iPad 2: The end of the laptop era?

[polaris20]

Ive had it in various forms for 10 years, its ok. It can be frustrating in some ways. Most people get by without it. YMMV.

It's not just about you though. You can't really argue on a point that is so subjective as this. Mileage does indeed vary, because while you may think it's not important, a lot of us love using touch interfaces.

Look there is already a lot of talk about delivering all textbooks for public high schools in the USA on tablets. Specifically iPads. If that happens then the death of the laptop will follow in short order.

I don't quite see the logic of that, TBH. You're not replacing 'textbooks on laptops' with 'textbooks on iPads', so what impact does the textbook medium have on laptops?

FWIW, I dont see our students using laptops for textbooks; they're not even 'only' using them for the web and wordprocessing; they're using applications like Photoshop, Final Cut, AutoCAD and Maya. Other faculties they're using Matlab, SPSS, Solidworks et.c.

Textbooks on a tablet could change how students learn, because you can embed stuff in the eBook not possible with the physical text, such as video and other interactive components. Sure, Apple is first to it with iBooks/iBooks Author, but they most certainly won't be the last. Amazon and Google will surely follow. I don't think tablets will necessarily kill laptops in the classroom, but they may very well kill textbooks someday. The only reason they may replace laptops is due to cost and durability; generally tablets are cheaper than a good laptop, and slightly more durable due to no moving parts and solid state memory.

Has Apple designed something like this for the iPad 2?

"A laptop without a screen and with no hardware inside. Something that you can plug your iPad into to allow you to use a qwerty keyboard and trackpad wit ith?"

Do you follow? Basically something to allow you to type on when needing to write fast...

You mean make the iPad like the Asus Transformer?

Nope. Apple dont really design very much additional hardware for any of their hardware.

How about the standard Apple bluetooth keyboard that works great with the iPad in any app? Works for me! It works on the iPhone too, though it looks a bit comical using the keyboard with a phone. The Apple model is only slightly wider than the iPad itself is, and I prefer it due to weight. But any BT keyboard will work. The iPad doesn't "snap in", but it certainly serves the purpose of fast text entry, and added screen real estate since the virtual keyboard isnt taking up any space.

[allofdrab]

Has Apple designed something like this for the iPad 2?

"A laptop without a screen and with no hardware inside. Something that you can plug your iPad into to allow you to use a qwerty keyboard and trackpad instead of using the iPad's touchscreen?"

Do you follow? Basically something to allow you to type on when needing to write fast...

iPad's work great with Bluetooth keyboards.
You're not limited to the touch screen for typing.
Plus there are plenty of third party products that basically join the two together and make your iPad seem a bit like a laptop.
Trackpads on the other hand won't work.
That would require iOS to have the functionality of a different control paradigm, which Apple is not focusing on for iOS.

[Cordelia]

I'm not a Mac/iTunes person, but I am very much interested in tablets and touch screens. I may never purchase an iPad, but I will get another more powerful tablet someday soon, and I know I'll never purchase another laptop. The one we have hardly ever gets booted up anymore.

[UltraJv]

Ive had it in various forms for 10 years, its ok. It can be frustrating in some ways. Most people get by without it. YMMV.

It's not just about you though. You can't really argue on a point that is so subjective as this. Mileage does indeed vary, because while you may think it's not important, a lot of us love using touch interfaces.

Look there is already a lot of talk about delivering all textbooks for public high schools in the USA on tablets. Specifically iPads. If that happens then the death of the laptop will follow in short order.

I don't quite see the logic of that, TBH. You're not replacing 'textbooks on laptops' with 'textbooks on iPads', so what impact does the textbook medium have on laptops?

FWIW, I dont see our students using laptops for textbooks; they're not even 'only' using them for the web and wordprocessing; they're using applications like Photoshop, Final Cut, AutoCAD and Maya. Other faculties they're using Matlab, SPSS, Solidworks et.c.

Textbooks on a tablet could change how students learn, because you can embed stuff in the eBook not possible with the physical text, such as video and other interactive components. Sure, Apple is first to it with iBooks/iBooks Author, but they most certainly won't be the last. Amazon and Google will surely follow. I don't think tablets will necessarily kill laptops in the classroom, but they may very well kill textbooks someday. The only reason they may replace laptops is due to cost and durability; generally tablets are cheaper than a good laptop, and slightly more durable due to no moving parts and solid state memory.

Has Apple designed something like this for the iPad 2?

"A laptop without a screen and with no hardware inside. Something that you can plug your iPad into to allow you to use a qwerty keyboard and trackpad wit ith?"

Do you follow? Basically something to allow you to type on when needing to write fast...

You mean make the iPad like the Asus Transformer?

Nope. Apple dont really design very much additional hardware for any of their hardware.

How about the standard Apple bluetooth keyboard that works great with the iPad in any app? Works for me! It works on the iPhone too, though it looks a bit comical using the keyboard with a phone. The Apple model is only slightly wider than the iPad itself is, and I prefer it due to weight. But any BT keyboard will work. The iPad doesn't "snap in", but it certainly serves the purpose of fast text entry, and added screen real estate since the virtual keyboard isnt taking up any space.

