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Ugh. Gizmodo is the worst example of blogging evar.

As for the new iThing, I'm only interested if the original rumored price point of $600 is correct. The $1,000 figure I've seen around lately is too much. At that point you'd might as well get a MacBook and have a keyboard. Or a Nook and a hundred e-books.

Either way, I think this is going to be the Kindle-killer if Amazon doesn't go color. And fast.

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Agreed, I think $600 is doable but $1000 is too pricey, for the reasons Editor mentioned. However, I have heard that there will be a model with a smaller screen and a model with a larger screen, which would make more sense.

Not mentioned in the original graphic is that I think this tablet (and the programs that run on it) will be cloud everything. From LaLa to iWork it will all be versions of web apps, saving onto the web in addition to/instead of a hard drive.

EDIT: I'm predicting $699 and $849, depending on hard drive size and screen size.

EDIT: Here's an article on what people are willing to pay for the tablet:

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/01/21/consumers_reluctant_to_spend_above_700_for_apple_tablet_study.html

While consumer interest in Apple's forthcoming tablet is high, a price north of $700 could turn off many potential buyers, a new survey has found.

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Ugh. Gizmodo is the worst example of blogging evar.

As for the new iThing, I'm only interested if the original rumored price point of $600 is correct. The $1,000 figure I've seen around lately is too much. At that point you'd might as well get a MacBook and have a keyboard. Or a Nook and a hundred e-books.

Either way, I think this is going to be the Kindle-killer if Amazon doesn't go color. And fast.

Kindle is going to have to completely upgrade everything if it wants to compete in the same category.

As long as there is a huge price difference, the Kindle will be safe.

But I hear Sudoku and other simple apps are coming to the Kindle.

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Kindle is going to have to completely upgrade everything if it wants to compete in the same category.

As long as there is a huge price difference, the Kindle will be safe.

But I hear Sudoku and other simple apps are coming to the Kindle.

Well, I've been putting off my purchase of a kindle ever since I heard Apple coming out with a product that MIGHT compete with the kindle.

I'll drink the koolaid, but I'm hoping it's not over $600, plus it has to show it's a rugged little sucker.

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This could be the killer app for the Apple tablet: educational books. I would have killed for a slim, portable tablet to avoid carrying all those text books back in college.

Apple in Talks with McGraw-Hill, Hachette over Tablet

Also, for those of you with stock in AAPL, you might find this interesting:

Why AAPL dropped 10.32 points Friday

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$500 bucks? That's not bad at all.

Now I have to wonder if I wanna be an early adopter or wait for the bugs to get out of it. Apple is usually good about taking care of that stuff quickly.

I haven't been keeping track of who they made deals with publishers, but it should be interesting to see what all happens.

Sorry, my inner geek just made a little girly scream of delight.

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This could be the killer app for the Apple tablet: educational books. I would have killed for a slim, portable tablet to avoid carrying all those text books back in college.

Apple in Talks with McGraw-Hill, Hachette over Tablet

Also, for those of you with stock in AAPL, you might find this interesting:

Why AAPL dropped 10.32 points Friday

A truly horrible thought. To this day, any book I care about, is a book. I still have all my college text books. The idea of solving calculus problems with anything other than a blank piece of paper, a pencil, and a real book is just wrong. On too many levels. Some things are never meant to change. No matter how hard we try, we will never replicate the feel of a real newspaper or real books. Ever.

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A truly horrible thought. To this day, any book I care about, is a book. I still have all my college text books. The idea of solving calculus problems with anything other than a blank piece of paper, a pencil, and a real book is just wrong. On too many levels. Some things are never meant to change. No matter how hard we try, we will never replicate the feel of a real newspaper or real books. Ever.

I'm buying one for my daughter the minute (and myself) it shows that doesn't need to cart that many books around and has some savings.

As a person that is an avid reader, I wouldn't mind carrying a variety of books around whenever I am in the mood for something relaxing to read.

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A truly horrible thought. To this day, any book I care about, is a book. I still have all my college text books. The idea of solving calculus problems with anything other than a blank piece of paper, a pencil, and a real book is just wrong. On too many levels. Some things are never meant to change. No matter how hard we try, we will never replicate the feel of a real newspaper or real books. Ever.

I disagree...if the text quality and battery life are good enough I'd prefer the iPad. And you'll still have sheets of blank paper for the purpose of solving calculus problems. The only downside is not being able to sell the textbooks back for cash at the end of each semester.

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A truly horrible thought. To this day, any book I care about, is a book. I still have all my college text books. The idea of solving calculus problems with anything other than a blank piece of paper, a pencil, and a real book is just wrong. On too many levels. Some things are never meant to change. No matter how hard we try, we will never replicate the feel of a real newspaper or real books. Ever.

