1 1024x768.
If it weren't Apple, I would be positive, but as it is, I don't want another Apple product in my life. And 132ppi honestly sucks. I saw better netbooks in Yodobashi camera. Cannot fathom why Apple used such a silly screen.

2

Seriously, this is the killer that is going to replace the laptop and netbooks?  A killer that  has less functionality than a netbook, let alone a laptop?

Apple really thinks this?

I can already see the tagline now: "Apple iPad tries to assassinate laptop, gets shot by bodyguard."

C.T.

3 I think it's the cell phone network connection which Jobs is so excited about. At its core this is a really big iPhone.

4 I've often said that I'd like to see a scaled-up iPod Touch, but I was referring to the capability as much as the size.

-j

5 I'm rather positive about it. Flash support aside, I'm seeing cross between netbook and e-book reader, which is no bad thing--tablet netbooks are too rare and expensive and e-book readers too lacking in functionality.

This will be 1st gen, so it'll be a bit lacking at first but I think the iPad successor models will end up taking huge bites of both markets.

More cynically, if nothing else, it will serve as the benchmark model in its class for the competition; it will drive the tech forward. And to be honest, I think I'd rather have a Windows or Linux based tablet anyway.

6 Is there a particular reason Apple couldn't have already made their own Flash implementation, since Flash is a big part of, well, the internet?  Or do they just think nobody will care?

7

It wouldn't violate the laws of physics for them to do their own Flash runtime, but it wouldn't be easy either. The "reason" is that it would be very expensive. On a PC, the Flash 10 runtime is about 3 megabytes.

They'd be more likely to bribe Adobe to do it, but that wouldn't be cheap either.

8 Honestly, if Flash disappeared from the web tomorrow, I'd hardly notice. Apart from Youtube (which is moving to HTML5 video), 99% of the Flash I see is advertising. That's why I don't even let it load into the browser; why slow down my connection with content I don't want?

I'm always stunned at how slow and ugly the web is for people who don't block ads and Flash. The people raving about how fast they can surf on an iSpork would be shrieking in pain if it tried to load all that crap.

-j

9 Some of the Zynga games on Facebook are flash-based. Terrible platform for anything at all complicated, which is one reason why Zynga game performance truly sucks (an amazing feat for something as simple as FarmVille or Cafe World, but there you have it). Anyway, there are an awful lot of casual facebook users which might be rudely surprised by the lack of flash. Not to mention Zynga being caught on the short end of it. I suspect Adobe will have a flash version ready for the iPad before very long. -k

10 I use Flashblock.

11 Dkallen, Adobe has already ported Flash to the iPhone. Apple rejected it, and I'm sure they'll reject it for the iPad as well.

-j

12 Ah, right right.  I forgot, Apple still hates the open structure.

Seriously, Apple?  You shouldn't be trying to remind me of Sony and their long list of blunders. . .

13 I think the main reason Apple doesn't want Flash on the iPhone is that it would reveal just how miserably slow the CPU is. Whatever else Flash may be, it's nearly always a CPU hog.

14 Nokia n900 has exactly the same CPU as iPhone and it has flash (on Linux, no less). So, I don't think that is their exact reasoning, although perhaps it played a part.

15 The fact that flash exists for Linux on that chip doesn't mean it would be an easy port to whatever kernel Apple is using. In particular, does the iPhone kernel have anything that looks like a standard HAL? I bet not.

16 Apple wants to own and control the whole device, both hardware and software.  Flash is a proprietary technology owned by another company; Apple does not want the headache of supporting it (especially on resource-constrained mobile devices) and they don't want to endorse it either -- they're betting and hoping that MP4/h264 and HTML5 will replace Flash.

Then there's the fact that Flash generally runs like crap on non-Microsoft OSes, and that lots of people hate it as evidenced by this thread, and finally that they've sold over 40 million iPhones just fine without Flash... Apple just wants nothing to do with Flash.

I certainly don't think that technical issues nor cost issues are a factor, considering the tens of billions of dollars that Apple has in the bank, and the fact that they've already executed one major CPU architecture transition (PPC to Intel), and that their OS currently runs on multiple architectures (Intel and ARM).

17

regarding comment #9, it's not Flash that's the problem with the Zynga games.  Cafe world runs like a dog on my desktop with a core 2 duo, 2gb of ram, and a geforce 8600gts.  Partly because it takes 500MB of ram (seriously!  look at task manager.)  Farmville is a pig too but a smaller one.  Every other flash game or regular game I play on that comptuer runs fine.

I just bought a new core i5 laptop today with Intel *integrated* graphics and 4gb of ram, and cafe world happens to run fine.  Go figure.