[Caleb]–My grandma would love this. I really think that she is their target. It is easy to use, portable, and has a custom interface that removes all of the windows style interface cruft. Personally, I don’t need one. I have an iPhone (yes, I know most of you hate them). The iPad offers me nothing that my iPhone doesn’t, except a larger screen.
I am excited though. I’m excited at the prospect of a mid level touch screen tablet with an appliance style interface becoming common. I can’t wait to see the knockoffs that can run Linux with a custom interface. The knockoffs that will actually have USB ports, and a non wobbly back. Those same knockoffs that will most likely have a front facing camera. I want one of those.
As far as hackability goes, this might actually be fairly hackable. The processor isn’t actually as proprietary as some would think. It is ARM based, and not too different from some other devices we’ve seen. It appears as though they planned for a camera. There might even be a spot on the motherboard for it. I fully expect to see it “jailbroken”, but what I WANT to see is the guts modified. I want to see home hackers add external storage (card slot), load a different operating system, up the storage. Then again, I thought the same thing about the iPhones and iPod touches, but haven’t seen hardware hacks at all really.
[Mike]–This is the first I’ve heard of theÂ*iPad. I got soooooo tired of all the apple tablet rumors that I quit paying attention. I run Linux only and unless this device will sync out of the box with my Linux systems I’m not interested. I also don’t usually do hardware hacks on anything that cost me more than $250 but buy so I’m not going to be cracking the case open on this thing anytime soon.
[James] — The iPad has the opportunity to be a great product, but probably not for me, and probably not for most of our readers. It markets itself to the casual internet user who wants to listen to music, browse Facebook, or watch Youtube on the couch rather than the hardcore photo editor, writer, or programmer. I am excited to see someone like Apple really push the market, and cant wait to see the responses, especially from people like MSI and Asus. Personally, I’m waiting for someone to make a really great convertible tablet netbook with native support for Linux.
[Jakob] — I hate Apple products, I mean almost with a passion. But I actually do own an iPhone – and I admit, it is one slick nice device. Small, powerful, convenient – all things the iPad is not. Its like Apple couldnt decide on making yet another iPhone revision or a full tablet PC and decided to give us a semi nerfed iPad instead. From what I’ve heard, there is no multitasking and several other features that – if can be included on the iPhone – why did they remove it from the iPad? Final note: being an apple product, itsÂ* about $500 more then it should be.
(And it doesn’t even come with wings for extra absorption)
[Devlin] — Meh, I don’t think there is going to be much to do with hacking the iPad, I won’t buy one because I don’t see a reason for having it. If others have the same thought, not many people are going to be buying the iPad and therefore not many people are going to be hacking the iPad.
