Go go gadget iPad

[Ryan Thunder]

Neither. The iPhone uses a capacitive, not resistive, touchscreen. It does not recognize pressure (which is how the iPaq's stylus works). You need a capacitive stylus.

Ah, my mistake. I thought capacitive screens didn't work with fingers for some reason.

[Ace Pace]

Because Flash support is a pain in the behind, makes you tied in alot of ways to Adobe's market practices, support schedule and buggy applications. Embedding flash into your embedded is a non trivial prospect from the engineering perspective.

[phongn]

Because Flash support is a pain in the behind, makes you tied in alot of ways to Adobe's market practices, support schedule and buggy applications. Embedding flash into your embedded is a non trivial prospect from the engineering perspective.

Not quite - the complete runtime is available from Adobe and is native on ARM. Safari already uses the NPAPI plugin system; it's not that difficult to add it. The rest of your points remain true - Flash is very often a terrible user experience.

[Ace Pace]

Because Flash support is a pain in the behind, makes you tied in alot of ways to Adobe's market practices, support schedule and buggy applications. Embedding flash into your embedded is a non trivial prospect from the engineering perspective.

Not quite - the complete runtime is available from Adobe and is native on ARM. Safari already uses the NPAPI plugin system; it's not that difficult to add it. The rest of your points remain true - Flash is very often a terrible user experience.

I misspoke. When I meant engineering, I did not mean just the conversion from x86 to ARM, I know that has been done. I meant the total user experience, such as dealing with it's inevitable crashes (sticking it in a separate process like many browsers are doing today is probably non trivial in an iPhone).

Bad phrasing, my apology.

[Stark]

I was surprised to see that there are plans to port UE3 to iPad. The hardward doesn't look significant enough to really take advantage of most of the engine's features, but it's an interesting idea.

[phongn]

I misspoke. When I meant engineering, I did not mean just the conversion from x86 to ARM, I know that has been done. I meant the total user experience, such as dealing with it's inevitable crashes (sticking it in a separate process like many browsers are doing today is probably non trivial in an iPhone).

I don't see the trouble doing process separation either, honestly. It is the user experience that is a big issue - Flash ads are a notorious power hog and a "click to view" option is not the most user friendly.

I was surprised to see that there are plans to port UE3 to iPad. The hardward doesn't look significant enough to really take advantage of most of the engine's features, but it's an interesting idea.

The GPU and CPU are fairly powerful. The bigger issue is UI, I'd think.

[Stark]

Well I seriously doubt that they're going to port Unreal 3 itself; UE3 is an extremely flexible engine which is already being used for the sort of low-end 3D stuff that's all over the App Store. I'm not certain it's a 'big deal', as people already use 3D engines for these kind of platforms and UE3's highend trickery is obviously irrelevant. I guess I'm not familiari enough with the engine's lowend capabilities - and I wonder if they'll also port UE4 later.

At least it'll be easy to develop for.

[salm]

Well I seriously doubt that they're going to port Unreal 3 itself; UE3 is an extremely flexible engine which is already being used for the sort of low-end 3D stuff that's all over the App Store. I'm not certain it's a 'big deal', as people already use 3D engines for these kind of platforms and UE3's highend trickery is obviously irrelevant. I guess I'm not familiari enough with the engine's lowend capabilities - and I wonder if they'll also port UE4 later.

At least it'll be easy to develop for.

Some of the 3D engines that are used are pretty solid engines when used for developing PC or high end consoles. You can usually buy a version of the same engine specifically for iPhone development which comes without the features the iPhone doesn´t support anyway.

No idea if there´s a significant amount of money behind this but apparently Epic thinks so. They´ll have to sell it at a price way lower than the regular version which is several hundeds of thousands of dollars.

[Stark]

If they market it as cross-platform, they could be aiming at the 'popcap market' of games that exist both on PC and iPhone. I've been surprised how many games in the casual space transfer directly to iPhone, so maybe there's money there.

[Dahak]

After some careful thought, I really cannot see what market they are trying to target here.
I am no Apple fan, but a good tablet PC would be nice to replace my netbook. Something with a "real" OS like MacOS I could understand and potentially buy. But an "overblown" iPhone? Why...?
But what they offer in the iPad is mostly a fail for me.

eBook-Reader: I would rather buy a dedicated reader, like the Kindle, than use an iPad (or other tablet) for that. I simply don't like reading for a prolonged time on LCD/computer displays. It just doesn't feel comfortable for my eyes; I tremendously prefer eInk (or real paper...).
Multitasking: my usual use case is to listen to music and browse simultaneously. Or to use the browser and write my fanfics (a guilty pleasure...). And I have chat/IM-programs running at the same time. There is basically no time I only ever use one program exclusively. For a phone like the iPhone this might be OK, but for a tablet PC...?
Apps: again, for a phone it is OK to limit the choices of software. But if I think of replacing my netbook, I want to install software I want, from browsers to tools.
USB/SD cards: why is this not natively included? I usually take my netbook with me for holidays, so I can backup photos from the camera onto it. I just have to put the SD card in the netbook. For an iPad I would have to use whatever solution Apple deems fit for me (if ever)?

