skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
What nobody talks about?!

This thing only got announced 5 minutes ago.
Somewhere in the depths of their evil corporate headquarters, Apple has a spreadsheet with 3 cells. One is labeled "People who buy devices if they are really easy to use". Another is labeled "People who don't buy devices unless they can replace all of its software". And the third cell is labelled "The greater of cell 1 and cell 2".
Better Place gains $350 million for electric car technology
> After using the iPhone so much for two and a half years, I’ve become accustomed to web pages rendering (relative to the Mac) slowly. On the iPad, they seem to render nearly instantly. (802.11n Wi-Fi helps too.)

...but the wi-fi doesn't actually help as much as you'd think. If you've ever tethered a 3G iPhone, the speed difference between web browsing on the phone, and web browsing through the phone is palpable; at this point, upgrading cell networks is a bit silly, as every phone in the market is too CPU-limited to render pages as fast as they're pulled down. Getting the A4 into the iPhone would likely be a bigger subjective speed boost than putting 3G in ever was.
1. Much much better touchscreen

2. Better on-screen keyboard

3. Safari

4. Ease of setup/use

5. 802.11n

6. Low Cost/Performance

7. Quality/stability that I expect from Apple

8. Longetivity

9. Battery life

10. Coolness :)
If you go Android you're halfway there :) I'm very envious of the Droid's 480 x 854 screen.

Update: Just noticed you're across the bridge from me. If you ever need help on the data entry web apps, let me know. I'm working on a similar type thing for a group of medical imaging centers locally (Palm Harbor, St Pete, etc). That's actually what I have the Droid for.
But people have been discussing for well over a year. Not one prominent bloggers/journalist mentioned the industrial applications. 802.11n + 10hr battery life + standardized browser like Safari is awesome for writing data-collection web-apps.
I remember reading that a center in the NFL had been mic'd and that he said "fuch" an absurd number of times during the game (three or four hundred).
China Won't Limit Google's Android
I agree that they never got there, but they were trying.
Probably none. Multi-task, if it comes, will come on the iPhone and iPad at the same time. They either aren't ready to figure out how it fits into the OS model, or they've decided it shouldn't for now.
Yeah, this is a 1.0 release And it will get better after a few years of field experience. I think that after the level of hype we saw, it had to be a let down.

But, I do think this will be a hit for some unexpected applications. I could see deploying one almost anywhere a stylish but not terribly powerful terminal is needed. A lot of salespeople will be buying these.

To most technically inclined people the iPad won't have much appeal beyond being a shiny toy. But to many professional people who are not technically inclined it will be a useful tool that feeds their need to feel in control of technology rather than at the mercy of it.
"if nothing else they would be less likely to grow a pair of legs."

So the best way to keep theft down is to give your employee's less than the best tool for the job? When you think about it that is almost perverse.
I'm a bit surprised though - I've only read Daring Fireball over the past year or so, since I started doing iPhone development, and it's usually pretty rational. I did a double-take when I read this one (and the words "reality distortion field" did cross my mind).
I gotta say, the tone of this almost turned me off. I got an impression of mouth-foamy vehemence in some of those paragraphs, and it was a little off-putting.

However, you're entirely right. It's going to be really interesting to see how this pans out.
> Now I just need to find cheap barcode scanners that plug into the 30pin instead of USB.

That's going to be tough. Apple controls the 30-pin connector and I haven't heard of any barcode scanners. You're probably better off looking for Bluetooth. Since it supports BT keyboards, you could likely find one that pairs as a keyboard. Won't be cheap, but hey neither were the MC70s.
I use my iPhone when I'm on site almost exclusively but the employees at this location probably aren't savvy enough to work with the tiny screen. I'm pretty sure the larger iPad display would eliminate a lot of problems that a tiny iPod touch screen and keyboard would create.
this is why I'm never getting married :)
Both of your statements can be true, depending on the difference between the mean and mode of the distribution.
If you listen carefully, some people have been talking about exactly this for quite a while. Mostly in terms of hospitals.
I think most people do recognize the compromise.

