Clarke's 2001 Newspad becomes real

http://www.tuaw.com/2010/01/28/arthu...ate/#continued
I'm pretty sure I have that same TV dinner in my freezer also. :-)

Pat

On Fri, 29 Jan 2010 03:32:09 -0800, Pat Flannery
wrote:

http://www.tuaw.com/2010/01/28/arthu...ate/#continued
I'm pretty sure I have that same TV dinner in my freezer also. :-)

A large, cumbersome, expensive iPod. Cool looking, hopelessly
impractical.

Brian

On Fri, 29 Jan 2010 19:34:09 -0600, Brian Thorn
wrote:

On Fri, 29 Jan 2010 03:32:09 -0800, Pat Flannery
wrote:

http://www.tuaw.com/2010/01/28/arthu...ate/#continued
I'm pretty sure I have that same TV dinner in my freezer also. :-)

A large, cumbersome, expensive iPod. Cool looking, hopelessly
impractical.

Brian

I haven't felt the need for an iPhone or an iPod, so I guess I'll skip
the iPad.

On Sat, 30 Jan 2010 00:48:15 -0500, rwalker
wrote:


I haven't felt the need for an iPhone or an iPod, so I guess I'll skip
the iPad.

I have an iPod 80gb. I plug it into my car stereo, hang it on my belt
when I go out walking, and take it into my office. That's what makes
it so handy. iPad? Not so much. It's too big to fit in a pocket, so
unless you want the thing in your hand all the time, you have to carry
it around in a bookbag or briefcase. At $500 ($900 with reasonable
amounts of memory and 3G) no parent is going to let their kid carry it
around in his/her bookbag, and businesspeople carrying briefcases will
more likely opt for something more powerful like ever-improving
netbooks or a small laptop that have video-out, memory card slots, a
genuine keyboard, can play flash videos from the internet, and have
USB (probably 3.0 soon.) You can buy a lot of laptop for $900, so
unless you're just dying for multi-touch, why bother with the iPad?

Brian

Brian Thorn writes:

unless you're just dying for multi-touch, why bother with the iPad?

A screen I am actually able to read? And icons/buttons that don't alias
to something else because I don't have fingers the size of a three year
olds? Yeah and I know all about the iPod/iPhone magnifier, if I could
only see it and not press somthing else when I try to select it.

I was initially interested in this, but the Gen I article has
some serious limitations that make me want to wait for Gen 2. Like,
4:3 instead of true 16:9, and no web cam, only as a doc option.
USB as a doc/cable option I can live with.

Is this thing going to handle handwriting to text like the Palm Pilot
tried to do? Or just go with a qwerty keyboard on screen? I hear Apple
will have a mini-keyboard as a doc option available either at first sale
or shortly thereafter. A stylus would be a nice accessory, but Apple
doesn't like to add stuff that can be lost appearently. Guess I'll
have to settle with using a Qtip or maybe the stylus from an old Palm....

But to get back to Pat's original observation, it'd be cool to video
edit the BBC interview segment from 2001 to play as a stand alone
video on the iPad while eating a microwave TV dinner made for people
with no teeth. You suppose this was thought through in the movie?
I mean do you think they actually made everything like paste in case
the carousel failed and they had to eat in zero-G? But there was an
open container of coffee (or some black liquid) as well. Was it just
a case of English cuisine as catered to the Shepperton Studios?

That's real incentive to keep me on the ground...

Dave 'mash w/o the bangers'

On Sat, 30 Jan 2010 20:28:32 -0500, David Spain
wrote:

Is this thing going to handle handwriting to text like the Palm Pilot
tried to do?

Only if you want to scratch up the screen of your $500/$900 device,
which is what happened to my old Palms after a while.

I hear Apple
will have a mini-keyboard as a doc option available either at first sale
or shortly thereafter.

Oh yeah, that's convenient. Lug the iPad along with the dock/keyboard
or a bluetooth keyboard everywhere you go. That's instead of a
one-piece netbook with a lot more functionality at 2/3 the price or a
full-blown laptop for the same price as the high-end iPad.

Behold, the next MacBook Air, which had a splashy unveiling, a cool
marketing plan and wowed audiences as well, until the masses realized
that "slim" is not a particularly useful measure of a computer's
quality.

Brian

David Spain wrote:
Yeah and I know all about the iPod/iPhone magnifier, if I could
only see it and not press somthing else when I try to select it.

That's straight out of the movie "Brazil".
I can't figure out what is going on either.
It seems the world has gone "Tiny Crazy" and the smaller something is,
the better it is considered to be, beyond the point of any common sense
regarding ease of use.

But to get back to Pat's original observation, it'd be cool to video
edit the BBC interview segment from 2001 to play as a stand alone
video on the iPad while eating a microwave TV dinner made for people
with no teeth. You suppose this was thought through in the movie?

Yes, that was to show just of bland the future had become; even the food
was featureless gunk. That's also why the movie had hardly any dialog -
that was to show that people had become halfway automatons and were
bored to death...just like the movie's audience, who could also add
confusion to their complaints, and really wanted to see those monkeys
come back on screen and start beating the crap out of each other again.
By the time HAL started croaking everyone I was definitely on his side.
All this was discussed in way-too-many deep studies on the movie's
"meaning" by film critics, no two of who could agree on what its true
meaning was, except that it was a work of genius, due to its being
incomprehensible.
Its true meaning was of course to point out to studio executives that
unless monkeys were pounding the crap out of something (2001 came out
the same year as Planet Of The Apes) or there was a killer robot or
computer involved, sinking big bucks into a sci-fi movie was as good as
sinking it into a toilet bowl.
And until that guy in the Nazi helmet showed up and started strangling
people from across the room, sci-fi movies ended up in a real studio
funding doldrum.
It would have been better if that monolith on the Moon had turned the
people who found it into prehistoric monkey-men of some sort, and Earth
had to fight the Moon monkey-men and then send the Discovery, with a
crew of killer robots, out to blow up Jupiter.
And when the Jupiter people stick Bowman into that room, so they can
suck the youth out of him?
The ******* has a machine gun hidden under the sheets of that bed, and
he wastes them, then detonates a antimatter bomb he has hidden up his
ass that turns the whole planet into a star.

Audience would have gone for that, big time!

Pat

"Brian Thorn" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 29 Jan 2010 03:32:09 -0800, Pat Flannery
wrote:

http://www.tuaw.com/2010/01/28/arthu...ate/#continued
I'm pretty sure I have that same TV dinner in my freezer also. :-)

A large, cumbersome, expensive iPod. Cool looking, hopelessly
impractical.

I have trouble using the "virtual keyboard" on my kids' iPod Touches. The
iPod Touch screen is just too small for my larger adult sized fingers. This
bigger iPad touch screen no doubt has a much bigger virtual keypad and would
be much easier to use.

I can see how the bigger screen would also be easier for someone with poor
eyesight or dexterity problems with their hands.

Jeff
--
"Take heart amid the deepening gloom
that your dog is finally getting enough cheese" - Deteriorata - National
Lampoon