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<p>Thank you Amazon. I am glad someone is looking after the consumer. $15 for most books that cost nothing to print, transport, etc. is ridiculous.</p>
<p>The price is actually low for a tablet. I read an article where tablet makers thought that it would come in at $1,000 so that they were aiming designs a few hundred below that. This has them going back to the drawing board.</p>
<p>It may be that Apple is the low-cost provider here. They have a custom chip with everything on the chip and a very lightweight operating system that has nowhere near the overhead of Mac OS X or Windows 7. One of the biggest costs of a laptop or Windows tablet is the operating system itself. Windows 7 Home Premium is around $100 so if someone wanted to do a Windows 7 laptop, 20% of the price is eaten up by Windows. The next problem is the CPU. Comments from associates on Atom performance are less than positive. That means $75 to $100 for the CPU. Component and software rapidly eat up your margins because you are buying components.</p>
<p>The iPad, as a bigger iPhone is probably designed for use with another computer.</p>
<p>E-ink is a non-issue. If Apple gets most of the publishers on-board, then Kindle is in a lot of trouble. As with many Apple products, the accessories are wonderful. There is a beautiful case available that has a built-in stand. And you can always hook up a keyboard.</p>
<p>I’m typing this on a $2,700 MacBook Pro. Many can’t fathom why someone would spend so much on a laptop when you could get something the same size for $700 from HP or Dell. Are we stupid or do we just know something that the rest don’t?</p>
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<p>Kindle was the only game in town for a while so they had a monopoly. And they pushed it. That monopoly limited choice as some publishers declined their rates.</p>
<p>We have the situation where songs are a dollar and where there is a ton of piracy for songs and increasingly, movies. What happens when the content creators can’t make money? Well, they make less content or they make crappier content or the do live performances.</p>
<p>The cost of a product shouldn’t be a function of distribution cost - it should be a function of value to the consumer.</p>
<p>Newspapers and magazines are looking forward to the iPad revive their huge declines in revenue. We all want our content for free but free content will eventually go away or the quality will decline.</p>
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<p>The Nexus One has the superfast snapdragon chip from Qualcomm and the Android operating system from Google. You can open more than one app at a time and do as much multi-tasking as you would like. Why can’t Apple do something like that. It can’t be that hard, can it?</p>
<p>And why do you have to pay an extra approximately $130 to get an ipad with 3G?</p>
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<p>They are different devices. The draw of Windows devices is the large amount of software available for it. That’s a potential threat. Android isn’t a threat.</p>
<p>Yes, Apple could. But it’s apparent that they don’t feel the need to do so.</p>
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<p>Why do you pay an extra $3,000 for a nav system in a car when you can buy a Garmin for $200?</p>
<p>I LOVE my Kindle, and I think this Kindle experience has made me even more interested in the iPad than I otherwise would be.</p>
<p>I asked my super-techie, Kindle-loving cousin whether the iPad would cause us both to regret having recently upgraded to the newest Kindle. His reply: “My philosophy is that every house should have both a Cezanne and a Picasso hanging on the walls. I plan to thoroughly enjoy both devices.”</p>
<p>Gotta love it!</p>
<p>Before I got my ipod touch, I was perfectly ( well not perfectly- but happy), with my Palm Pilot.
it had my calendar I could sync with my laptop ( once I bought extra software) I could store books on the digital card- and it could hold some pictures.</p>
<p>But really, for what they did, the applications were expensive-
I have some great apps on my ipod that are free or they cost $0.99. So many apps- all the other devices don’t/can’t even come close.</p>
<p>My husband who has been a Luddite since I got my first Mac ( 18ram80 HD) decades ago, * looves* his ipod touch and basically all he does on it is read books, check the weather and plays pinball.
But it lets him hang out with all the other cool kids.
;)</p>
<p>I expect there will be different levels of the ipod/ipad/itouch OS, depending on need.
I would have made it smaller- and with ability to have a bluetooth keyboard, although does it have that?
I dont’ care about a camera- I have a camera ( or a phone) and it seems too unwieldy to take pictures with anyway.</p>
<p>But to read things a little easier than on my ipod or phone, and still be able to reply to info- but still- it wouldn’t take the place of my 13" laptop running Snow Leopard- ( which has double the ram/double hrdrive space, of my last macbook pro & was * only* about $1,400)
I like the tactile feedback and I don’t care so much for AT&T.</p>
<p>I love that my Kindle is small, it slips into the outside pocket on my purse and goes with me everywhere.</p>
<p>I just downloaded Dorian Gray for free.</p>
<p>We also have a fatter, heavier AcerNetbook that is our second internet device.
Desktop lives upstairs in home office.</p>
<p>Depends on what you want/need.</p>
<p>BCEagle - As I have mentioned, we are Mac people. I have never tried to persuade my brother or his family to consider a Mac. He, on the other hand falls into the can’t fathom group and will ask why we would spend SOOOO much money on a mac when we could get a dell or something else. I just keep my mouth shut. </p>
<p>LSM - I think we will also eventually be a two device family. I love my kindle, particularly its portability and for now the prices are great. I slip it in my purse and have it handy whenever I am waiting for someone. Makes it so nice. I also love the aesthetics of the Ipad. It is pretty cool and I would love to easily access email when I am traveling. The only downside I see in this whole thing is that the prices on books from all sources may rise. Well, I had better start downloading now!</p>
<p>When people say, “Why can’t Apple do multi-tasking?”, I wonder if they’ve ever used the darn things. To explain, I was playing a game a little while ago while listening to music. The iphone software allows that. If I want to switch games, I press the home button and I’m instantly out of the one game, which is saved as is, and then into another app and I’m still listening to music. What it can’t do is run two separate apps that aren’t part of the iphone OS at the same time. That means it can’t run Pandora - still the only app that people refer to - and another app like some game. (Gee, if internet radio is so darned popular, then why isn’t it popular?) It means you can’t run Pandora and update Facebook at the same time. </p>
<p>The trade-off is that multi-tasking slows down response and runs down your battery. Would it be nice? Maybe it is now for some but there is no compelling reason for it for almost everyone as of yet. </p>
<p>We’ll have to see how useful the iPad is but Apple is not making this to be a laptop replacement. It’s a consumer electronic device that can be used in non-consumer ways. </p>
<p>As to size, the Kindle is 7.5″ x 5.3″ x 0.7″ while the iPad is 9.56" x 7.47" x 0.5". I have no idea if the additional 2 inches in height and width is important or not. I think Apple intended the size to be around that one of those pads of paper in a cover that people carry around. The weight is about a pound more. My guess is that will be more noticeable for people who expect to hold it like a book in a hand without resting it on a table or a lap or chair arm.</p>
<p>The iPad has a fairly large boarder as fingers will overlap somewhat when grasping the device.</p>