It does nothing well except emulate words on a printed page.

Thats the whole point! People want something they can stare at and read for hours without hurting their eyes. Its target specifically at people who want to get the book reading experience without carrying around a book.

As for the limitations you mentioned, I believe they are well acknowledged. At the moment, people are just happy to keep their eyes in good condition.
Right now my entire blog's in a very stream-of-consciousness mode. I'm writing lots of long unedited things every day just to get it out in time for an upcoming major revision.

I submitted this because I was a bit irked at how commentary here is steadfastly ignoring what the iPad is and how it's going to be sold. I enjoy critics as long as they understand what they're criticizing. Aaronsw's post was enough to provoke me into submitting this.

If anybody thinks this isn't appropriate tone for HN, feel free to flag it! I have no particular expectations for this submission.
To insist on appending an angry, trashy review on the day the man died is especially graceless.
Apple Reveals New iPad Touch Screen Tablet… With Wings?
I think this essay, written in 1997, is worth another read in light of the recent iPad announcement, and the closed and locked down platform it provides.
>(and maybe one for me if i'm nice to her)

Buy yourself a pair of balls too.
Can we go back to how off this thing's name is?
Nobody owes Adobe anything with regards to Flash. It has sucked for so long (especially on OS X), and been bane of the Web in so many ways that one can only applaud Apple's refusal to inflict Flash upon their mobile devices. Flash games simply don't matter that much to many people who are actually in a position to buy an iPad, and none of the other uses of Flash are particularly excusable. (HTML5 is here, and if you were using Flash for fancy effects and navigation elements, your users probably already hate you for it.)
No, most of the stuff you have explicitly derive from DOM (as far as I know)
What about an iPod touch?
Of course if Apple went one step further -- build this feature in for free -- then they might reduce to nearly zero the incentive people have to steal the iPhone.
Well, that's what I meant by "you're entirely right". I agree with you that these are points that are missing from a lot of the "geek" discussion about this, which seems to be the only discussion informing even the mainstream discussion about this so far.

And the "mouth-foamy" tone (Apple "the most powerful company that’s ever existed."?) kind of helps to make your point, so I'd suggest that it works both for and against you in that way.

:)
Go to the source: http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/privacy/hipaa/understanding/index.htm...

It's not really that hard. Keep personal data secure when stored and encrypted when in transit.
Therefore the Master
acts without doing anything
and teaches without saying anything.
Things arise and she lets them come;
things disappear and she lets them go.
She has but doesn't possess,
acts but doesn't expect.
When her work is done, she forgets it.
That is why it lasts forever.

-- Lao Tzu
Awesome! Anything that excuses my writing is fine in my book.

From the perspective of an art student Apple's essentially cornered every market now. Whether you're a multimedia programmer, a musician, a filmmaker, a newspaper editor, or a novelist, now Apple controls you on this thing. Even something like HTML5 support means that suddenly I don't have to worry about web standards for this entire block of the market, thanks to Webkit.

The good news is that it's in Apple's interest to appeal to artists and to smaller publishing groups. Between this and the Supreme Court's ruling this week, the University of the Arts is throwing lusty drunken celebrations. Every student here's just been told they're going to be employed and making a lot of money.
Will & Grace DVD Boxset - Free-Press-Release.com
> Tax cuts in capitol gains, lowering the tax rate on income over $250k/year,

And the tax system became more progressive. The share of taxes paid by the top 1, 5, and 10% went up.

> You mean to tell me you didn't benefit from those tax cuts?

Now half of US workers don't pay federal income tax. It's hard to cut their taxes more. (Yes, the poor pay SS, and it's a greater percentage of their income, but they get it back with interest. The rich don't break even on SS.)

Is that good?

What fraction of the tax burden should fall on each income cohort?
When XYZ is released the playing field is going to be leveled

When manufacturers start taking notice that unresponsive, laggy, slow devices are unpleasant to use, the playing field can start levelling. Until then everyone else is doing a Wintel - hardware many times faster, normal activities just as slow as ever. It's not hardware, it's software that matters, it's design.