I would have killed for something like this in college - not having to carry around 20lbs of books would have been fantastic...

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I would have killed for something like this in college - not having to carry around 20lbs of books would have been fantastic...

Back in the 1800's... pioneers would trek for months and months across the country. Taking 5 to 7 days to travel a distance that we can travel in 1 hour in car. Carrying all sorts of heavy stuff in their wagons, horseback. Battling the elements. Battling the Indians, too. Bows and arrows. Subsisting mostly on beans... but somehow, today... we can't carry books any more on campus because they're "heavy."

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I disagree...if the text quality and battery life are good enough I'd prefer the iPad. And you'll still have sheets of blank paper for the purpose of solving calculus problems. The only downside is not being able to sell the textbooks back for cash at the end of each semester.

Can I take my pencil and write and scribble on the iPad screen (using a real pencil)? What about yellow high-lighter (a real one)? Or putting a sticky note, in the back of the book where the solutions are, so I can quickly check? Of course, I never understood people who defiled their books in such a manner. I never did that. I respected the book. Still do. But a lot of people take liberties.

Another reason I never sold my books back. I figured if I got ripped off once by buying them at inflated prices, I wasn't going to get ripped off again by selling them back for next to nothing.

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I don't think there is enough demand for this sort of device that is not a laptop yet nearly as expensive as one and not as useful. I'd be surprised if this device took off outside of the Apple crowd.

I kind of agree... I love Apple, and I think this thing looks pretty cool, but I'd rather pay $250 for a netbook if I want to carry something lighter than my laptop around. At least a netbook has a USB port.

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I kind of agree... I love Apple, and I think this thing looks pretty cool, but I'd rather pay $250 for a netbook if I want to carry something lighter than my laptop around. At least a netbook has a USB port.

Agreed. I want something I can use to load pics from my camera and other computer tasks, not just an over-sized iphone.  

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Back in the 1800's... pioneers would trek for months and months across the country. Taking 5 to 7 days to travel a distance that we can travel in 1 hour in car. Carrying all sorts of heavy stuff in their wagons, horseback. Battling the elements. Battling the Indians, too. Bows and arrows. Subsisting mostly on beans... but somehow, today... we can't carry books any more on campus because they're "heavy."

Yeah Yeah Yeah...and my parents walked to school in knee-deep snow....doesn't mean I want to or need to....its called progress....

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Kindle is going to have to completely upgrade everything if it wants to compete in the same category.

As long as there is a huge price difference, the Kindle will be safe.

But I hear Sudoku and other simple apps are coming to the Kindle.

So how about that measely $10 difference between the base iPad and the Kindle DX???

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The thing that really disconnects me from ebooks is the fact that you have to pay for the digital copies through a DRM'd system...you can't really easily "rip" your books like CDs (unless you scan them in page by page and extract the text, but that's time-consuming at best) and a "bought" digital copy can't be printed out for a hard copy (I could be wrong, though).

Similar thoughts exist on video game digital distribution.

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People still use Macs??

Considering that Apple sold 3,360,000 Macs in October-November-December, 2009 and Mac sales are up 71% compared with the Wintel sector being up 17% year-to-year, I think the answer is "yes."

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The thing that really disconnects me from ebooks is the fact that you have to pay for the digital copies through a DRM'd system...you can't really easily "rip" your books like CDs (unless you scan them in page by page and extract the text, but that's time-consuming at best) and a "bought" digital copy can't be printed out for a hard copy (I could be wrong, though).

It is possible to print e-books, depending on the format it is in.

The iPad's e-book are in E-Pub format, which is an open format. For the most part e-pub books can be printed just like PDF books can. Though, I don't expect this to happen with books purchased through the iBooks store.

The e-pub specification does not have any DRM in it, but it allows third parties to add DRM, just like the MP4 format that iTunes uses for songs is also an open standard, but allowed Apple to wrap the songs in DRM for a while, though that is no longer the case.

Still, I don't see people printing out their books as a backup. Even printing just a few bestsellers would run through thousands and thousands of pages of paper and ink and probably wear out a printer pretty quickly, since most home printers aren't designed to handle that kind of load all at once.

I wish there was a service that would scan your books into e-books, like those companies that will rip all of your CDs for you.

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I know that's an Onion link, but people who compare the iPad to a laptop don't get it. They're the same people who complained that the iPod didn't have a rewind button.

There are masses of people out there who don't need a full computer, but need occasional computing power. My wife and all of her friends are in this group, as I suspect pretty much every netbook owner is.

