Re: The Apple iPad
 

I actually like Pandora a lot better. It actually stays in the general genre that I start with, instead of starting me with Lily Allen and ending up with something like Ke$ha.

(and still...I believe that last.fm wouldn't run at the same time as anything else, either :P)

Re: The Apple iPad
 

I wish Pandora was allowed in Canadia, darn music industry with their DMCA and DRM and a whole bunch of other acronyms.

Re: The Apple iPad
 

Does Grooveshark work in Canada?

Re: The Apple iPad
 

Apparently! Thanks, it looks great!

Re: The Apple iPad
 

With Pandora you end up getting large amounts of repeats, Last.fm is better for us adventurous types.

Re: The Apple iPad
 

What's amazing to me is that Apple's practically trying to brainwash everyone into thinking it's the best piece of crap they've ever put out. Quote from the iPad front page: "...best experience on the web .... hands down".

Re: The Apple iPad
 

That's what most PR and advertising departments try to do. Apple is just a bit more... extreme.

Re: The Apple iPad
 

All right, does Archos or someone else have any Android-based tablets coming out in the future, cause a lot of manufacturers working with an open-source developing platform has to lead to a good thing at some point.

That and the Reality Distortion Field is starting to sink in, and I require the power of software-libre to fight it.

Re: The Apple iPad
 

I hope they sell a billion of them - Of course I am biased by having bought a small (literally) dollop of Apple stock back in the 90s - Investing when you are young is a good thing - Buying and holding (of good companies) is a good thing.

OK - Now back to alternately demonizing and adoring this shiny new non-phone, non-computer, gizmo and its imagined successors. :)

Blake

Re: The Apple iPad
 

What are you using to base your radio? Artists? Tags? I find Pandora's radio to be far less accurate and varied, and not to take into consideration when an artist changes their style over the length of their career (and thus smack a track of hip-hop Beastie Boys in a punk station simply because they used to play punk).


More on topic, here's a review of the original Apple iPod in 2001. Maybe we might just need to wait and see with the iPad.

http://news.cnet.com/Apples-iPod-spu..._3-274821.html

I won't be an early adopter. I don't even have a smartphone, let alone an iPhone. I don't have a netbook. I'm not their target market. But give it a couple years to mature and maybe I'll be interested.

Re: The Apple iPad
 

To put it simply, Last.fm said I would enjoy Jet, and The Killers. Kind of a deal breaker there.

That's an important point. The third generation iPod is the one that really started to catch on, though part of that was due to the previous model's Mac-only limitation. I think people are too used to iPhone-style launches.

Re: The Apple iPad
 

What sold iPod though, ultimately, was iTunes. The iPod was a nice piece on engineering, but once iTunes came out of the Mac only club, and had every song ever for $.99 that only worked with the iPod, it suddenly got wheels.

iPad, however, doesn't have an exclusive store and function to use with it. It is banking on the fact people want a big, internet tablet, and that Apple can throw enough momentum behind it to make it appealing to it. It has music, but you can get that anywhere cheap. Movies/TV, same. Apps? There's an iPod for that, has been. Apple is selling this device on a feeling, plain and simple, and hoping it will stick to the wall.

Plus Firewire? Really?

Re: The Apple iPad
 

I highly doubt that the iTunes Store is the source of the iPod's success, considering that there are large numbers of people who steal music or would prefer CDs. It certainly helped, though.

Hey, I liked FireWire! D:

Re: The Apple iPad
 

While I agree that the iTunes store is not the sole source of the iPod's popularity (and also like Firewire), I do think it was a very important factor. iTunes is now the largest place for music sales in America (if not the world) and represents a very large chunk of how mainstream America gets their music. While younger and more tech-saavy groups turn to other means on the internet, and some still holdout to various physical formats (I have a rapidly growing record collection), iTunes has offered a very large, easy-to-use market for millions of people.

That being said, the iPad will have an extensive market that will only be available to Apple products (the app store). And many apps will become iPad exclusives and/or have more functionality on the iPad than they do on the iPhone or iPod Touch. Apple isn't trying to win over the netbook user, they're trying to win over the user that has never really thought about the netbook. And the app store is going to give them the advantage over the countless competitors that are also on the horizon (Android-based tablets [including the Dell mini], HP Slate, and eventually the ChromeOS).

The fact that Apple is far from the only company investing heavily in this type of device shows something. These guys all see the potential in this market, and the likelyhood of this market exploding. All of these devices will likely have their early stumbled, including the iPad, but give it a couple years and see what happens. And who knows, maybe Apple is working on another game changer like the iTunes store.