The Apple iPad

[ProgrammerJoe]

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?

[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by ProgrammerJoe

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.

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.

Plus Firewire? Really?

Hey, I liked FireWire! D:

[Lil' Lavery]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

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.

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.

[Fennig247]

Look, I will say this to the iPad. I work there and ever since this baby has come out, I have been thinking of ways to make apps and connectors for our robot, our scouting program and even just stuff around the season. It is ridiculous for what it can do. I say by next season, 247 will be having one to show everything we need for our team and just to keep up with scouting.
If anyone was in the MI regional's or in the Curie division, there was a lime green laptop with the scouting program I made on it. I would love to down grade to an iPad. I am in the works of one for the iPhone. But this iPad, just made every scouters dreams come true.

[Karibou]

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

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).

I normally start with an artist. While I do agree that Pandora isn't as varied, it's only that way if you don't "add variety" to the stations and "like" every song that comes off. If you don't do that, it starts changing things up a lot. Also very handy for Christmas music [:

iTunes crashes a lot for me, but I'm running it on a laptop that is running XP, has an almost-filled hard drive, and two versions of Age of Empires installed on it, so that may be the reason for the crashing. It certainly slows down the computer, though. And let's not get on the CDs vs. digital debate, but I do get most of my music from iTunes, when I can get the giftcards. Buying a 20-track album for $9.99 is much cheaper and more convenient than getting the same album from Borders (I also don't have the time or the car to go out and actually buy CDs, but I probably would if I could so that I could use the music elsewhere). I was just greatly disappointed when they raised a lot of the songs to $1.29 instead of $.99, it certainly drains my balance quickly.

iTunes is also not just for music any more: as new iPod models come out, more things become available, such as TV shows, Podcasts, Movies, and games. I'm not familiar with the app store - I don't have a Touch or an iPhone - but I agree that as the iPad evolves, a lot more things will become available, and they'll be iPad-exclusive.

[artdutra04]

Originally Posted by ProgrammerJoe

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.

Still can't buy Let It Be, Back in the U.S.S.R., With A Little Help From My Friends or the rest of the entire Beatles discography.

[JesseK]

iTunes still regularly crashes on Windows. It's such a pain that it's the ONLY way to put music on an iPhone. Had I even thought about that before I bought it, I'm not so sure I would have purchased it.

I think a Slashdot user said it best:

"If you get an iAnything, it will be like life in a beautiful flower garden: a walled-in, no-way-to-get-out thorny garden. All aboard the DRM failboat!"

[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by JesseK

iTunes still regularly crashes on Windows. It's such a pain that it's the ONLY way to put music on an iPhone. Had I even thought about that before I bought it, I'm not so sure I would have purchased it.

I think a Slashdot user said it best:

"If you get an iAnything, it will be like life in a beautiful flower garden: a walled-in, no-way-to-get-out thorny garden. All aboard the DRM failboat!"

iTunes hasn't crashed for me in awhile... and they don't sell DRM locked music anymore.

iTunes isn't _that bad_ unless you like FLACs.

[Ian Curtis]

Originally Posted by JesseK

iTunes still regularly crashes on Windows. It's such a pain that it's the ONLY way to put music on an iPhone. Had I even thought about that before I bought it, I'm not so sure I would have purchased it.

Really? I'm a recent Window's user (I got my first PC in 7 years this past August) and iTunes has yet to crash on me. It did crash occasionally (every few months) on my Powerbook, but I haven't had any problem with it on Windows.

(now watch it crash shortly after I submit this post )

Oh, and the iTunes/iPod/iPad/iPhone/iTouch/etc. has been a consistent pain in the butt for me since my iPod magically got bent in half. I now listen to music from my enV Touch, but I have old iTunes DRMed music that I'm too lazy to CD-RW over into DRM free mp3s.

[ProgrammerJoe]

iTunes is bloatware on Windows, no ifs, ands, or buts about it. (Need verification on the Mac end of things) Useful bloatware, mind, but bloatware nonetheless. And the day that the Desktop is entirely cut out of the transfer equation is the day I will become "happy soul."

Now, does anyone think that the SDK will be able to expand on that Camera Connecting USB port? Or anyone working outside the SDK kit, for that matter?

[MrForbes]

My wife gave me her old ipod, so I kind of need itunes. I finally set up an extra internal hard drive that I can plug in to my computer to run a separate windows XP installation with itunes installed on it.

that way I don't have to have that apple stuff on my real hard drive.

I don't bother putting the cover on my computer case, I play wiht the insides too often.

[artdutra04]

Originally Posted by ProgrammerJoe

iTunes is bloatware on Windows, no ifs, ands, or buts about it. (Need verification on the Mac end of things) Useful bloatware, mind, but bloatware nonetheless. And the day that the Desktop is entirely cut out of the transfer equation is the day I will become "happy soul."

Now, does anyone think that the SDK will be able to expand on that Camera Connecting USB port? Or anyone working outside the SDK kit, for that matter?

The "iTunes is bloatware" argument used to work when most people only had 512Mb RAM, since opening a decent-sized iTunes library with album art on could easily gobble up 250Mb on a PC. When most new computers are now sold with 2Gb, 3Gb, 4Gb+ RAM, 250Mb doesn't matter anymore.

Anyway, here's how performance of iTunes (with a pretty large library) versus Firefox (only eight tabs open, two of them YouTube videos) on OSX 10.6. Combined, these two programs only use 1/8 of the total system RAM.

[ProgrammerJoe]

I said iTunes on Windows is bloatware, and I'll amend that as being from my perspective. It eats up way more processor and ram on my machine than I feel is necessary, and can easily tank an older PC. I don't have experience with a machine blessed by the Jobs, but I can imagine that who ever programmed iTunes knows their way around Unix better then Windows-based systems. Just saying.

[Lil' Lavery]

Originally Posted by JesseK

"If you get an iAnything, it will be like life in a beautiful flower garden: a walled-in, no-way-to-get-out thorny garden. All aboard the DRM failboat!"

You are aware that iTunes no longer has DRM on their music, right?

Originally Posted by Karibou

And let's not get on the CDs vs. digital debate, but I do get most of my music from iTunes, when I can get the giftcards.

CDs are digital.

Side note: Am I the only one who doesn't find Quicksilver that helpful? I've now given it two tries, and ended up uninstalling it both times.

[GUI]

Fujitsu has had iPads forever, except they come with a real processor, a keyboard, a hard drive, more heft and a higher price tag. I find the idea of the iPad competing with netbooks rather amusing, since I have used my netbook as my only computer for the past 5 months and had no problem, while I see the iPad's lack of a real keyboard, processor, or actual interface ports getting old after a day. Flash is also nice to have, especially in a device intended for heavy entertainment usage.