Ive had a lot of experience in the field. Many fads come and go, few remain. Touch and tablets have their place alongside keyboards and mice. As for textbooks on tablets, My books never need charging, updating or power. What happens in the classroom when the batteries arnt charged? A book will last for many decades, many have tried to replace it with electronics, it hasnt worked so far.

The paperless office has been coming for over 30 years, its not here yet. There are books youll never get on any tablet or PDF etc. Gutenberg press project has been around for a while. Its free for use on any device, unlike Apples system, which is designed to make a buck. Thats the difference here. Once you add peripherals like BT to add keyboards, youve lost the point of size, weight, portability etc.

In the VHS/Betamax video format wars back in the day, technical prowess lost. Betamax was technically better but VHS had porn and won. The BBC micro won its way into education in the 80s uk. Eventually it was notices that kids didnt know how to use a PC because of this. These, like any other are just opinions

[polaris20]

Ive had a lot of experience in the field. Many fads come and go, few remain. Touch and tablets have their place alongside keyboards and mice. As for textbooks on tablets, My books never need charging, updating or power. A book will last for many decades, many have tried to replace it with electronics, it hasnt worked so far.

The paperless office has been coming for over 30 years, its not here yet. There are books youll never get on any tablet or PDF etc. Gutenberg press project has been around for a while. Its free for use on any device, unlike Apples system, which is designed to make a buck. Thats the difference here. Once you add peripherals like BT to add keyboards, youve lost the point of size, weight, portability etc.

In the VHS/Betamax video format wars back in the day, technical prowess lost. Betamax was technically better but VHS had porn and won. These, like any other are just opinions

I've had a lot of experience in the field too. There's a reason why Windows tablets never took off; it was simply a dumb idea to put a desktop OS on a tablet. That's why MS has completely re-thought it to compete with the iPad.

And eBooks are replacing regular books. Amazon sold more Kindle books than physical versions this past year. Sign of the times, and all.

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Desktops-and-N ... ks-792500/

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/12/ ... christmas/

Those articles are as recent as this past year, but go back to 2009. It's not new. Apple's system is designed to make a buck because text book publishers don't work for free. Apple doesn't want to sell textbooks, they want to sell more iPads. To do that, they need to charge money for textbooks to get the publishers on board. Yay capitalism and all. That's the idea behind iBook Author.

You don't need to use a BT keyboard for the iPad, it's just an option. And even with the BT keyboard it's still ligher than pretty much every netbook or bigger laptop.

The netbook fad lasted less than 5 years. I guess we'll see how long tablets (yes tablets, not just the iPad) last.

[UncleAge]

Ive had a lot of experience in the field. Many fads come and go, few remain. Touch and tablets have their place alongside keyboards and mice. As for textbooks on tablets, My books never need charging, updating or power. What happens in the classroom when the batteries arnt charged? A book will last for many decades, many have tried to replace it with electronics, it hasnt worked so far.

You make some fair points. However, textbooks rarely prove valuable for decades. And it may not be necessary to replace all books.

Over the last six months I have had a range of problems with my health that have led to lots of visits to many doctors. The vast majority had a tablet to work off of. One facility had desktops set up in each room. However, only one office had laptops. I see this guy a couple of times a month and he's mid forties or so and I asked him why he went with laptops. He shrugged and told me that it wasn't his choice initially. He also told me they were switching to tablets soon.

In addition I have been approached twice in the last year by people who work in the education field but are not teachers and they work on a contract basis in school systems. Both sessions were about developing software on iPads to improve some part of what they do. I asked each time, "Hey, why not a laptop?" The response each time was that they had learned that the iPads (tablets) were less distracting when working with students. All they desired were other solutions that allowed them to simplify their setup. None saw laptops as the future.

Hey every story is different right? Well, the above is part of mine.

[IncarnateX]

Believing that an OS makes you better music is like believing that painting fire on your car makes it go faster.

Just show me one thread in which someone claims that you make better music on iOS Devices! What a lame strawman, especially considering the fact that it is usually the PC people who claim that you can not make pro music on iOS Devices.

Jump on twitter and watch some general posts about macs and you'll see otherwise.

Or, go stand in an apple store.

PS, I make music on both mac and PC, I like both - but I hear more "My music is so much better on a mac", than I do from PC users.

YMMV.

No one has claimed anything like it in this thread, so at best your claims are irrelevant and at worst they are...well...lame.

[IncarnateX]

I must say that for making music on the run, I have been very satisfied replacing my netbook with the iPad. I have always headed for as small and portable a studio as possible. I started with an iPod touch and though I really liked the idea this was simply too small and too inconvenient to work with. The iPad2 really makes a difference in this respect with it's much bigger screen.

However, even if the iPad could perform just about the same tasks as a PC, I fail to see any reason to replace a PC with it in a stationary music studio, at least not for any rational reasons (maybe some simply are in love with the touch screen).