I've been humming and hawing about whether this will be worth a look given the obvious things to gripe about. I heard on one of the post-announcement streams that the first impressions were roughly "heavier than expected, unbelievably responsive". This quote from DF "if I had to sum up the device with one word, that word would be “fast”." really pushes me strongly in favour. I'm interested.

If nobody else is going to push for responsive software and Apple are, then I'm going to lean more in Apple's direction.
Skewers | Party Picks | Swizzle Sticks
Bamboo Skewers - Cooking bamboo skewers, injected skewer, keko bamboo skewer, bamboo spatula, grilling bamboo skewers, bamboo skewers soak, appetizer skewers.
For a readable font, paste this into your address bar:

javascript:(function w(){document.body.style.fontFamily='Georgia';})()
Just because you're the best one to take a bad risk, doesn't mean the risk's worth taking.
His rhetoric was simpler than that. He was anti-money-grubbing-indian-killing-black-people-killing-chinese-killing-immigrant-killing-worker-killing-racist-corporate-capitalist-unregulated-opportunist. I'm not totally sure what that has to do with marxism or communism.
Not a fan of Calluna? I'm partial to it.

It'll make you happy to know I'm switching to a no-holds-barred Helvetica/Cufón combination shortly. Everybody wins!

EDIT: Just for you guys, Georgia's the default font again.
Not many people have Macs with Consolas installed on them.

I do. Best programming font ever.
I was puzzled by that too, but when I deleted the cookie from panopticlick.eff.org it no longer claimed I was unique among 60-some thousand, but among half that number.
OK, I agree. You're right. Just sounded funny.

I guess Apple's strong B2C orientation & the non-tinkerability of the device has something to do with that. Can you run the webapp on a local server, for example?
I'm wondering how much the iPad will be like a scaled up iPhone OS - because as a smartphone which syncs with Exchange, you can force policies on the iPhone from the server to require a PIN, allow remote data wipe, encrypt data, and so on - but you can't do that to a Windows desktop with Outlook. I don't know if you can to a Mac with Snow Leopard.

If this is going to have OS X/iPhone software, email, a wifi and data connection then it will likely have an ActiveSync connection to Exchange so the policies might be a possibility to keep your data safe(r) in the event of an unscheduled malfunction of an, ahem, ambulatorial nature.
They're not making their own CPU, their just licensing ARM tech and adding a few spins to the thing.
Data entry on an iPhone-sized device isn't as efficient as a pen/paper/clipboard, so you'll just end up using a pen/paper/clipboard, and then transferring data into a workstation later. The iPad looks like it could be different—there's just more raw room to place/space the virtual keys—but we'll see; it could be just as crappy.
In summary: It's worth spending hundreds of dollars to not have to use Linux / the kinds of devices Linux is associated with.

The message the desktop Linux community is refusing to learn from. At least half your points are fairly directly based on the state of Linux at the moment (e.g. Safari, ease of setup) and the other half linked to the state of the ecosystem surrounding Linux which pushes for cheaper and hackier solutions (wifi drivers, perception of coolness, implementation of software and hardware quality).
Has anyone run SunSpider (or any other performance metric) on the iPad?
I keep reading and hearing about fast the processor is, but I'd like to see hard numbers.
Agreed. Another overlooked option is you can easily get people to physically sign things on it. That's a potential tipping point for a huge number of forms that are still on paper.
Apple approved 3G VoIP on iPhone
thanks, eff, for letting a bunch of people know about an awesome new analytics business idea.

Seriously, this is brilliant. Even with cookies off, it'll work. NoScript should still block it though.
I was wondering if it would work creating a second type of app, a Service, that has no gui and only runs in the background. They'd have an api that allows them to communicate with a regular app. This way, something like Pandora could be split in two, with the background service running constantly, but the gui closing as usual.

This make it easier to manage background tasks, and also eliminate the problem of users leaving all their apps running. I guess if the makers of a Service decided to make their api public, other people could develop alternate front ends for it as well.
They're simply shifting one of their best ideas over to a new device. It's revolutionised how apps get delivered and created a huge barrier to entry for competing phones/devices. Every app (/song) you buy is a reason to not move to a new device.

