Ordered my iPad last week

Do you think HP will do anything with PalmOS, or just use some of the underlying technologies and Palm's patents to roll their own? I don't know enough about the PalmOS to have an opinion on whether it's a solid foundation for a phone/tablet family of devices. HP is late to the game but they may want to make a serious run at it. There's plenty of market for other good devices out there, but Apple has serious momentum now.

Microsoft is just hard to figure out, but I think it all rolls up to Ballmer. He's a smart guy but seems incompetent in a leadership role. It's like they haven't even been trying to develop a real vision for the future these last few years.
 
Apparently Palm's WebOS has its roots in BEOS which almost became Apple's desktop OS just before Apple bought NeXT Computer and returned Steve Jobs to the helm. The rest, as they say, is history. Back in the day, BEOS was technically very impressive. Not sure how well that's carried over to WebOS.
 
A few more observations after a couple of weeks with my 16 GB wi-fi iPad.

For me and my family it's like another little appliance in the house. We pick it up, do what we want to, and set it aside. We leave it around the kitchen or living area, and grab it for a quick email, weather check, update the Netflix queue, look up something on the web, or look at some photos. I have synced more than 12,000 photos from nine years of my Aperture library, and I still have about 5 GB of free space. The iPad is a nice little photo album to have lying around, especially considering that I have thousands of photos that I will never print, so the kids can browse through them any time.

I also noticed that I am going upstairs to open my laptop less frequently because the iPad handles the little common tasks well. It's definitely not a necessity for us, just a handy extension of technology we already have. But the easy mobility of it is part of the value. Battery life is very good so we'll use it for several days before I need to think about plugging it into the charger.

The iPad, in its current form, will not work for me as a primary device because I need the power and memory of a full-featured laptop for processing images and HD video. But for someone like my mom who just wants to do basic tasks, it seems almost perfect. I think that says a lot for a first generation device, and I expect that future iPad models will provide more power and functionality as the technology evolves.

This quote from John Patrick, former Marketing VP at IBM, is pretty accurate, I think:

"When we introduced the ThinkPad in 1992 it seemed like a huge deal just to get everyone at IBM to agree with the name. No one, certainly not me as VP of marketing at the time, had any idea that more than 30 million ThinkPads would be sold. The iPad will surely sell multiple times that number but more important the iPad will change the model of personal computing — not immediately and not for everyone, but for many millions of people the PC will begin to look like a dinosaur."

I think the risk that Apple has taken here is to try to redefine what 'computing' means for a lot of people, and I believe the time is right for such a transition. It's about getting the technology out of the way for the average user (file systems, complex software installations, disk management, etc) and focusing in on the basic tasks people want to do every day. In that sense I think it could be a huge success. And for other fields like health care, education and publishing, there's huge potential for this form factor. We're looking at a new class of device here, and if we see other companies coming out with similar offerings soon, then we'll know that Apple has hit on something important. The iPad isn't perfect and it's certainly not for everyone, but I give Apple credit for taking this risk and executing well on the strategy.
 
You're right, Maduro. The iPad is a rotten, filthy scam. I've been a silly fanboy, but now I'm beginning to see the light, thanks to you.

I read your last response, real slow-like and careful, and I was all: whoa, wait a minute here. Dude is right. And then suddenly this big light comes on above me and I hear open source angels humming kumbaya while nibbling delicate Ubuntu tofu soy cakes and I'm like: hey, **** Apple and their lock-in ****. No! You're not locking me in. I resist the evil vendor lock. And gimme my mass in English, *************, I ain't no Latino! And no keyboard? **** THAT WHERE'S MY KEYBOARD *******! AND A MOUSE TOO OR MAYBE THAT STYLUS THINGY UP IN HERE!

Ha. I am so on to their game now, once again breathing the clear air of consumer choice and open formats. Thank you.
 
For $99 you'll get a refurbished iPad with a new battery and external case--by all appearances and performance a new iPad. This makes a lot of sense for Apple and their customers. Customers get quick turnaround since no time is needed to actually do the work and it will be a shiny virtually new unit. Apple can take their time refurbing the units and may even choose to send them off to a place with lower labor costs to keep the cost down for everyone. It also builds in brand loyalty. Since the battery is essentially the only part of an iPad that will eventually need maintenance, for a modest fee a customer can get a new one rather than go shopping for something else. It's actually a rather brilliant policy that's a win-win for everyone.

Here's an article about the policy.
 
I checked out the company iPad for a week, and made a solid effort to use it as my primary home device for the whole period. Here is my review:

In reply to:
 
As much as I would like one for the "wow" factor, I have sort of reached the same conclusion as you did. It seems like a large expensive touch. I like my touch and it would be neat to have it bigger, but not for $600-700.
 
It was an interesting experience, but I left it still unsure where it fit into my life.

Tell you what though, after using the iPad for 20-30 minutes it makes your iPhone/Touch feel really cramped. The OS feels much more natural on the iPad. Apple made a good device and they were definitely wise to use a version of iPhone OS, but they needed to take it a little further than they did.
 
There will probably be 7 or 8 new versions of the ipad, every 5-8 months if it is like previous Apple stuff.
 
The web on mobile devices is not something new. If Adobe is still in beta mode for a workable mobile version of flash then their **** is just about done. Today, there is no shipping mobile implementation of flash that doesn't create performance and power problems. None.

Adobe wants to criticize Apple for killing Flash, but the responsibility lies entirely with Adobe. Innovate or die, *******. It's 2010 and your code still doesn't travel. The iPhone came out three years ago and you still can't tell us why Jobs was wrong to ban it from his platform. Three years.

Adobe reminds me of Microsoft: great successes in the past, but no leadership and no apparent vision for how to innovate and prosper in the mobile world.
 
Allow a ****** experience on mobile devices and let the customer decide what? The point is to deliver stable technology that doesn't drain the battery and devour processor cycles. Adobe has had ample time to develop a good mobile version of Flash. That they haven't done it by now is either an indictment of the technology, of Adobe, or both.

The new Android OS sounds fantastic from what I've read, and competition with the iPhone OS can only be a good thing for consumers and progress of the mobile platforms as a whole. But when people are bragging that "Android has Flash but the iPhone doesn't" and then say well, you may want to disable Flash sometimes so your phone doesn't die -- that's a specious argument.
 
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