MacDailyNews Take: Despite numerous obvious shortcomings, of course. 
Dvorak continues, “The iPad is something different. The device eschews the old paradigm completely by not being a sketchpad/handwriting recognition device. The lesson, I suppose, was learned from the Newton, the company’s first attempt at such a machine. It was mocked for its miserable handwriting recognition function. Apple didn’t even try that this time.”
MacDailyNews Take: As Dvorak likely knows, but won’t admit, the final iterations of Newton were marvels of handwriting recognition. Even today, it remains so. In fact, the technology is part of Mac OS X. It’s called “Inkwell” (or “Ink.”) Users who connect a graphics tablet to their Mac, can handwrite on the tablet using a stylus and Inkwell translates what is written (or even scrawled) into typed words. It works quite well.
Dvorak continues, “Instead the company made the weird, but logical, step toward the small, easy-to-use app-oriented, touchy-feely UI. The iPad enlarged this new paradigm, which completely eliminates the desktop metaphor with its endless file folders. Now [on traditional PCs] we have buttons everywhere. [But with iPad], instead of mousing around on the desktop, opening and closing folder after folder or plowing through endless lists, you go from one self-contained app to the next.”
MacDailyNews Take: Of course, to make a touchscreen device with a “touchy-feely” UI that’s easy-to-use would be described by Dvorak as “weird.” Oftentimes the bloated gasbag just spews out words regardless of their actual meanings.
Dvorak continues, “So, what market segment does such a device impact? And what do competitors need to understand when they roll out their ‘iPad killers?’ First of all, the only company I’ve see that seems to understand the paradigm shift away from the messy desktop is Google with its Nexus One phone.”
MacDailyNews Take: It’s easier to seem like you understand after you’ve had a mole sitting in Apple’s boardroom and infringed on at least 20 of Apple’s patents.
Dvorak continues, “But the company doesn’t seem to be as actively involved in the tablet space as it should be. That leaves everyone else meandering—including Microsoft, whose OS will be employed on a number of pads… A number of interesting gold rushes will keep us very busy in the months ahead. The first is the rush to make apps optimized for the iPad, rather than the iPhone/iPod touch. The second is the rush toward making an iPad killer. Since these devices will all be derivative, the likelihood of an iPad killer is nil, but we’ve probably never witnessed an attack like the one we are about to see.”
“What is completely overlooked at the moment, is the potential to sink Microsoft, once and for all—or at least relegate the company to commodity computing (formerly known as desktop computing),” Dvorak writes. “The irony, of course, is that Microsoft predicted the trend toward pad computing. It just didn’t predict that it, as a company, wouldn’t be playing in the big game. There is a very real possibility now that Linux will finally be able to make inroads on the desktop, since the Android OS is the one true competitor to the Apple iPad OS.”
MacDailyNews Take: Before proclaiming Android the “one true competitor,” let’s wait to hear what the judges say, okay? It’s pretty easy to look like Apple’s “one true competitor” when your tech is based on and infringing upon Apple’s patents, than by doing your own independent work. Billy Joe Manley looked like John Steinbeck’s “one true competitor” in high school English class, until the teacher found out he was copying Steinbeck’s essays. Billy Joe started and quickly folded several business ideas (they never got out of beta, if you catch our drift) and while basically pumping gas for a living. Not that there’s anything with with that, but, regardles of how it looked at one time, Steinbeck’s “one true competitor” he was not.
Dvorak continues, “People have asked me if I’m going to get one of these devices. I can see its usefulness for all sorts of minor chores like casual Web browsing while watching TV. It would make a great turn-by-turn GPS device, too. But I’m going to wait. I’d like to see a real camera, some sort of I/O like a USB port, and an OLED screen like the kind on the Nexus One.”
