Regarding the iPad, I am Dr. Buzzkill
Steve Yelvington, Weblog, January 28, 2010.

Now that I've gloated a bit, it's time to take serious stock of the iPad's shortcomings. Of which there are many:
- everything - all content, all software, comes through the proprietary iTunes (or iBook) portal; even web content comes through Apple's Safari - no Firefox on the iPad
- no multitasking - when you are watching a video on the iPoad, you will not be checking your email or in any other way distracting yourself from the advertising
- no Flash, so the greatest source of (free) videos is not available; if you want the video experience, you need to be prepared to pay for it
- no USB ports, so you cannot plug in any potentially subversive devices like a printer or external disk storage or a mouse
- no camera, which means no Skype videophone (or movie-making, or any other subversive activity involving creativity or communication).
So - Apple has left the field wide open for the product that will eventually dominate this niche. Content vendors, meanwhile, are salivating at the prospect of owning the market (at least in the U.S.). Meranwhile, numerous writers have made the same points: Techdirt, the Chronicle, Mashable, Doc Searles, Mashable (again), Gizmodo. (Hits Today: 1 Total: 535) [Direct Link] [Tags: Apple Inc., Video, Audio Chat and Conferencing, Marketing, Portals, Experience]

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Re: Regarding the iPad

Anymouse, January 28, 2010

There are already tons of alternatives, including tablet netbooks like the Eee PC T91 (which costs less than the ipad but supports flash, firefox, webcam, usb, etc.) [Comment] [Permalink] [Previous][Next]

Re: Regarding the iPad

Anymouse, January 28, 2010

So, I think they did not put a camera into the unit intentionally - allowing the user to obtain a USB centric one (see http://www.apple.com/ipad/specs/ - and read about the "iPad Camera Connection Kit")
This will allow the user the flexibility to use any camera, clip it on, point in any direction, do macro work, etc. Think like the iSight camera when it came out, then got integrated into the actual MacBooks. The integration was/is a good idea, but you loose the flexibility of moving the camera, or pointing forward.

What many are also waiting for is the Bluetooth enablement of the iPhone OS to allow the same as the iPad promises - wireless keyboard via bluetooth. [Comment] [Permalink] [Previous][Next]

Premature iPad Assessments

Frank Lowney, January 31, 2010

The net is simply dripping with premature assessments of the iPad and, disappointingly, this set of observations seems like not much more than echo-blogging. I had expected a more reflective approach here.

The main complaint appears to be about the closed nature of the iPhoneOS ecosystem where devices such as the iPhone, iPod touch and, now, the iPad are fed by the iTunes Content Management System which includes the iTunes Store for Music and Video, the iTunes App Store and, now, the iTunes Book Store.

Since Apple is not an eleemosynary concern, we should expect an emphasis on the commercial aspects of all this. Making life and consumption safe and easy for customers is certainly consistent with that status. Equally unsurprising is that geeks who like to tinker with everything, Libertarians and other kindred spirits are rankled by all of these constraints. Which camp is the more numerous and profitable? But is that all there is to it?

Smart capitalists also understand the "economics of free" and how "doing well by doing good" can improve the bottom line. Apple gets these concepts very well and that is why Apple has maintained non-commercial avenues for content production, discovery and distribution. Hundreds of thousands of podcasts are free via the iTunes Store podcast directory. Apple supports iTunes U which is free to any higher education institution and many other public information sources. Apple has a long history of supporting educators in their work with sites such as the Apple Learning Interchange.

Thus, I expect that these kinds of things from Apple will continue and expand. It's good business for them.

Unlike the iPhone, the iPad is aimed at a new category and Apple hasn't revealed to the world everything that we need to know in order to properly assess its importance or irrelevance to teaching, learning and other things. Right now, we know more about the iPad commercial model than we know about its corresponding non-commercial model and it's the latter that will likely be more important in education.

We know that the iBooks app and iTunes Book Store will be based upon the open ePub standard. What we don't know is how much of that standard will be supported. There's a lot to ePub beyond plain text. We also don't know whether there will be free books in the iTunes Book Store or not or whether books will be reviewed by Apple, someone else or not at all. Although eTexts will probably also be done with ePub, we don't yet have confirmation of that nor do we know how eZines and eNews will be done though I suspect that these will be apps that use in-app purchasing to acquire single issues or commit to multi-issue subscriptions.

The big unknown, IMO, is what the non-commercial counterparts of eBooks, eTexts, eZines and eNews will be like. How will they be produced, discovered and consumed? The podcasting model would seem to me to be a natural fit. If they were all done as ePub documents, these would be just one more new podcast media type. There are other possibilities, especially for eZines and eNews (including newsletters) that I would like better than ePub but this is hard to discuss when we don't know how Apple will address these things.

The fact is that we know too little about how new content for iPhoneOS devices will be created, discovered and consumed, especially the non-commercial varieties that are so important to educators. Thus, our assessments are premature and sorely lacking. [Comment] [Permalink] [Previous][Next]

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