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[Phaëton]

12 inch screen full featured os and computer inside:

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2364354,00.asp

asus's eee pad to compete with ipad...

im curious to see how much they will be charging...

okay, flame suit on, GO!

[rcjordan]

>okay, flame suit on, GO!

HHH! It was the 'flame suit' that hooked me into the thread.

Aside: A big-name blogger once told me that Hell hath no fury like a fanboi scorned. Or something like that, anyway.

I'm betting the Asus will have a USB port.

[nutballs]

Even us iPad folks are excited to see what's coming. I still think though that being able to install whatever you want is the main cause of instability. That's why I like the iPad. Sure My inner geek would like to run all sorts of shit on it, but my older, more wise, less time for rebuild self says "meh, screw it"

[Phaëton]

You know theres a market that eee will grab ... but they are just
dragging the old model of computing into the new arena that apple
is trying to trailblaze... i mean okay apple doesnt have a usb port
but they also dont have security issues and an attachment to the
way of computing that just has evolved because we all want new
cars developed, upgraded and worked on while we drive em.

So the ipad doesnt have flash or usb but it also doesnt have the
crap that comes along with the entire computing scenario that exists
out there. 

I dont see any other companies inventing new stuff and delivering
brand new computing experiences.. Ok so they dont have flash for
now and blah blah blah but i think soon the old way of using computers
wont be able to catch up with the way apple will show us what can be
done with them in the future..   in the meantime the apple haters
will keep turning wrenches, rebooting, and reinstalling drivers and
the rest of the shit that comes along with the tower of babel.

ever reboot the ipad?  prolly dont need to... ever need to spend 30
minutes reinstalling the flash active x player object because hulu doesnt
work... im guessing not..  Im guessing that the internet experience is
as polished as the brushed metal that used to be on the macbooks...

im saying this because i just spent a half hour reviving hulu on the dell craptop
so my wifey could have her hulu... i bet that never happens on the ipad.

so soon apple will show everyone a new way to use computers and this
old model of patchwork technology will die.  The 'heres how we intended
these tools to be used' stuff will win out , IMO   

[perkiset]

Excellent post, both to start and just now Phae.

The funniest part of that article to me is the commentors, saying things like "finally, some innovation and a computer i can actually use to do stuff with." if that's innovation then I'm a Republican.

I think people really miss the point. The iPad is not trying to go head to head with full notebooks. It's a different machine with a different mission. The rumored Android tablets seem to get this as well. Different features and things of course, but they understand as well that the landscape of what people want a little machine like the pad to tackle is not a PC in a different form factor. It's a different kind of computing experience.

They'll sell a bunch of those, certainly. But to your point about stability Phae and yours as well Nuts, it just won't be a 'pad. It's a BSOD capable machine that will probably be capable of attempting too much... And not succeeding at any of it really well. But all that said, given what Asus (as a company and their product line/apparent mission) I'd expect nothing else. Honestly, wish them well. It just increases the contrast between what is (and is fading) and what will be. Nuts is right: we pad people are BIG excited about what is coming ... It's why we bought the pad. I'm looking forward to seeing what the android front edge does to push Apple into new directions, and vice versa. 

     

[Phaëton]

Im surprised the internet even works at all.

I have a project im trying to get paid on and
for three weeks its a holding pattern.

'x' cant get email to click the do my job button.

Email is sent.
smtp log shows it.
my private log shows it.
my cc: shows up
i can click on it.

it works

but somewhere in the tower some setting or something
somewhere has caused my boss to have to take two trips
out ... a full day of gestapo style meetings to show some
old fuck how to use their email... i told him to tell them to
call rent a nerd, who will do it for 169$ just to show up..

but all that stuff is handled by apple... you have an ipad,
you get an email...  theres no rent a nerdable 169$ hulu
update clashed with ff update bsod pebcak reboot...

no keyboard, no pebcak.... dont give them control...
the sheeple must find only one way into the gate,
and apples doing it well. 

[rcjordan]

>So the ipad doesnt have flash or usb but it also doesnt have the
crap that comes along with the entire computing scenario that exists
out there

And neither will my machine (whatever that may end up being) when I buy one.  I'll strip it down to fighting weight and build it up to what I want --running the apps that I say it's going to run.  And, if it's like the rest of my dozen or so machines, 5 years from now people will be awestruck that it's still over in a corner working just fine.  The only thing that kills my hardware is lack of processing speed relative to new machines.

Where I think Apple has the distinct advantage, though, is in their multi-touch gestures.  THAT is what would keep me from buying a competitive machine. This device is a new UI, that's what this is all about.  I don't want something that just physically resembles an ipad, I want the UI to equal or beat the ipad.  So, my guess is that the first round of competitors just aren't going to meet my demands even if they have four usb ports.

I was in bestbuy last week to pick up another airport extreme. They had a table full of ipads on demo and I almost bought one just for the hell of it.  But, to tell the truth, they just didn't give me a woody.  Mostly, it was the browser I didn't like.  Some of the apps were interesting but not really must-have for productivity. I ended up figuring that it'd be just tossed in with my stack of coffee-table netbooks so I walked.

[perkiset]

@ gestures and UI - so with you there man. I wonder how long it will be until someone snaps up the work of Pranav Mistry because that's where it's really going. The 'pad does and admirable job of pushing up the bar, but there is so much room left for improvement.

