> From: Chris Dunford <seed...@gmail.com> > Subject: Re: You Saw the Demo? Are you impressed? > > David, sorry, but I have plenty of experience with multitouch devices. Of the > two I have now, the SMALL one is 12" (and they're both 16:9, by the way, not > 4:3 like iPad). The iPad's touchscreen is > incontrovertibly midsize.
Now here you're telling us of your vast experience with something without providing any basis for us to evaluate it, making us work to tease some details out of you. It's annoying, but anyhow, here goes: please tell us of your multitouch experiences and the devices you now have. I realize myself that I had forgotten about the tablet computers that everyone else seems to have forgotten about also. So yes, I was wrong as far as screen size goes for generically-named "multitouch devices". While conceding the issue, I would like to point out that for many of these tablets, "multi" means "two", and for a lot of the others it means "three", and that it would be difficult to apprehend a really good multitouch experience based on familiarity with those clumsy machines. > >> Regarding the lack of HD output, I'd really like it if someone would >> establish how important it really is for any mobile device. > > I think it's silly to bring out any non-toy video device in 2010 without HD > capabilities. Then many smartphone and netbook manufacturers are silly. As are most portable DVD players, but maybe you consider those to be "toys". Speaking of toys, the PSP, Wii and DS/DSi don't have HD and Nintendo seems to be doing quite well without it at the moment. And why exclude "toys"? I would have thought that HD is even more essential to them. For example, it seems like weekend sports fanatics aren't considered serious unless they have HDTVs. In any case, you haven't answered the question, only slapped a different adjective on it. Before, I asked why HD output was so important, and now I am asking why not having it is silly. As I asked before, can you give any indication how popular HD output is among Zune HD users or explain why smartphone manufacturers aren't exactly falling over each other in a rush to include it? Maybe they believe that the extra sales HD would generate aren't enough to justify the cost of including it at present. > >> The tech specs page says that the 3G iPad has assisted GPS, >> and the TomTom kit for the touch should work for the non-3G >> model, so you DO have GPS on all of the iPads, should you want >> it. > > Extra cost for GPS either way. Come now, it has GPS, contrary to what you said. Tell us, where don't you pay extra for GPS? I guess you could say the iPad, since if you are buying it for the 3G you would be getting GPS for free. > Well, I didn't say anything about "horrible" app restrictions. But it IS a > restriction, and a significant one, in my view. I can't write an iPad app, > post it on the web, and let everyone use it. > Nobody else can either. All I can do is submit it, wait, and hope. If Apple > doesn't like the app, for whatever reason, that's it, that's all she wrote. I > don't like that one bit, either as a developer > or as a consumer. You came close to owing me a new keyboard, as I just barely was able to contain a mouthful of tea when I read this. You write an iPad app? Wouldn't you have to use a Mac for that? (Seriously though, if you wanted to do it, I hear that there's a Mono iPhone SDK now.) I didn't say you said horrible, but you did imply that they were bad, bad, bad, hence my use of quotes. How is what you describe different from working on spec in any field? You don't have exclusivity agreements with any of your retailers, who may also choose to stop promoting your product for any reason? >> .... > > Sorry, but I don't consider either of these to be multitasking. Unless you > can have two arbitrary apps both RUNNING at the same time, it's not > multitasking. Now you are moving the goal posts. The definition that the rest of us use is that multitasking is "the apparent simultaneous performance of two or more tasks by a computer". So the iPhone OS devices do multitask for their most commonly used apps, one example being Safari + Music + Mail + Calendar. And there effectively is multitasking for many more apps, since (for example) there is no functional difference between keeping a book app open while composing an email then returning to the book, as opposed to closing the book app, writing the email and opening the book app automatically at the page where it had been before. That is not to say that it wouldn't be nice if the multitasking was a little more thorough, but that hasn't proven to be a big obstacle for Touch or iPhone adoption rates. ************************************************************************* ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *************************************************************************