My wife has a MacBook that she used to use every day. Since she got her iPhone she only uses the MacBook once or twice every other week. Everything she needs to do, she can do on her iPhone. She is very eager to get an iPad. For people like her, they don't need a full computer. They just want to occasionally look stuff up on Wikipedia or make restaurant reservations and do Facebook and e-mail.

The iPad is a general purpose computing device that provides enough power to do the simple common tasks that people want, but in a size and with an ease that doesn't get in the way. It's the next step (the iPhone was the first) toward the long-predicted ubiquity of technology. Computing becomes something you pick up and do and put down and don't think about again, rather than an event where you sit down in front of a machine and turn it on and wait for it to boot and log in and open a browser and so on just to look up a simple recipe.

I was fairly skeptical of the iPad until the information came out about the data connections. They're cheap and best of all -- no contract. A carrier contract would have been a deal-breaker for me.

At first I was surprised that there's not a camera, but then I thought about holding up this pad, which is a monster compared to a regular digital camera, and taking a picture and it just seems like an silly and awkward picture in my head. That said, I think there still should be a forward-facing web cam. But then again -- how often have I used the one in my laptop? The only time I ever use it is when I'm traveling without my wife and we iChat while I'm in the hotel. So, it's something nice to have but not necessarily necessary.

I don't have much use for the Photo app, but it's a nice display of technology. I love the idea that the iWork apps have been broken up so instead of paying $75 for the suite, I can pay $20 for the two portions of it that I use. If I had one, I'd primarily use it for e-mail, surfing, and iWork stuff. I love the notepad. The biggest problem I have with the iPhone version of that app is that half of the screen real estate is lost to the keyboard. The iPad version is much more useful, and I'd likely use it a lot. A whiteboard app would be great. There are plenty for the iPhone, and if they modify them to take advantage of the iPad's increased screen real estate, they would be great for a lot of businesses.

If the iPad had a PHP editor, an FTP client, and Quickbooks then I could leave my laptop at home. But those are kind of a specialized set of requirements so I don't ever expect them to materialize.

I think the big losers here are the netbook manufacturers and Amazon. Not because of e-books. I wouldn't be surprised to see Amazon and Apple pair up on the books. But the Kindle is dead in the water. The Kindle DX has the same size screen and is the same price, but looks like a black-and-white silent film compared to the Avatar that is iPad. Why would anyone buy a Kindle now? I would love to see a graph of Kindle sales over the last year, and then watch the line take a massive dive right when the iPad price was announced.

The criticism I've heard so far is pretty weak. Mostly complaints from Slashdot-type geeks complaining that there's no Flash support. Funny, considering these same people have been complaining for the last six years that Flash is a bloated hog that they don't want on their PC's. They're just looking for a nit to pick, and can't find anything better.

The only thing Flash is useful for is pushing video, but HTML5 makes Flash obsolete. Safari and Chrome already support HTML video. Firefox I think either has it close to ready, or it's already deployed. HTML5 video uses 1/10th the battery and processing power as Flash. For portable units like the iPad, this is key. And the last thing I want on a mobile device is to sit there waiting for some web site's massive and unnecessary Flash interface to load over a 3G connection. Some day Flash will go the way of Geocities, the dancing baby, and the Hamster Dance.

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I agree, ever since I got my G1, I would use that even at home, but it was a pain to post on forums and so it has dissuaded me from doing that.

People are bemoaning the fact that it doesn't have multitask capability, cameras or whatever, don't know that it's important to have a proper tool to do the proper job. I will want to hold one in my hands and play with it before buying one for myself.

Music? Eh. I got XM in the car and and occasionally use Pandora at home.

Movies? At home, I don't need it. I got my beloved TiVo (and soon, BluRay). I just don't see the need for it.

Games? Maybe. If it can handle Civilization or Homeworld while I have some downtime, then I'm down for it. Just don't expect anything productive. For 10 hours.

Internet? I might use it as a substitute for the laptop at home, and might use it when I'm out and about. But only IF I have a WiFi connection.

Books? Oh Yeah, but if I can get a big enough of a selection and ONLY if they can keep it competitive with Amazon's Kindle service, including magazines for a decent price.

Photos? That's what I got a camera for. Now if it can EDIT them, then I'm down with that.

If anything, it's TOO capable, but for just a hundred or so above a kindle, it's a bargain.

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They just want to occasionally look stuff up on Wikipedia or make restaurant reservations and do Facebook and e-mail.

But isn't that what an iphone is for? My daughter recently got an iphone and I must admit I'm much impressed.

Sorry but I see the ipad as just an overgrown iphone and nothing more. 

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