@browser- curious RC - what did you not like about it?

@best buy- I think one of the problems, even with apple sales reps, is that the answer is always "it can do anything!" You'd probably be more impressed if you got some time with nuts or me to see how they are used in the real world, rather than the sales hoopla.

[rcjordan]

>best buy- I think one of the problems, even with apple sales reps, is that the answer is always "it can do anything!"

You still have problems recognizing just how distant/removed I am from the bricks world, perk.  Other than to point us to which aisle has the product, I have no use for salesmen. Period.  The guys did know where the Extremes were stacked.  Other than that, those guys are door props.

>You'd probably be more impressed if you got some time with nuts or me to see how they are used in the real world

No doubt. But the general feeling was Meh. I even asked Louise if she wanted one and she turned it down --which, to my knowledge, has never happened before and kind of shocked me.

>gestures

In my circle of seo dawgs, tech honchos, and even family members there are enough iphones out there for even the partially observant to see that the UI is where it's at.

>browser- curious RC - what did you not like about it?

Nothing except it didn't fit my synapse. I don't need to acquire the feel for a new browser when the product only marginally fits into how I like to work. Needs to be Chrome or -less desirably- FF.

[perkiset]

I even asked Louise if she wanted one and she turned it down --which, to my knowledge, has never happened before and kind of shocked me.

Shopping + wife + no thanks == call doctor.

[rcjordan]

>Shopping + wife + no thanks == call doctor.

I'll mention here that she hates to shop as much as I do.  That said, she genuinely enjoys the cloud life and all the tech gear, media centers, streaming, etc.  She tends to use more of the entertainment side of it than I do (zero for me), so some things fit more in her lifestyle than mine, such as the netflix-xbox setup. She has 2 Toughbooks, yada, yada, yada.  Anyway, she likes the same stuff you and I do, but I couldn't get her to take an ipad.  The reaction was simply meh.

BTW, she was buying the Extreme to put on the office network as we switch it over to voip. She did the entire install as well as hammer out all the kinks in the voip, dsl and static ip's.  So she's fairly tech inclined.

BTW2,  It occurred to me that while I have quite a few very high tech people in my circle and there is an above-average percentage of iphones amongst them there hasn't been much interest in the ipad.  From those who've commented, they seem to be like me --wherever we sit down, we already have plenty of hardware in place and like the setup.

 

[isthisthingon]

"You can be both a premier professional and a housewife."   Question is, can Asus get an Eee Pad in her hands before she buys an iPad. No specific ship date was given.

 

The full featured PC part is of course quite tempting, at least for me.  If a pro+wife unit can successfully compete with the wife-only version, then Apple may have a challenge defending their choice to go iPhone OS.  I thought Android was the next challenger but Win7 is an interesting concept as well.  And I don't believe that what is needed is to simply determine what a pad OS should not do.  The OS is a mere foundation that's hopefully stable enough to permit any device to do what it should be doing best.

True, dropping Win7 on a pad hardly shows signs of innovation.  Some of the apps I've seen on the iPad definitely show innovation.  Question then about a Win7 pad is: could apps be written to do the same things as they do on the iPad?  Perhaps better?  Maybe not.  But it's not the foundation that really demonstrates innovation imo.  It's the creations that spring from it 

[rcjordan]

>Question is, can Asus get an Eee Pad in her hands before she buys an iPad.

Assuming that the reviews of their respective gestures capabilities say they are equal, the first one that has FF or Chrome on it wins.

[perkiset]

@Apple rethinking their choice of iPhone os: you miss the point entirely. If the mission of a machine you want to purchase is to Do It All then an iPad is most probably not for you.

That's the biggest failing of virtually every commentator i read that claims it's underpowered or doesn't do all the things that they want it to do. What people are describing is that they want a full blown laptop in the iPad form factor. Well, there will certainly be competitors in that space and bon appetite. I have a notebook. It's fine for what little meaning in life it has anymore. But i don't want the baggage that comes with a laptop for the appliance style work I do with my pad. Period.

IMO, having similar apps on a Win7 device as I have on my pad would be almost the worst of all worlds. If I have a machine with a full blown OS then I'll use it in a different way than how I use the pad. The entire point is not having to deal with Windows, Linux or even OSX. I want none of it on a machine who's job in life is to assist me with well understood, well compartmentalized day to day tasks. I have never and would never take my notebook around to carry my todo list with me. What a blistering PIA. But while I'm popping about, carrying the pad and being 2 touches and about 3 seconds away from my todo is awesome. And since everything else about my digital life is on it, more the better.

It's a different way of thinking and behaving with a computing device. Impossible to even really get your arms around until you've been there. I never thought it would be what it is to me, even with my highly optimistic notions.       

[rcjordan]

>I have never and would never take my notebook around to carry my todo list with me. What a blistering PIA.

Ah, see, there's where our mindsets differ. I have never carried a notebook and view even cell phones as a blistering PIA (greater phraseology, btw).  Even the ipad is too big. My goal has been to nuke any & all portage issues while out and about, yet have massively convenient kiosks set up at points where I tend to stay for a few minutes.  I'm the guy with laptops lying about the house like coasters and both media centers flip over to full browsing mode.

Now the compromise for me might be an itouch ...except they still need charging.