The thing I _really_ want to know about the iPad is simply this: Can you sync an iPhone to it? Can you sync a camera to it?
That first bit can most likely be taken care of via mobile.me (but what about music?). The second bit - that's more confusing. Wiring two slave-mode USB devices together is not simple, though I'm fairly sure the dock connector has enough free pins for 2 of them to form a master USB side. Given that the iPad is closed, a third party can't make such a cable. Well, they can, but without software it won't do anything, and you can't write the software without escaping the sandbox, which the appstore won't let you do. Syncing to another phone isn't relevant; RIM/BlackBerry isn't relevant for iPad customers, WinMobile devices aren't used as smartphones, and android and palm sync via the cloud. If it can do these things, then I see absolutely no reason to let me parents carry on with their current macbook. I'll give em both an iPad and they'll be far happier, and so will I. My dad has already installed far more apps on his iPhone than he ever managed on his macbook. That's where I see the iPad going: As the _ONLY_ computer device for a very very large group of people. I really don't see the 'extra PC for the extremely lazy farts who can't get off their couch to go grab their notebook'. I don't have the numbers offhand, but I expect that the market of folks who are even going to consider buying one are far more likely to own a notebook than a desktop PC anyway. I'd also be a little less ready to scream blood and murder about the closed nature of the device if at the very least this insanity is fixed: To become a developer, you don't _just_ have to cough up $99 bucks, you also have to sign an NDA. Which legally can't really be done unless you're 18+. I don't know about the rest of you folks, but I started on the path to learning programming when I was less than half that age. I really don't have the time, but I'd love to make some sort of advanced logo-esque programming language for the iPad, abstracting subroutines and the like as blocks you can drag about with gestures, and syncing your programs to the cloud including a social aspect where you can see your friends' programs and the like. Technically even such a simple thing would run afoul of the TOS, but, god, that would be an awesome learning environment for young programmers, wouldn't it? On Jan 31, 1:40 pm, Karsten Silz <[email protected]> wrote: > First of all, I'm glad now that Oracle bought Sun since that probably > did save more jobs and kept more projects alive than being bought by > IBM. I was skeptic at first but not anymore. > > Now onto some comments to both Oracle and the iPad. > > Killed projects: Beyond Kenai, it seems that the Amazon-EC2-clone by > Sun (Sun Cloud?), announced at JavaOne last year, is dead > (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/01/28/sun_amazon_cloud_dead/). > > Glassfish: To put some necessary distance between the free Glassfish > and the "$10,000 per CPU" Weblogic, Glassfish "will be geared for > departmental use" (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/ > 2010/01/27/urnidgns852573C400693880002576B900002824.DTL), like Apache > Geronima and Websphere at IBM. So I expect high-end, enterprise > features to either wither away from Glassfish or not being added at > all, making Glassfish less attractive for some developers. > > Netbeans: I know that the slides said that Netbeans will focus on > dynamic scripting languages, but in the webcast Ted Farrell said that > Oracle wants to "invest into the community for dynamic languages", or > so, which I interpreted as Oracle handing those over to the > community. Time will tell. > > iPad: I think the iPad is a new mass-market platform platform with the > first new UI paradigm since "keyboard, mouse and GUI" became > dominant. With permanent internet connectivity, great media > capability and a large touch screen, I'm excited to see what > developers come up with. I think that one of the reasons that past > tablet efforts failed to gain wide traction where because both the OS > and the apps were built upon "keyboard, mouse and GUI" and just > slightly adapted; the iPad forces developers to start either from > scratch or from their iPhone apps, which is good. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en.