Sure a few developers are more cranky than before but on balance there still seem to be more apps coming out than before. As a user I'm dismayed mostly by how much junk is on the app store.
There is an article for that: http://www.executivehm.com/news/itablet-in-healthcare/
Should be an awesome opportunity for WuFoo.
8 Things That Suck About the iPad ?
The A4 is an System-On-Chip, so no separate GPU.

From http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-10442684-64.html :

By definition, the A4 is a system-on-a-chip, or SOC, that
integrates the main processor, graphics silicon, and other
functions like the memory controller on one piece of silicon...
A post entitled The iPad Big Picture seems to be lacking in something that I would consider to be part of a big picture: what will the product be used for?

Is it intended to be a replacement for the laptop? Or is it a supplement to the laptop, filling a previously unseen niche between the phone and the laptop?
You don't get it. All those other things you mention could be done by any amateur quarterback. They require no special skills. What makes Peyton Manning unique and consequently expensive isn't his ability to show up, watch film, practice, work out, etc. Rather, it's what he does in those 5 minutes per game that separates him from thousands of journeyman quarterbacks and determines his $14M salary. So yes, he is making $8.85M per hour. All the other stuff he does could be done equally well by countless others.
Hmmm... that would explain a lot.
"... I can't think of any activity where heel first running would work ..."

When you have 32lbs on your back with GP's. Toe first doesn't work because of the weight. So it's heel first.
The Calluna would be alright, I suppose. However, I think a lot of users have your second preference, Didot, installed which is unsuitable for body copy.
Whoops! I completely forgot I'd put Didot in there for a day.
>"... because that sentence will sell several billion of these things."

Several billion? what are you smoking?
To be fair, there are two other things at play here.

* 1. No app had ever displayed books on a bookshelf in this way until Delicious Monster did.

* 2. The designer who designed the bookshelf UI at Delicious Monster was poached by Apple to work on the iPad team.

(And because I'm irritated by comments on Hacker News lately, I just want to point out that sarcasm is the simplest form of humor.)
"Apple fanboy" is kind of the generic term. I think "fawning sycophant" and "groveling lick-spittle" describe Gruber better.
Reading this article raised the bullshit alarm BIG TIME.

Yes Apple will make these things sell, using empty buzzwords that makes geeks cringe. But the author didn't have to be a dick about it.

The Howard Zinn story was more important than this.
hyperbole /haɪp'ɜːʳbəli/
Synonyms: exaggeration, hyperbola, overstatement

If someone uses hyperbole, they say or write things
that make something sound much more impressive than
it really is.
> Also, why is my question (followed by an if-so) being downmodded? I wasn't even being rude.

Good question. Downmodding of questions is a phenomenon that I've seen on other sites (less so on HN, but here it is, happening). And I always wonder why.
IPad’s initial target audience is iPhone and iPod touch users
Personally I think it's a complimentary device. Some apps are just going to work better with a multi-touch interface than a traditional keyboard/mouse setup. Judging by the amount of new UI elements it appears you can write some serious, near desktop quality, applications for the iPad. I think a very common usage scenario is going to be using the iPad in conjunction with your laptop or desktop. For example, I think multi-touch web browsing is a much better experience than a keyboard/mouse browser experience. It's just easier to move around pages and zoom in. If I had an iPad sitting on my desk next to my keyboard and mouse I suspect a good chunk of my browsing would be done on the iPad.
Are you implying your audience are a bunch of idiots?

Seriously, that's not even a hyperbole. That's a really stupid statement, even for a hyperbole.
So judging by the comments, I was wrong to have assume he was communist... back in my younger more naive days. I should probably re-read "A People's History"... except it's already reserved solid for the next 6 months in the SF Public Library system. Go figure.
Isn't that what sucks about HN's rise and fall story display? I completely agree with you. But if people read this and like it, the only way they can spread it to other people is to vote it, potentially past other stories.