To me, any meaningful discussion would be narrowed to mobile music making. In that respect I am from the time when four track tape recorders where nothing less than miracles. That was in the 80's. In the 90's they were replaced by grooveboxes and mini mixers, which were nothing less of miracles. In the 00's, it was the laptops and netbooks that ruled mobile production and now it might be the iPad. So from my point of view the question is really whether the iPad is mature enough to bring this development to a new level. So far, I would have a hard time arguing that the iPad has- and are able to run as complex programs as my netbook. On the other hand, the touch screen is bloody awesome compared to clicking a mouse or using touch pad and the contemporary apps kind of bring me back to the groovebox era in the 90s, where limitations could be a force with regard to creativity and not a show-stopper. Thus, I am not even sure that I want the iPad to turn into a mini PC running the same kind of complex software as they do.

Just one more cent from me

Cheers

[whyterabbyt]

However, textbooks rarely prove valuable for decades.

Very quick interjection, but that's not really true, even in the fastest-changing fields. Some of the core CS textbooks I used in the 80s are still standard texts now. The standard reference on compiler design lasted from 1986 to 2006 before it was revised. And Knuth, anyone?

[aMUSEd]

I'd say my iPad 2 has certainly replaced my netbook - I used to take that into work most days, now I just take my iPad. For most tasks I would have used the netbook for the iPad is adequate and even more portable plus it carries its own internet access. I also use it quite a bit in teaching - particularly on my anatomy course as it has some very good anatomy apps with 3D multi layered images that are far more effective than using static images.

[tetsuneko]

If iPad's would replace laptops, it would deal a critical blow to general purpose computing in general. I hope that day never comes.. iPad can be a great alternative to a fullblown laptop, but there's room for both to coexist.

I for one don't see the iPad replacing my laptop DAW anytime soon..

[sonicflux]

Tablets, laptops, and desktops will all continue to coexist peacefully. I have all three plus a smart phone. I use them all at least once a week, but mostly it's my phone and iPad for daily tasks.

It's silly to think that tablets will replace laptops. The technologies may merge some, but people will still have the need for a small, portable device like a tablet and a larger, more powerful, slightly-less-portable laptop.

Touch interfaces will become more commonplace; especially on laptops. They're most comfortable and practical on tablets, though. Reaching up to touch something on a desktop monitor is more awkward then grabbing the mouse and clicking.

Now how soon is someone going to come out with a 17" tablet?

[polaris20]

You make some fair points. However, textbooks rarely prove valuable for decades. And it may not be necessary to replace all books.

Over the last six months I have had a range of problems with my health that have led to lots of visits to many doctors. The vast majority had a tablet to work off of. One facility had desktops set up in each room. However, only one office had laptops. I see this guy a couple of times a month and he's mid forties or so and I asked him why he went with laptops. He shrugged and told me that it wasn't his choice initially. He also told me they were switching to tablets soon.

In addition I have been approached twice in the last year by people who work in the education field but are not teachers and they work on a contract basis in school systems. Both sessions were about developing software on iPads to improve some part of what they do. I asked each time, "Hey, why not a laptop?" The response each time was that they had learned that the iPads (tablets) were less distracting when working with students. All they desired were other solutions that allowed them to simplify their setup. None saw laptops as the future.

Hey every story is different right? Well, the above is part of mine.

The appeal of tablets in business are that a. they're cheaper (businesses don't buy $500 cheap flimsy Best Buy specials or $300 flimsy netbooks), b. they don't have moving parts (HDD's, hinges), they can't carry the entire network's worth of data to be lost, they can easily be wiped via Exchange console, and remote access to services like Citrix have gotten very, very good. And as you say they're less intrusive when interacting with people, which is an important factor. Much of this is irrelevant to music production, but it gives a hint at where things are going in terms of the technology industry.

Very quick interjection, but that's not really true, even in the fastest-changing fields. Some of the core CS textbooks I used in the 80s are still standard texts now. The standard reference on compiler design lasted from 1986 to 2006 before it was revised. And Knuth, anyone?

It's not black and white. Some texts remain relevant for awhile, others are obsolete in months. Some of the texts from my grad degree were painfully out of date, and the publication date wasn't that old at all.

[whyterabbyt]

It's not black and white.

yup, that's what i said.

[botkiller]

Believing that an OS makes you better music is like believing that painting fire on your car makes it go faster.

Just show me one thread in which someone claims that you make better music on iOS Devices! What a lame strawman, especially considering the fact that it is usually the PC people who claim that you can not make pro music on iOS Devices.

Jump on twitter and watch some general posts about macs and you'll see otherwise.

Or, go stand in an apple store.

PS, I make music on both mac and PC, I like both - but I hear more "My music is so much better on a mac", than I do from PC users.

YMMV.

No one has claimed anything like it in this thread, so at best your claims are irrelevant and at worst they are...well...lame.

Ok, dude. I forgot KVR is the center of the internet universe