MacDailyNews Take: Camera, schamera. Nobody wants to look up your nose during a video chat, John. You want to take a snapshot, use your iPhone. You want to capture a photograph, use a real camera. As for I/O, iPad has plenty of I/O, it’s just not big on old wired I/O. It does have it’s Dock Connector, of course, which is a sophisticated wired I/O port, plus it has Wi-Fi (802.11a/b/g/n) and Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR and/or 3G: UMTS/HSDPA (850, 1900, 2100 MHz) GSM/EDGE (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz). As for the OLED screen on the Nexus One, it pales (pun intended) in comparison to iPhone’s and iPad’s IPS screens. Please see: Screen Test: Apple’s iPhone 3GS LCD gets the part over Google’s rebadged HTC ‘Nexus One’ OLED – February 22, 2010
Dvorak writes, “In the meantime, Apple has ignited a rocket with an unknown payload. One thing is for sure: in the coming months and years, we’re sure to see a lot of ripples from this device. Hang on!”
Full article, with lots wrong obviously, but, surprisingly, also with one or two things right (even a broken clock is right twice a day), here.
MacDailyNews Take: Looks like he’s finally starting to get it. As opposed to:
Now that the fizz has dissipated regarding the Apple Inc. iPad, we can objectively look at the device and conclude that it probably will not have the impact on the market that the iPhone had… The tablet market has only succeeded as a niche market over the years and it was hoped Apple would dream up some new paradigm to change all that. From what I’ve seen and heard, this won’t be it. – John C. Dvorak, January 29, 2010
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers too numerous to mention individually for the heads up.]
No, MDN is wrong on Inkwell, there’s no comparison to the Newton ink recognition. The latter was terrific, it worked in full productivity mode. Inkwell, on the other hand, has never worked well for me, it seems like an afterthought for Apple. If you want something decent on an Apple product, then get WritePad for the iPad, it works almost as good as the Newton.
I refuse to buy this car until it has cup holders. Until then, I will continue to walk 40 miles one-way to work.
This “No camera” BS is almost reaching the level of Glossy Screens.
Notice how everything will be compared to the iPad. Once again, Apple makes the industry standard.
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@twinkie, somehow 35 million iPod touch owners have learned to cope without a camera. They obviously are on prozac or something.
oh how dull life would be if we didn’t have idiots like Dvorak to make us laugh.
This is a good review from Dvorak, and MDN missed a few compliments in there.
“A few obvious shortcomings” This is another way of saying that only Apple can take what any other company would consider an obvious shortcoming and turn it into got-to-have-it feature.
“Apple didn’t even try handwriting recognition” That’s true, they didn’t even try to put it on the iPad. Handwriting is so 19th century. I took typing class in 1962 so I wouldn’t have to write by hand. I certainly don’t want a computer that throws me back to parchment and quill pens.
“Weird UI” This is a compliment. If you had never seen an iPhone and someone showed you a Windows tablet right before showing you the iPad for the first time, you’d say it’s weird. Which makes it all the more astonishing that Apple actually made such a radically different UI so good that people fall in love with it at first touch!
“Android OS is the one true competitor” This is another way of saying that there aren’t any other competitors and that iPad is lightyears ahead of the pack.
Wish list of features: Everything Dvorak would like to see, some fanboi is going to want, too.
Somehow the iPad actually drove Dvorak sane!
For those wanting to download files on their ipad chack out goodreader for ipad it’s fantastic and only a buck.
As for cameras I think a wireless cam is the way to go for the ipad. There are already a few apps that let u use your iPhone camera on your ipad.
In time hopefully we will see apps like skype add this function.
No need for a cam in the ipad really.
@MDN I find this whole notion of schmidt sitting in board meetings, pillaging apple secrets and giving them to google completely absurd and utter nonsence (if not slanderous). Because if he was willing to do that to apple then why wouldn’t he also be willing to do it to google, thereby making him utterly untrustworthy and unemployable. So to suggest android infringes on apples patents is pure speculation. Apple didn’t invent touchscreen or gesture control. Apple ‘borrowed’ them too. So get over it…
Anyway, no iSight on an iPad is a bit of an annoyance since if you use skype…
Well, it WAS the whole Flash thing, ya know, I won’t get an iPad because of the lack of Flash. Still some who are using that one. But it’ll die down.
Then it WAS the whole it won’t Multitask. That one has been shut up.
