Re: Apple iPad 2
 

In this case, I would argue that it has less to do with apple, and more to do with foresight. The SGX line of devices that will have access to the OpenCL drivers have been in devices since 2008, including the beloved n900/Galaxy Tab. However, the majority of next gen tablets may not have access to a developed GPGPU framework like OpenCL due the the choice of SoC and lack of vision.

What's key here is vision. You're bang on when you argue that there are many ways to do GPGPU, and that there are other competing technologies, but it would seem that imagination is leading the pack with its USSE2 engine and now OpenCL 1.0 compliance.* I would bet a small subset gifted developers would even consider using GPU shaders for a non-graphic purpose on any device and even then, I bet there are serious limitations in the shared memory available for GPGPU computation.
* Point of interest: Imagination is ~9% owned by apple and some ~16% owned by intel (wikipedia), which may indicate the limits of their influence.

I don't believe I said 'winning' but I was trying to infer that Apple has access to unified method of GPGPU computing that may be closed off to other devices for lack of development (but not necessarily capability). This puts them at a tactical advantage and ahead of the pack, especially with such a competent GPU (SGX543).

In short, I don't know of another chipset that has a GPGPU strategy, and it seems that the iPad 2 is the only major tablet on the market with the SGX543 and OpenCL. Whether they use this remains to be seen.


Somewhat off topic:
I would also say that DSPs are quite specialized, and may not be perfectly appropriated for new tasks, especially from a developer-productivity standpoint, where creating a general computing algorithm would be far more intuitive than re-purposing a DSP.

Re: Apple iPad 2
 

Oops! They did it again! Is anyone seeing this problem on the iPads?

Time Change Reveals More iPhone Alarm Clock Bugs
By Bob Bhatnagar - Published March 14th 2011 - 19:30 in alarm clock • iPhone Applications • iPhone Software • News
The iPhone has mishandled another time change as clocks across the continent were set forward one hour this weekend to mark the beginning of Daylight Savings Time (DST). Reports have surfaced on Apple forums, Twitter and other venues of frustrated iPhone owners missing appointments and experiencing strange behavior on their devices.


The DST bugs run the gamut from iPhone clocks jumping backward instead of forward by one hour, alarms going off an hour early, and phones switching to DST properly but later in the day undoing the change. Apple has not announced an official reason for the clock problems, but they are easily fixed.

To correct the DST clock issues on your iPhone, simply reboot the device. Alternatively you can turn on Airplane Mode then turn it back off. This will reset the connection to your cellular data provider. Typically the iPhone collects time data from the service provider to keep the clock accurate. The DST problems reportedly affected both AT&T and Verizon customers in the US.

The iPhone is no stranger to alarm clock bugs, with the most recent problems hitting users in the first days of 2011. Right after the New Year many alarms failed to go off at their scheduled time, leaving those without a backup alarm sleeping. Apple stated they were aware of the problem and working on a fix for the issue. The move to Standard Time in the fall of 2010 was also a rough one for the Clock app.

The time change to one hour earlier didn't take with any alarms that were already set. Many iPhone owners saw their alarms go off one hour late and had to delete and re-create repeat alarms on their devices. iOS 4.3 was just released last week, but it's not clear whether or not this update made the clock immune to the most recent DST problems. When all else fails, it's possible to manually set the time by navigating to Settings -> General -> Date & Time -> Set Automatically -> OFF and entering the time zone, date and time.

Re: Apple iPad 2
 

Conspiracy theorists, start your engines..

There is a claim that Apple is handicapping web apps launched from the homescreen as they run much more slowly than if launched via Safari.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03...n_home_screen/

What's more is HTML5 offline mode isn't working, which is a major feature bullet for HTML5. Of course, many browsers have somewhat spotty support for HTML5 features, as it is still quite young.

I'm not one to subscribe to Conspiracy Theorist's Monthly, but something certainly smells fishy...

Re: Apple iPad 2
 

This actually doesn't look half bad:

http://cdn2.ubergizmo.com/wp-content...21_hanfree.jpg
http://www.ubergizmo.com/2011/03/han...ad-hands-free/

I've heard that iPads in bed are somewhat uncomfortable (I find this true with large items like laptops). This looks a bit messy, but like a comfortable system!

Re: Apple iPad 2
 

@Capt'n

What is your take on the upcoming PlayBook and Touchpad?
http://www.palm.com/us/products/pads...pad/index.html, http://us.blackberry.com/playbook-tablet/

I think that the Touchpad is a lot more interesting and possibly a decent alternative to the iPad?

