Cos then they couldn’t sell you their Camera Connection Kit for $25. Real dick move, I agree… but if you buy the adaptor, it allows you to plug in keyboards, external HDD’s, flash readers, pretty much anything USB – which just goes to show the iPad can actually handle everything, they just decided not to put the USB plug in the unit.

The iPad doesn’t compete with the Archos. The reason you get the iPad is because it’s currently the only way to get a big touchscreen in your hands with great battery life. With the best mobile browser around, it’s actually quite a great device. Having said that though, as soon as a comparable Win7 tablet comes out, I’m getting one and flogging my iPad. The only reason that the iPad is the best choice right now, is that it’s the only choice in its class.

Ridiculous question! Like the internet wasn’t useful B4 this cloud computing drivel came up.

Plenty of people buy technology for ridiculous reasons. It is nothing but status symbols for them. I have plugged a USB keyboard into my Archos but that doesn’t work on an iPad. I could get a folding USB keyboard if I used the Archos for input enough. I consider the lack of USB reason to not look at an iPad. They must have deliberately decided to not add that feature. WHY?
.

Sure it is, but the context of my comment was that there are better ways of doing things nowdays. If you were starting a bank from scratch today, would you seriously consider building your systems on COBOL or RPG, just because other banks have made do with it for 50 years?

@Wogan
>No, the biggest bone I have to pick here is the “single device” theory. If people were OK with a single device, we’d have 1 mobile phone brand

I didn’t suggest one brand or a 100% standardised platform, I suggested a single device. The point is that, like email is now probably done as much from phones as it is from desktops, more and more tasks will converge onto a “single device”.

>There will ALWAYS be a spread of different devices, different brands, different styles and systems.

Agreed, and I wouldn’t want it any other way, you want to buy a device that’s strong at the tasks you want to use it for. Competition drives innovation. But there’s an unrelenting trend towards device convergence, and that trend is only getting faster.

>I covered this here, highlighting what is probably a more likely (and believable) scenario.

I had a quick skim (which it seems you did with my article judging by your comments ) … I agree 100% – I did mention that many tasks like CAD, Video/Photo-Editing, Games, etc are best suited for apps, and always will be, because they push the hardware requirements far faster than the cloud can deliver them.

>And for the record, vinyl does produce superior sound.

LOL. Don’t get me started on that.

We don’t. People like diversity, they like choice. They like to distinguish themselves by making those choices to suit their own needs. They do different things with different purposes on different devices. There are people who excel at catering to all these choices. There will ALWAYS be a spread of different devices, different brands, different styles and systems.

I covered this here, highlighting what is probably a more likely (and believable) scenario.

http://woganmay.com/2010/05/14/the-cloud-is-here-long-live-the-pc/

@Greg Getting the job done for 50 years is damn good motivation to keep things working the way they are. Critical systems, like utilities control, financial databases and transactions, etc, these are rarely if ever upgraded, because there’s no NEED to upgrade them. Water will always we water, money will always be money, etc.

Imagine if all the banks in SA patched their transaction software every 6 months, taking another 12 months to work out all the kinks. How many failed transactions, duplicate records and ATMs going offline would it take before the government burned those banks to the ground?

And for the record, vinyl does produce superior sound.

~ Wogan

As for COBOL, still very much alive, like RPG which I use in production.

@All_Day_SCI-fi no offence but if you see no value in cloud computing what are you doing on the internet.

re: Dr Eye form factor – they’re fine as a Blackberry replacement, and certainly nothing new, that’s an evolutionary update on the old Nokia Communicators. To replace a laptop you need something with a decent sized screen so your eyes don’t explode and hands cramp up after a few hours, and a tablet sized device is the lower limit of that. The onscreen keyboard on a tablet sized device is very comfortable to type on – I actually wrote this article on an iPad assuming it would be difficult, and we’d need UMPC type keyboards tacked on “in the future”, and I was astounded at how well it worked. Landscape mode, though – the portrait keyboard is too small to do large amounts of work on.

Backing up your hard drive over the net isn’t cloud computing.

Upgrading software: this comes as a side-effect of hardware advances, there’s nothing stopping you using telnet to connect to your xenix server and doing your emails by command line and vi from whatever hardware your choose as a client, but I find it far better to use software that takes advantage of the power and features of the new hardware to make the experience easier/more accessible.

Does it have a similarity to cars and stereo equipment? Sure… and there are those that still believe valve amplifiers and vinyl produce superior sound. They also probably think COBOL is a cool way to get things done, just because “it’s got the job done for 50 years”.

Sorry, Star Trek The Next Generation did not air until 1987.

The “Dr. Eye” by Inventec has the right form factor, fold down keyboard with touch screen that fits in a pocket. The iPad is too big and doesn’t have a camera or USB ports. But the Dr. Eye doesn’t have a 30 gig drive like my Archos PMA400. When is anybody going to get everything right?

Cloud computing? You can keep it. I can back up to my own drives over the net. Disk space is so cheap it is scary. But I recently watched a video saying that some corporations were still using software from the 60s. So why are we upgrading SW every six months? LOL

Software does not wear out, people.

The future of computing is paying for silly upgrades. Does this sound like cars and stereo equipment? YEAH!
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Interesting to see that most of the things he thought of, is starting to become real things we can use everyday.

We still have a long way to go…