But still we have the “I’ll buy one the minute it has a camera” bunch. Really? The stupid camera is the deal breaker here? You’re missing this whole revolution because it doesn’t have a Skype camera? I really wish there were some stats on just how much the camera built into the iMac and the laptops get used for Skype video chatting.
I say that even though I’m a grandparent and my Grandchild is a thousand miles away. We Skype; but I DID get the iPad. I can skype with the laptop. Not really convinced that a handheld video chat camera makes much sense.
Your Dvorak diatribes are getting really old, isn’t it time to find a new target for your puerile attacks?
@ The_Steve,
“… isn’t it time to find a new target for your puerile attacks?”
I agree. Would you mind posting your real name?
Dvorak is right (even a dead-broke clock is right once or twice a day) in that the iPad is selling quite well despite its many short-comings. Of course, one person’s “short-coming” could be another persons “feature”. Then again, sometimes what’s included is enough to justify the price, even with all those short-comings. Not for me. I’m not at all interested in a v1.0 iPad. Nice as it is, I don’t want to have to justify swapping up to a v2.0 when my wife asks. No. I’ll go straight to the v2.0 and avoid the fight. ;^)
Geez. Dvorak writes a good article about Apple and still gets blasted by mdn. This has grown beyond tiresome.
Btw. A camera on an iPad for video chat would not be looking up your nose. Do you guys actually use one? 99% of the time I am leaned back in a recliner with the pad angled right at my face. I don’t know anyone that places it flat on the table and looks straight ahead. You look at the screen which inevitably points your face directly at the spot where a camera would be. Unless of course you’re a contortionist or just strange.
Thinks about things before spouting off after every article. Credibility is not something mdn has much of. It’s more or less childlike and amateur commentary.
I really need to find a better apple news site that is at least high school level in their responses. Fanboy rants disecting every paragraph of an article is just. Oh nevermind. Blah
Poor John Dvorak.
Still pissed off Apple didn’t buy Be OS and make him a multimillionaire. Thank Steve they went with Next.
ONCE AGAIN ON THE NEWTON BEING A FAILURE !! Why, do people hang onto the negative and forget the positive? YES. The Newton OS in its initial form was problematic. But subsequent version were not prone to the handwriting recognition ! My Newton ran on nothing newer than version 1.3…. (I believe the Newton OS evolved up to 2.X) and .
@ Brulek,
“So to suggest android infringes on apples patents is pure speculation. Apple didn’t invent touchscreen or gesture control. Apple ‘borrowed’ them too. So get over it…”
Apple bought the company that obtained patents on touchscreen gestures. Apple received even more patents on multi-touch gestures that build on the patents Apple bought.
Multi-touch gestures belong to Apple and any company using Apple’s IP will not be doing any business in America.
So, in a nutshell, you haven’t got a clue about Apple’s IP and who’s infringing upon their patents.
A tired blowhard who can only blow soft. Goodnight, John.
“Your Dvorak diatribes are getting really old . . .”
According to whom?
It does need a camera for video chat. It can easily be propped up. If you’re doing video chat you don’t need to be typing.
What amuses me more than even Dvorak is the little menu bar at the top that begins “News, Opinions, Archives…” as if “news” and “opinions” are two different categories in MDN! I love this site: it is the computer version of a Star Trek convention.
Dvorak is right about one thing — Microsoft is well on its way to being relegated to total irrelevance in mobile computing. Heck, some might say it’s already there. It will still milk its desktop dominance and Office cash cows for as long as it can, but will soon be tottering off to the corporate equivalent of a nursing home, where it will continue to exist, but be out of sight and mind, gradually becoming enfeebled. I call it karma.
This oversized gasbag is a perfect example of the pompous idiots that all M$ fanboy are.
Please don’t let him have an ipad. His punishment shall be that he must use Winpoop forever.
oh come on people, this guy spews comedic gold every time he opens his mouth. and you know he’s a mac guy just playing the part of the ms shill. any moron with two brain cells rubbing together knows the future is being worked and massaged by jobs and co. this guy is just doing zune tang on a larger scale. hi-larious.
Numerous shortcomings like the lack of Flash which just rendered the last 5 sites I visited on my iPhone useless.
I seriously don’t care whose fault it is. Fix it.