Re: Apple iPad 2
 

Both of those tablets look interesting!

I really like what I'm seeing come out of Palm on the tablet front. The specs look great, and the OS has a wonderful UI, which should be a pleasure to use. I just hope that the application support matches the devices potential.


The playbook, I'm less interested in, for a couple of reasons.
1) To use 3G you need to have it tethered to a BB. Even my g/f's BB can't use certain features via WiFi, and I worry that it will be the same for the playbook.
2) I've not been too impressed with BBOS UI in the past, which is slightly worrying when considering the playbook. Of course, RIM did acquire TAT, which are masters at crafting creative UIs.

I'm somewhat skeptical, but must wait to hear reviews. At least one developer has mentioned that developing for the playbook was a nightmare, which if true, may hurt application support!

Other than that, it looks like it could be a solid tablet!

Re: Apple iPad 2
 

iPad sucks, at least for geeks like me... You can't do anything with it!

Re: Apple iPad 2
 

The new Apple ad campaign has been released!

http://cdn2.ubergizmo.com/wp-content..._iPhone-ad.jpg
http://www.ubergizmo.com/2011/03/app...hone-campaign/
VIDEO: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onLYKU-CNhM
VIDEO: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDJxSCEXV_I
VIDEO: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmz0YG2ZP0I

The ads are a bit misleading in that they make the iPhone seems as though it's the only handset to have access to books or music. It certainly seems like they are hammering the competition quite hard, and trying to differentiate the platform.

EDIT: I'm not the only one that thinks this campaign is more than a bit misleading.
http://www.androidcentral.com/has-ap...eting-campaign

Re: Apple iPad 2
 

Sasha at netbooknews.com has some less than nice things to say about the innovative Apple iPad cover (the plastic one):
http://www.netbooknews.com/wp-conten...PM-170x110.png
http://www.netbooknews.com/22124/app...on-not-at-all/
VIDEO: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcOPhzG5sRM

Perhaps the leather one works better? A great idea, but the implementation could have been better.

Re: Apple iPad 2
 

Here are some AMAZING looking games optimized for the iPad 2:
REAL RACING: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7iYOz2H0UM
DEAD SPACE 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHQjhiGEqy0

Wow. Real racing looks like it features HDR lighting (shader heavy), and great geometry. For an entry level app, this is quite amazing. As developers start learning more about the system, expect graphics far beyond this.

Dead space looks simply stunning, with amazing lighting.

It looks as if the iPad will be unmatched in the tablet world for games for another year, realistically.

Re: Apple iPad 2
 

Here's a clip of the AMAZING Infinity Blade on the iPad 2:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TejV8nFTaBA

It looks stunning!

Re: Apple iPad 2
 

This rather understated feature of the iOS is a game changer.

It allows the host device (iPad) to stream the screen contents to another device (AppleTV):
http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget....-iosgaming.jpg
http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/17/r...-ios-5-on-ipad (w/ video)

In this example, the game Real-Racing HD is being played wirelessly on the TV!

Wireless video streaming has so many neat implications and is one less cord to worry about. So long as there is a functioning WiFi connection (via LAN or AP), you can mirror the content of your tablet on an external screen. Huge.

This is not unlike VNC, but is obviously so much more efficient and requires extremely little setup. I would love to see this technology on other devices in an open form!

Thanks to the open VP8 codec and the pleathora of ARM based devices that can compress a large frame-buffer in realtime, this should be readily possible on a host of devices with a clean and simple API.


It would seem that the last cord to go will be power. With BT doing duty (albeit poorly in this man's opinion) for USB, WiFi replacing Ethernet, and now Wireless video being done very well in place of HDMI (albeit at lower resolutions), we are on the verge of true mobile devices!

Re: Apple iPad 2
 

I think someone did this already on the N900 with gstreamer but like you said, this is a neat plug and play package.

Re: Apple iPad 2
 

Very interesting indeed! I would love to see more information on that.

It's certainly not a first, or space-aged for that matter, but seems remarkably well implemented.

Re: Apple iPad 2
 

I wonder which device will keep most of its [resell] value by Feb 2012;
1) the iPad2 (lets say 32GB wifi) VS
2) the ASUS Transformer (lets say 16GB wifi + dock)

Re: Apple iPad 2
 

Most likely the iPad. But what does that prove beyond the well known fact that the masses like things that don't make them think too much about what they don't understand and that are shiny, and that Apple is notoriously good at appealing to, fostering, and creating the blind impression of, such blind simplicity.

