New Apple iPad device

[Simetrical]

I work for Microsoft these days. Having strong competition is one of the main reasons they pulled their finger out and made a really good operating system.

Oh, sure. That's good for their products, though, not good for them. They'd have made worse products without Apple, but had a much closer to 100% market share, thus more revenue. Of course, they could have a larger market share and still make less money, but only if they drove people away from desktop-style computers entirely.

I'm pretty sure Microsoft is correct in viewing Apple as a threat, not a boon.

Edit: The other thing is, your making a fairly basic assumption about markets. If Apple has 9% or 12% then it has reduced Microsofts share of the pie. The pie is only so big and if one company grows another diminishes or loses. In economics and in real life it isn't the case. The pie isn't only one size, what Apple does very well is to create whole new markets. The smartphone is a good example of this. Certainly they took some away from other popular brands but there wasn't a market anywhere near as big for smartphones before Apple launched the Iphone. That market is now enormous.

Oh, I agree with that. Apple is trying to create a new market with the iPad, and it will probably succeed. But for general-purpose home computers, it's almost certain that a lot of Mac desktop/laptop users would use Windows instead if Mac didn't exist. Anyone who uses Macs only, for starters, would probably not go without a PC . . . a few would use Linux, but most would use Windows.

[pspguy123]

Lol @ the ipad. What a useless invention.

[Denny Crane!]

Well I guess so Sim, I suppose I can't help but viewing it as a good thing because of my bias as a consumer.

[Simetrical]

It's a great thing for consumers, definitely. It will be even better for consumers if open-source software starts taking over in a big way. But it's not good for the entrenched monopolies who see their market share drop, and actually have to spend resources innovating if they want to keep on top.

[PGeo36]

This about sums up my opinion.

A pictures worth a thousand words

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[Denny Crane!]

Netbooks are without a doubt the most godawful devices ever unless you pay the top price and at that point they become barely functional because they have some kind of computing power but are still hampered by minature fiddly bloody keyboards and horrible screens. When netbooks were proposed for us to use I nearly exploded.

Sim: Open source is a bit of a pipe dream or has been for the last few decades. I think the best we can hope for is a huge level of competition between Android, whichever cat Apple happen to pick and Windows.

[Simetrical]

Sim: Open source is a bit of a pipe dream or has been for the last few decades.

Firefox is open source. Linux has reached 1% desktop market share, and is increasing. Google's Chrome browser and Chrome OS and Android OS and a bunch of other products it makes are all open-source. Java is open-source these days. Symbian is now being open-sourced, which means a majority of smartphones are about to be running open-source OSes (modulo the version). Tons of embedded stuff runs Linux: TiVo, TomTom, etc. Not to mention most servers and routers.

If you think open-source is a pipe dream, you're not paying enough attention. You use it every day.

I think the best we can hope for is a huge level of competition between Android, whichever cat Apple happen to pick and Windows.

You realize that Android is open-source, right?

[C-Rob]

Goodbye pr0n.

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/...be-porn-flash/

it killed betamax and HDDVD... it certainly can take down the pad a peg or two.

[Top-Tier-Tech]

Netbooks are without a doubt the most godawful devices ever unless you pay the top price and at that point they become barely functional because they have some kind of computing power but are still hampered by minature fiddly bloody keyboards and horrible screens. When netbooks were proposed for us to use I nearly exploded.

I couldn't disagree with you more. They're much cheaper than a laptop, they're much lighter, they're much thinner, their keyboards are typically 92% of the standard size which isn't much smaller, they're extremely efficient, their battery give you 8-10 HOURS of use.

"Horrible screens" you say? Get a life, most netbooks are LED backlit, therefore extremely thin.

All this for $300.

[Denny Crane!]

Sim I was not aware Google was open source.

I couldn't disagree with you more. They're much cheaper than a laptop, they're much lighter, they're much thinner, their keyboards are typically 92% of the standard size which isn't much smaller, they're extremely efficient, their battery give you 8-10 HOURS of use.

"Horrible screens" you say? Get a life, most netbooks are LED backlit, therefore extremely thin.

All this for $300.

Much cheaper? Typically you can get a netbook for perhaps £80 less than a laptop if you are willing to accept XP but in anything else an ADVENT ROMA 1000 is actually more than competitive with quite a few of anything but the worst netbooks and it is a proper laptop.

Keyboards are not 92% of the size at all and the 8-10 hour battery life? Utter rubbish. I train in DSGI stores where these things are sold. The best ones with the higher cell batteries promise 7-8 hours battery life but only come anywhere near delivering if left in hibernation otherwise you can expect 5-6 hours and a lot less if you actually use the damn thing.

Screens being horrible refers to the horrendously small size relative to the type of OS being used.

[Top-Tier-Tech]

Much cheaper? Typically you can get a netbook for perhaps £80 less than a laptop if you are willing to accept XP

That's in Europe I guess, in America our prices are different.

Keyboards are not 92% of the size at all

Yes they are, I have one of the many that are 92% of standard.

and the 8-10 hour battery life? Utter rubbish.

Mines rated between 8-10 hours of use (as are many models) I DO get 8 hours on a single charge. You must not have any working clocks where you live.

I train in DSGI stores where these things are sold. The best ones with the higher cell batteries promise 7-8 hours battery life but only come anywhere near delivering if left in hibernation otherwise you can expect 5-6 hours and a lot less if you actually use the damn thing.

That's just how the ones you can get are I guess.

Screens being horrible refers to the horrendously small size relative to the type of OS being used.

10" is plenty I can view webpages and such just fine.

[Simetrical]

Sim I was not aware Google was open source.

Google is a company, not a software product, so it can't be open-source. However, Google develops and distributes a large number of open-source software products. High-profile ones include Android, Chromium, and Chromium OS. Not to mention the large amount of money they put into other parties' open-source software, like bankrolling the Mozilla Corporation or contributing code to the Linux kernel or running Google Summer of Code. And Google itself runs on a huge amount of open-source code, starting with the fact that all their servers are Linux.

You can read more about Google's open-source involvement here. They say they've released over 500 open-source products totaling more than 15 million lines of code (but on inspection, it seems a lot of those aren't really standalone software projects).

[johndenver3210]

Needs a lot more features for the price tag that it comes with. I think the next version (obviously a long way until that) will include a lot of features that should have come out with this first version.

[Adler]

This actually makes pretty funny reading now we are on Gen 3 of the iPad, especially the guys who said it wouldn't sell.