You know, I have to disagree. Without application multitasking, the iPad won't even replace the laptop that stays in my living room -- sure, I mostly surf the web, but I'm also running (multi-protocol) IM and IRC all the time and I want them to stay connected in the background.
I do realize that there's always BeeJive for the IM portion of my requirements, but I always thought that keeping your connection alive through a proxy server was an ugly hack that was only necessary due to the limitations in iPhone OS. That and I dislike sharing my login credentials with a third party server.
I also have to say (as an iPhone owner) that I really kind of hate the app switching experience as it stands now. I want an instantaneous switch -- more or less like alt-tab on Linux or Windows -- and waiting for the springboard to reappear and then for whatever new app to load kind of gets on my nerves, especially if I'm trying to bounce between reading an e-book in Stanza or reading a web page and a slow-moving IM conversation. This is one reason why I'm ditching my iPhone 3G for a Nexus One as soon as they're available on Verizon. It's also why I find the Android tablets that are in development, like the MSI Harmony, much more appealing than the iPad: Android multitasks.
But I do also recognize I'm not the iPad's target market.
On a somewhat unrelated note, I suspect a lot of the iPad hate, particularly regarding no multitasking, isn't so much the idea of making a device that normal people can use so much as it is the idea that this is the sum total of the future of computing: specialized devices that uni-task, attempt to lock us into specific content providers, lock up our data in apps rather than letting us have free access to the file system, and so on. In other words -- it's not so much about what it currently is, but rather the potential future it represents. I think those fears are a bit overblown, but I definitely empathize with them. I'd hate having a computer that (for example) forced me to use iPhoto or Aperture or Lightroom or Picasa to manage my photos rather than just keeping them in a nicely organized file structure that I created.
But at any rate, I think there's room enough in computing for both approaches and I don't understand why various groups on both sides seem so anxious to strip those choices away from everyone else. Which is to say: I don't think anyone who is confused by a file system or windowed multitasking is a drooling idiot who shouldn't be allowed to use the Internet, but I also don't appreciate the simplicity advocates telling me that I should get over it because I don't need the ability to multi-task or be able to see multiple programs at once anyway. There's room for both approaches and I suspect there'll always be a need for both.
I do realize that there's always BeeJive for the IM portion of my requirements, but I always thought that keeping your connection alive through a proxy server was an ugly hack that was only necessary due to the limitations in iPhone OS. That and I dislike sharing my login credentials with a third party server.
I also have to say (as an iPhone owner) that I really kind of hate the app switching experience as it stands now. I want an instantaneous switch -- more or less like alt-tab on Linux or Windows -- and waiting for the springboard to reappear and then for whatever new app to load kind of gets on my nerves, especially if I'm trying to bounce between reading an e-book in Stanza or reading a web page and a slow-moving IM conversation. This is one reason why I'm ditching my iPhone 3G for a Nexus One as soon as they're available on Verizon. It's also why I find the Android tablets that are in development, like the MSI Harmony, much more appealing than the iPad: Android multitasks.
But I do also recognize I'm not the iPad's target market.
On a somewhat unrelated note, I suspect a lot of the iPad hate, particularly regarding no multitasking, isn't so much the idea of making a device that normal people can use so much as it is the idea that this is the sum total of the future of computing: specialized devices that uni-task, attempt to lock us into specific content providers, lock up our data in apps rather than letting us have free access to the file system, and so on. In other words -- it's not so much about what it currently is, but rather the potential future it represents. I think those fears are a bit overblown, but I definitely empathize with them. I'd hate having a computer that (for example) forced me to use iPhoto or Aperture or Lightroom or Picasa to manage my photos rather than just keeping them in a nicely organized file structure that I created.
But at any rate, I think there's room enough in computing for both approaches and I don't understand why various groups on both sides seem so anxious to strip those choices away from everyone else. Which is to say: I don't think anyone who is confused by a file system or windowed multitasking is a drooling idiot who shouldn't be allowed to use the Internet, but I also don't appreciate the simplicity advocates telling me that I should get over it because I don't need the ability to multi-task or be able to see multiple programs at once anyway. There's room for both approaches and I suspect there'll always be a need for both.