But you missed my point. They're not empty buzzwords. Looking at the tablet in terms of dimensions and RAM and DPI is like looking at a film in terms of how many reels it takes to project it in a theater. Yeah, there's something going on there that's worth a discussion, but to assume that the point of the movie is to make a long film strip is a little silly.

"Magic" is not an empty buzzword. "DPI" is. I don't care about DPI. I care about I can push a button here and it'll give me a blank screen and I can DRAW on it. Just like magic. Or I can watch baseball and TOUCH it and make things happen on the screen.

There's a lot of technology going on there, but the technology isn't the point. The magic is the point.
Enter to Win Prizes from User Reviews Contest-Consumermate.com
Looking at it, honestly, it's something I'd use instead of a laptop for a lot of cases, from sitting around in a coffeeshop to catch up on feeds to going to conferences (since it can do Keynote, which is the only thing I currently actually need a laptop for).
After some thought, this sort of seems like it's missing the point.

What I'm curious about is what the current state of cookie and user click stream sharing among analytics/advertising companies is. What proportion of my browsing history is known to any given company, and what proportion given collusion? Are there any studies on this?
I'll explain again. The point of hyperbole is to deliberately exaggerate something for effect, in this case humorous. I could have tried to estimate how much Apple will sell, but I don't care about estimation. My point is they will sell a lot.

My audience is not a bunch of idiots. They got it. You're the only one out of thousands of readers who's complained.
Why not? WiFi links up to the local network; access the server based on an internal server.

I can already do that via the iPhone.
Bug in iPad: 1,000,000 million hits on Google with 1,000 solutions

Bug in any of the other Nix tablets: 12 hits, all of them from people like me asking for solutions

Question I have to ask myself is do I want to save $2k upfront and spend countless hours some day in the future supporting the device or just pay a higher price and get a stable appliance that I don't have to worry about.
I think a demo will really help in showing what your app does.
Your essay is great. It makes me feel less alone in this world. I didn't find it full of vehemence.

`

It is okay to speak with force. At times force is needed to cut through layers of of mental resistance. New ideas that we don't understand scare us. We fear what we don't understand. The points you are trying to make are over the head of most people. 99.9999999% don't get "it". If they did we would have more companies that could compete with apple not just copy apple.

`

What do I mean by copy Apple? One example is the iPhone. If Apple never made the iPhone. What would phones look like right now? We would have the the Razor3 and it would allow us to download ring tones, not apps.

Heres some food for thought from Einstein:

"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex... It takes a touch of genius --- and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction." - Albert Einstein

"The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift." - Albert Einstein

And the most important to this discussion:

"The significant problems we face can not be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them." - Albert Einstein

The iPad is not a solution to the question of: whats a better computer or whats a better phone. Just as the iPhone wasn't a better Razor.
Escort yourself to the world of escorts
A few others:

-Standardization: Same software everywhere you go, consistent UI
-Ease of deployment: Restore a preconfigured iTunes backup to each iPad, done.
-VPN support: VPN into the corporate network when you're out of the office for secure access
-Exchange support: Sadly still a very important feature
-Ease of use
Scheme from Scratch - Bootstrap - Conclusion
I think Apple has decided they don't like multitasking on its merits. You can only do one thing at a time, so why run more than one application?

Instead, they're putting their effort into making application launch and exit very fast, and cautioning developers that they should save all important state, and restore it all next time.
I'm glad you like it! It's corny, but when people let me know they've enjoyed something of mine it makes it all worth the gritted teeth and the hurling laptops out windows.
Why I'm not going to buy an iPad
I would rather put it the other way around: one of the most noticeable things about the iPhone / iPod touch is its slowness, the little glitches in the animations where the rendering drops a few frames, the pauses before there's a response to pressing the big button.

Wintel very much isn't "slow as ever", in my experience. Desktop machines are another class of hardware altogether; I have 12GB of memory, an SSD, 8 logical cores and 2 monitors on my desktop - nothing slow, laggy or unresponsive about it.