[Sarevok]

Wait dahak are you saying you can't multi task on a iphone ? I got a pdf open, ms excel spreadsheet halfdone and a music video on youtube playing on the cheap nokia I am typing this from. Is not multi task virtually universal on any device deserving the term "smart" ? Ipad is going to be a brick if it at least dont allow running 3 to 5 different apps in background.

[phongn]

Wait dahak are you saying you can't multi task on a iphone ? I got a pdf open, ms excel spreadsheet halfdone and a music video on youtube playing on the cheap nokia I am typing this from. Is not multi task virtually universal on any device deserving the term "smart" ? Ipad is going to be a brick if it at least dont allow running 3 to 5 different apps in background.

iPhoneOS does not presently allow multitasking outside of certain Apple applications (e.g. phone, music). Apple's presently philosophy for mobile apps is that they should be ready to be pre-empted (or crash, or powered down) at any moment and state restored on next launch.

[Superboy]

Just to clarify, the iPhone does let you multitask with certain things; you can listen to music while doing pretty much anything else, for instance. It should also be noted that there are third party work arounds available that allow all sorts of multitasking on the iPhone. It's apparently an easy fix.

[Ryan Thunder]

Just to clarify, the iPhone does let you multitask with certain things; you can listen to music while doing pretty much anything else, for instance. It should also be noted that there are third party work arounds available that allow all sorts of multitasking on the iPhone. It's apparently an easy fix.

Or you could just use any number of devices with this capability out of the box.

[Stark]

The contention it's impossible is nonsense; as phongn says, Apple are just preventing people from doing it due to concerns with resources. I seldom feel the lack of multi-tasking since push was released, so... ?

[Superboy]

Or you could just use any number of devices with this capability out of the box.

Sure, if multi tasking was the only thing you want from the device. These Apple devices do other things brilliantly well, and that's why I love my iPhone. The multi tasking was a minor issue, and I found an easy work around.

Even without it, the lack of multi tasking wouldn't be a big problem with the way Apple has set up the UI anyway. If I have an app running, I can exit it and open up another app, then exit that and re-open the first app and be back exactly where I was before I closed it. In many cases, it's just as easy as switching between apps that run in the background on other devices.

My point is, the lack of mult tasking is a problem, it's just not a big problem.

[Singular Quartet]

My point is, the lack of mult tasking is a problem, it's just not a big problem.

For you, perhaps, but I like to be able to look at more than one thing at a time. 9.7" is enough to have two things up at once, on hardware that can take running more than one thing at once. While I have no doubt Apple will make money on this product, I know for a fact that this product isn't marketed to any of us. It's marketed to people who want an Apple Netbook, because that's what it is (It doesn't matter what Steve Jobs claims it is, that's what it fucking is. It may have less functionality than a netbook, but let's face it, it's a fucking netbook). It browses (most of) the internet, and you can use it for basic word processing. That, and it already has a big library of games and stuff that people already know and like.

[Sarevok]

Multi tasking can be damn useful. I often have a big file downloading or torrenting on my symbian while doing something else. Like gaming, chatting on msn messenger,typing a word document or watching a dvd movie i turned into divx etc. .Basically multi tasking is useful on a phone for same reason as a pc, The smartphone today is as powerful as a netbook pc while being small enough to fit in a pocket. So why not use it as a real computer ? Normal play music while running just one single app thing is so backdated. I had that in 2004. For 2010 smartphone or device needs at least to run browser, email, chat and basic document and media handling programs at once.

[Questor]

Multi tasking can be damn useful. I often have a big file downloading or torrenting on my symbian while doing something else. Like gaming, chatting on msn messenger,typing a word document or watching a dvd movie i turned into divx etc. .Basically multi tasking is useful on a phone for same reason as a pc, The smartphone today is as powerful as a netbook pc while being small enough to fit in a pocket. So why not use it as a real computer ? Normal play music while running just one single app thing is so backdated. I had that in 2004. For 2010 smartphone or device needs at least to run browser, email, chat and basic document and media handling programs at once.

