PragPub 2010-02: Issue #8 by The Pragmatic Bookshelf

Author:The Pragmatic Bookshelf
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: PragPub—Monthly Magazine
Publisher: The Pragmatic Bookshelf, LLC
Published: 2010-02-01T05:00:00+00:00

What Is the iPad’s Greatest Shortcoming?

Alan Oppenheimer: “No multitasking.”

Alan Smithee: “I was surprised by the lack of a camera. Flash? A colleague said, ‘Doesn’t even support Flash? Duuuuude, that’s a feature.’ Just figured out why it has no camera: AT&T would have refused to offer cheap 3G, because people would be videoing non-stop, saturating their net. I wonder if Apple will approve apps that even receive video during chat.

Andy Hunt: “Weight. The Kindle is better than a laptop because it’s easier to read in bed or a recliner. Holding the iPad for any length of time I think will be an issue. But not an intractable one; it will surely get lighter over time with new and better materials, etc.”

Tony Bove: “No multitasking announced yet. But I assume it will happen shortly, and you’ll be able to run several iPhone-sized apps at the same time. No video conferencing or video chat (yet). I don’t really need a camera or video camera in the device (those are already in my phone, which of course is an iPhone), but video-conferencing would be a nice addition and take advantage of the full screen. No GPS (although it probably offers the same location services as an iPod touch, through Wi-Fi). These are shortcomings of the current version; I expect all of these to be part of the iPad for 2011.”

James Duncan Davidson: “I think the lack of an iSight camera for doing video chat is an oversight. Anything else I can think of is a more minor thing. For example, I’d like a built-in SD card reader for removable storage. There’s an optional dongle bit for that, but if it was built in, it’d be nicer. It’s nothing that can’t be fixed in a second rev though. Of course, in use, we’ll find out if there are other shortcomings.

“I’m curious about sync and how documents are handled. A huge thing I’m waiting to see is how well something like Dropbox can work with the iPad. Dropbox has become a major part of my computing experience and I hope it can be leveraged there in a deeper way than just the viewer app that is on the iPhone.”

Ed Burnette: “The issue of multi-tasking is largely overblown. People say, ‘Well, I can’t have Twitter and email (or whatever) going at the same time’ and dismiss it. But even with Android, where you can have all that stuff going at the same time, you can only see one at a time. As a user, you can’t usually tell if there is multi-tasking go on, or if you can just really quickly switch between two or more tasks. Let’s say you’re working on a presentation and you need to look up something on the web. On both Android and iPhone/iPad you press a button to go to the home screen and select the browser app. Does it matter to the user if the presentation app is still running in the background as opposed to having been paused while

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.