I.E. I am actually typing this on an acquaintances iPad2 - But I'm not particularly a fan of it. Even though I'm rather good at typing on its keyboard, I still find the interface annoying for rudimentary things like having good control over capitalization, the lack of a delete key as well as a backspace key, and the lack of a truly good cursor positioning system - it will not let you manually place the cursor in the middle of the word if you don't first long-press and then use that magnifying glass thing. And it likes assuming things for me - that when I'm long pressing here it presumes I want to select the entire HTML element and that when I'm long pressing slightly over there it assumes I want something entirely different - with no choice I have yet found to let me choose what I want to do.

I mean, on the N900 I have some frustrations likes this on the main browser, but this is so systematically ingrained into the iOS UI that I find the prospect of manually correcting a typo daunting - on the N900's stock browser with a little bit of practice I got very good at being able to get the cursor everywhere I want in a text input box. On the iStuff I have to perform annoying long-press and drag combos just to get the cursor in the middle of a word or to select text for copy/paste. Ewww, in other words.

Just because the masses are such that they want the iStuff features and ignore the crappy bits because it's what they've been taught to know doesn't mean that the thing is actually better. All resale value can tell you is demand - demand is only a heuristic for true worth, a heuristic that much be understood in context of sociology and psychology, and the current attitudes of the time.

Re: Apple iPad 2
 

iPad, definitely.

a. More people know about it, bigger 2nd hand market.
b. It's perceived as a premium product (and brand), so those who couldn't afford it the first time around will be more willing to cough up the dough for the perceived prestige.
c. There are some cheap android tablets. Those will drag the price down for the 'more premium' android tablets.

Re: Apple iPad 2
 

Coincidentally, my mom who is over 60 ordered me to get her an iPad2, specifically a white one, because she couldn't stand her oldmates showing off their iPad2 in front of her.

For no reason I felt dirty when I turn on this thing.... :o

BTW, yours is 16GB version right? I found 16GB is hardly enough for storing all the podcast movies/audio clips she needs. Darn it has no external flash slot. :(

Re: Apple iPad 2
 

eeePad Transformer. I'm bored with the iPad2 the forth day I bought this thing already.

I haven't used the Transformer though, but from what I've heard its detachable keyboard is pretty good.

Re: Apple iPad 2
 

This is potentially the single most annoying thing about the iPad2; it solidifies my impression of it being brilliant at consuming, mediocre at best at creating.

What I really liked about the iPad2 was using it as an ereader with plethora of newspaper/ebook apps; that is, until I purchased a Nook3.

I realize that each user has their preference, and the tablet market is not really for me; ereaders on otoh were really what I lacked in my mobile arsenal.

Re: Apple iPad 2
 

I´ve been trying to figure out what´s to like on iPad2 for the last two weeks, but I don´t get it. I don´t know what "awesomeness" 12 million people have seen that I´m missing.

Ok here´s the good things:
- It´s thin
- It´s got a large screen
- It´s not heavy
- I´m happy with battery life

Here´s the not so good things:
- Apple´s proprietary connector
- Only being aple to sync through itunes
- Bluetooth is crippled so neither my Lenovo Thinkpad nor my N900 can communicate with this thing
- 98% of the, non preinstalled, Apps I´ve tried suck. The one that doesn´t is Amazon´s Kindle. Many of the apps use iPhone resolution and are hence tiny on the middle of the screen with limited usability. The webbrowser on the N900 is more useful.
- The layout of the virtual keyboard is odd and not good for fast typing. Why on earth do I need to hold down "the most closely related letter" of the english alphabet to get accented characters or letters used in other languages?

I´m really, really hoping TabCo is Nokia. This iPad is disappointing. Essentially all I want is a N900 with a 7-10" screen. Perfect.

Re: Apple iPad 2
 

I think everyone has pretty much established that a giant iPod, opens up a whole new set of software possibilities. Better e-mail, more powerful apps, a more desktop like feel, amazing touch UI, advanced apps, better browsing are just a few in the long list...

Re: Apple iPad 2
 

This is actually the thought process of someone who gets too deep into a technical oriented field and forgets about the real world.

Yep, I can say that cause I used to be like that.

Form factors matter, yo.

Re: Apple iPad 2