I'm going to ask a stupid question here, but (aside from the downloading thing) how much of that can you actually do at once? Or do you simply have the apps available as a background?

Remember, the iPhone - and presumably the iPad - fake multitasking by having apps save their state on exit.

[General Zod]

Multi tasking can be damn useful. I often have a big file downloading or torrenting on my symbian while doing something else. Like gaming, chatting on msn messenger,typing a word document or watching a dvd movie i turned into divx etc. .Basically multi tasking is useful on a phone for same reason as a pc, The smartphone today is as powerful as a netbook pc while being small enough to fit in a pocket. So why not use it as a real computer ? Normal play music while running just one single app thing is so backdated. I had that in 2004. For 2010 smartphone or device needs at least to run browser, email, chat and basic document and media handling programs at once.

I'm going to ask a stupid question here, but (aside from the downloading thing) how much of that can you actually do at once? Or do you simply have the apps available as a background?

Remember, the iPhone - and presumably the iPad - fake multitasking by having apps save their state on exit.

I can't imagine trying to do more than one thing at once on a tiny phone-sized screen would be very pleasant anyway. Shrinking them to fit into that small area would make everything unusable.

[Questor]

I'm going to ask a stupid question here, but (aside from the downloading thing) how much of that can you actually do at once? Or do you simply have the apps available as a background?

Remember, the iPhone - and presumably the iPad - fake multitasking by having apps save their state on exit.

I can't imagine trying to do more than one thing at once on a tiny phone-sized screen would be very pleasant anyway. Shrinking them to fit into that small area would make everything unusable.

That was kind of my point. He claims to have all of this on a smartphone.

[Beowulf]

[I'm going to ask a stupid question here, but (aside from the downloading thing) how much of that can you actually do at once? Or do you simply have the apps available as a background?

Remember, the iPhone - and presumably the iPad - fake multitasking by having apps save their state on exit.

I don't necessarily want to be able to do six things at once on my iPhone. But, should I really have 6 different copies of mobile Safari (Safari, one in Tweetdeck, my RSS reader, Facebook, Stanza, etc.)? And sure, the fake multitasking is rather fast, but it's still a longer period of time than is necessary, especially for apps which take sometime to start up. And so I can play music from the iPod app at the same time as using one of the other apps... I still can't use Last.fm at the same time as one of the other apps. I shouldn't have to jailbreak to be able to do this, and especially not for the iPad, which has a much better processor, and more room for battery than my phone.

[Netko]

I'm going to ask a stupid question here, but (aside from the downloading thing) how much of that can you actually do at once? Or do you simply have the apps available as a background?

Remember, the iPhone - and presumably the iPad - fake multitasking by having apps save their state on exit.

That is better then nothing, but its still inferior to proper multitasking. Take this example - it might be much more realistic and common then torrenting. A couple of times now, I've been forced to compare prices or look for the place to buy something on my phone either because the shop I originally went to didn't have whatever I wanted or because I didn't manage to do the price comparison or search before heading out. Now, that pretty much involves 1) a browser, 2) a mapping application (extremely common with speciality shops that are, frankly, at the ass end of nowhere), 3) the actual phone features (calling the shops to confirm their Internet info and/or reserve the product). On my Symbian-based Nokia, once I have all three running, switching between them is literally a press of a button. So I can look up a shop, (click) look up how to get to it, (click) call to confirm that they have the item in stock, and then, if it doesn't pan out, (click) immediately go to the next shop on the list. On the iPhone, sure, theoretically you can do it the same way, however each of those clicks is more like a ~10s wait for the app to launch yet again. Frankly, it offends my sense of efficiency to be constantly launching and closing apps to look up related info.

[Sarevok]

Another better example. Often I am chatting with a friend over msn or yahoo and want to send them a link or information. I can just minimize and copy paste it. Say for example Shroomman (we used to MSN often) wants me to review his story. I can download his story and give it feedback while chatting with him over MSN. Or say I found a picture on the net and need to email the link. I can just copy the link, start a new email message and paste the link without killing the browser.

[Questor]

Another better example. Often I am chatting with a friend over msn or yahoo and want to send them a link or information. I can just minimize and copy paste it. Say for example Shroomman (we used to MSN often) wants me to review his story. I can download his story and give it feedback while chatting with him over MSN. Or say I found a picture on the net and need to email the link. I can just copy the link, start a new email message and paste the link without killing the browser.

Right, and you can do all of that with fake multi-tasking, or at least the amount that is feasible on the screen size. You end up with a slight delay, but it still works.

I do it on an almost minute to minute basis, if you substitute e-mail for AIM/MSN.