John Gruber: The iPad

http://daringfireball.net/2010/04/the_ipad

by georgekv • 16 years ago

112 50 16 years ago

gr366• 16 years ago

I think Amazon would do well to add color support to Kindle e-books for use on iPads and iPhones.

The Kindle app for iPad already supports color. I downloaded the Kindle sample of the graphic novel "The Impostor's Daughter", and it displays in glorious color (and has more pages than the iBooks sample of the same work).

aphyr• 16 years ago

The iphone and ipad lack virtual memory? They can't be serious... it's a Mach kernel. Maybe he means swap?

philwelch3• 16 years ago

That explains the lack of multitasking. Multitasking would work if background apps just swapped to disk and slept. The current guidance for developers (on exit, save state; on startup, restore state) is a poor man's version of swap.

kvs2• 16 years ago

Yup: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1240171

I also wonder how useful virtual memory would be on a device like iPad/iPhone. With limited memory and no multitasking how often would address fragmentation be an issue.

snprbob86• 16 years ago

Android encourages this as well. With respect to multi-tasking, swap is an abstraction to save developer effort at the expense of performance and persistence.

philwelch3• 16 years ago

Why exactly was this downvoted? I'm not trying to justify the lack of multitasking, just pointing out how it's consistent with the lack of swap.

Dellort• 16 years ago

iPad review: It sucks.

proee• 16 years ago

maybe so, but the community here wants to know WHY?

mpk• 16 years ago

It requires iTunes to load content from local storage.

cubicle67• 16 years ago

we also want to know, at what and how badly?

there seems to be some areas where the iPad excels unequivocally (its speed, fit/finish etc) some areas that take getting used to, and you'll either like or not like (keyboard) and other areas in serious need of work (document syncing etc).

martythemaniak• 16 years ago

Wow, John Grubber loves an Apple product?! What's next, the sun rising from the east tomorrow morning?

ugh• 16 years ago

Reviews have value beyond a simple love/hate judgment which you so intelligently extracted.

stcredzero5• 16 years ago

No man, you're either with us or against us! </sarcasm>

jsz03• 16 years ago

In Mr. Grubber's defense there's a lot more substance in this review than a thumb up/down conclusion. It's obviously written by and for Apple fans. Friendly critiques are often more valuable than unfriendly ones. I don't want to read a review by someone preaching to me that I need Flash or a command prompt so I can edit my /etc/rc.local file. I'm more interested in a strong focus on the small details of design along with commentary about the bigger picture from someone I agree with on the basics and has a proven track record of understanding Apple.

Would you rather read a review of a new sushi restaurant from a sushi lover, someone who never tried sushi before, or someone who hates sushi? Same idea here.

mattmaroon2• 16 years ago

I'd like to read it from someone who is a sushi lover, but doesn't make their living writing about how great that restaurant's particular chef is.

shadowsun7• 16 years ago

Also - Gruber tends to write meticulously edited, well thought-out essays on Apple products (and the occasional accessory). I read his reviews because they're instructive on how best to write a product review.

I envy John Gruber, as a writer. I think he truly deserves his readership.

iamcalledrob• 16 years ago

"Those of you who doubt that the pixels-per-inch resolution isn’t high enough, just wait until you see the type rendering on this summer’s new iPhones."

Hmm, well that's interesting.

wmf• 16 years ago

Gruber has a history of making very specific "predictions" which are actually leaks from his moles. Maybe he's gotten tired of beating around the bush.

mcav• 16 years ago

He "predicted" the specific resolution here: http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/03/29/wsj

jsz03• 16 years ago

On MacBreak Weekly he eluded to the fact that some high profile developers are presently working on apps for the next iPhone. I'm sure we'll see some demos tomorrow.

portman• 16 years ago

Apple has to increase the pixel density. Android phones have sported 240 dpi displays since November (Motorola Droid).

Competitively, they need to increase the pixel density. I don't think Gruber has any firm sources, but just assumes a higher-resolution display is in the works.

jackowayed2• 16 years ago

You don't think Gruber has any firm sources? How do you think he makes all of his "predictions"? The vast majority is leaks. And I think when he goes to the extreme of saying the exact resolution (http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/03/29/wsj), it's pretty safe to say that he has firm sources.

g89• 16 years ago

In regards to his criticism of syncing, I think it seems like such an obviously missing feature that Apple has to do something about it, namely opening up MobileMe/iWork.com for free (ad-supported) to offer proper competition to Google.

I wrote some more thoughts on this here, if anyone's interested: http://gen89.net/2010/04/07/prediction-free-mobileme-after-a...

zacharypinter• 16 years ago

His notes on MobileSafari were interesting. If the iPad is having a hard time keeping a couple of pages in memory due to the lack of traditional virtual memory, then it makes even more sense why Apple is avoiding Flash. Not just the CPU/battery issue, flash is notoriously bad at garbage collecting.

lawrence• 16 years ago

I enjoyed his "curious choice" description of Apple choosing to go with default wallpaper that looks like a series of deep scratches on the screen. Glad I wasn't the only one who gasped "crap, it's scratched!" when I booted it up.

jackowayed2• 16 years ago

Yeah, when I went to the Apple store to play with one, I thought for like 5 seconds that it was scratched (as floor models on electronics are sometimes beaten up, though usually not 2 days after launch). Then I felt for the scratches and didn't feel them, and then I opened an app, fixing the screen heroically!

rortian• 16 years ago

Very interesting review. It's very hard to say this was sycophantic.

I was very surprised with how primitive the iWork document management was. Also, can you imagine being that constrained when web browsing? I need my tabs.

stcredzero5• 16 years ago

Funny, but I browsed just as if I had tabs. I effectively had tabs. What I missed was "Open In New Tab.". Instead of concurrently opening, I have to wait for each page.

ra88it• 16 years ago

Do you know that you can tap and hold on a hyperlink to bring up a context menu which offers the option "Open in new page"? Where 'page' is functionally equivalent to 'tab'.

signa11• 16 years ago

>One thing that’s making it hard for some people to grasp the purpose of the iPad is that no one has an answer to what precisely it is for.

after thinking a bit about it for a while, ipad to me, seems to be more of a media consumption device than either a computer or a phone. i can read books, play video-games etc on it, and it seems to be of the just right form-factor for such activities. given that, i don't think i would be interested in running any arbitrary program on it. i would prefer my computer for doing that. apple store thus becomes more of a alternate clearing-house of published information. i am probably more concerned about some fundamental erosion of fair-use-rights here than anything else, as building strict copyright controls on such a device is probably much simpler . if content-providers/distributors find ipad to be a viable platform for disseminating media, then copyright would be back with a vengeance. libraries / physical books might then be passe...

John Gruber: The iPad

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