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Apple iPad and related items

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Ae589 said:
http://www.atvflash.com/

A big draw for me was airport extreme/airtunes. I wanted multi room music, without multi-room cabling. Previously I'd been looking at the Marantz ZR6001, which has more functionality but tiny speakers (and about 3 times the cost). With ATV we can play our itunes library in the bedroom, controlled with an ipod touch/iphone/ipad.

What did you get in the end?
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\ramble/
At the time (about 3 and half years ago) I was only interested in video, specifically something that would play downloaded material and let me put ISO of all my DVDs on it and store everything off my main Mac. A media centre without a noisy PC around it :).
Wasn't much out then (and the Apple TV was even more pants back then: 160GB HD, but I came close to getting it) but I went with a tvix4100sh with a 500GB harddrive (which I've since replaced with a 1TB, it just slides out the side). Outputs SCART, composite, HDMI, optical, audio, etc - at the time I just had a normal SCART TV so the Apple TV was a no-no. And when I got my 47 plasma the tvix just carried on in HDMI mode. My entire DVD collection is on there now, slowly being replaced with downloaded and hired blu-ray versions :)

It plays absolutely everything (mkv, wmv, avi, xvid, divx, h.264, x264, apples mp4 among others) up to 1080, hardware upscaling, good network access (mount NAS on it, FTP to it, two USB ports to add additional HDs or thumbdrives), wireless and ethernet.
You can also just connect it as a hardrive to your mac/pc to dump a load on it. It mounts my mac's download folder as a NAS so I can play stuff as soon as it's finished downloaded (I use sabnzbd so everything gets unpared and unrared automatically). It's quite nifty, great remote.

There are better cheaper solutions now - the WD is only 100 quid and plays everything 1080 but lacks it's own HD and Network access.

I also play music but like you I use airtunes from my mac pro (it's always on anyway) to an airport xpress and control it with my iPhone. Or if I'm in the garden, stream to my iPhone using Simplify media... But I think there's much better and cheaper music solutions out there. The tivx plays music but the linux browser is annoying so I don't use it.

I think the next iteration of the apple TV will be the one, but your average consumer isn't going to want to have to crack their systems to play a bit of pirate material or be entirely beholden to the AppleStore. Which is why it's a poor seller at the moment.
 
Here's an interesting angle:
Why some people are so angry about the iPad

Some people get angry about anything to do with Apple. It's not for me to suggest they should get a life, because I am sure they feel they already have one, thank you very much.

However, the launch of the iPad seems to have revealed a rather more base and extreme level of emotional outpouring, last seen, perhaps, when Sports Illustrated created its first swimsuit edition.

Engadget, for example, decided to shut down its comments for a while in order to let the bile float off down the Nile.

For those outside the Fanboy Funhouse, it all seems rather odd. Which is why I was moved to pay attention to an e-mail I received from Sandee Cohen, self-confessed angry person. Cohen is no ordinary angry person. For a start, she is running a two-day seminar at next week's MacWorld Expo. How many angry people could do that?

Cohen is a mistress of the Adobe Creative Suite, but, as an intelligent angry person she has some theories as to why she and others are experiencing their negative emotions.

"Mac users feel they have some sort of investment in Apple. The older ones kept with the Mac platform when it was in danger of dying out. They may feel that since they supported the Mac, they have a right to tell Apple how to make products, operating system, etc.," she told me...


http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-10446912-71.html
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sunnysidedown said:
^ more noise, less signal...
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noise.jpg
 
sunnysidedown said:
Genius... is it your Forte to litter Apple related threads with inane articles? if so you are doing a sterling job.
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It's actually quite an interesting article with some sharp user comments and observations, but if such things trouble you, please put your head back in the sand and simply ignore any future links. Thank you.
 
It's another article about those crazy apple fans, with no content about the actual device
 
Kanda said:
Did you actually read it? It's just a Citrix client. I can do that already on my iPhone... ;)
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Actually, I didn't know there was a citrix client for the iPhone. I'm going to experiment with it today. It would be dead nice for me, as it means I can look at server errors via my phone if I'm out and about.
 
editor said:
It's actually quite an interesting article with some sharp user comments and observations, but if such things trouble you, please put your head back in the sand and simply ignore any future links. Thank you.
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Ed. Can I call you Ed? No. Fine. Well it's Mr bloody Lemon to you then.

Anyway, where was I. Ah yes. Seriously, Ed, sorry Editor - much as I shake my head at the rather non-critical adulation that some people greet Apple releases with, you really do seem to take it to extremes. It comes across as a bit, well, evangelical in your position. It sort of dilutes your argument a bit.
 
Lemon Eddy said:
Anyway, where was I. Ah yes. Seriously, Ed, sorry Editor - much as I shake my head at the rather non-critical adulation that some people greet Apple releases with, you really do seem to take it to extremes. It comes across as a bit, well, evangelical in your position. It sort of dilutes your argument a bit.
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Have you actually read the article?

How is linking to an article which presents a large variety of viewpoints about the iPad on a thread discussing the iPad be 'evangelical' in any way at all?

This is the conclusion to the article. It seems you - and Crispy and Kanda - were too busy knee-jerking to get this far. It argues in favour of the iPad.

For all I know, some of the above may, indeed, be entirely true. But from my own distant perch up here in the mental woods, there might be a simpler explanation: the iPad is for real, ordinary people. Real, ordinary people who just want things to work simply. In fact, even more simply than they already do.

They want those things to have as few buttons as possible. They want those things to look welcoming, rather than intimidating. If those things happen to work beautifully, too, as many Apple products do, this is a pleasure beyond their most ravished imaginings.

The iPad makes things that are important to real people--not necessarily to those people with a slight excess of technological enthusiasm-- more accessible in a way that suits a normal human life.

It isn't perfect. Neither are real people. But at least they might not have to ask their nephews, daughters, or hairy strangers at the shopping mall how it works and what it does. You see, that's what makes real people really, really angry.
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:facepalm:
 
Crispy said:
I read the article to the end thanks
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User comments on the site:

"Best interpretation of the iPad concept I've read to date."
"Damn, that was excellent."
"One of the best posts I've read since the iPad release."
"Yup, you hit the nail on the head."
Click to expand...
Comments here:
"It's another article about those crazy apple fans, with no content about the actual device"
"more noise, less signal..."
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Oh, and I'm supposed to be an anti Apple 'evangelist' for linking to an article that...argues in favour of an Apple product.

:facepalm:

No, really. :facepalm:
 
sunnysidedown said:
It doesn't argue, in fact it doesn't do much at all... apart from provide a load of fluff to the needle.

Here are a couple of interesting articles that I will refrain from selectively quoting, or bolding sensationally...

http://northtemple.com/2010/02/01/on-ipads-grandmas-and-gam

http://www.macworld.com/article/146040/2010/02/ipad.html?lsrc=twt_macworld
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The exact same points were expressed in the first link so I'm not sure why you were so quick to dismiss it.
 
Because the (small) point it was making was buried in a mound of fluff about cult of mac.


That macworld article is very interesting, though.

The iPad won’t kill the computer any more than the graphical user interface did away with the command line (it’s still there, remember?), but it is Apple saying once again that there’s a better way. Regardless of how many people buy an iPad, it’s not hard to look forward a few years and imagine a world where more and more people are interacting with technology in this new way. Remember: even if it often seems to do just the opposite, the ultimate goal of technology has always been to make life easier.
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Crispy said:
Because the (small) point it was making was buried in a mound of fluff about cult of mac.
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Isn't that what was said on the page I liked to? The vast majority of comments were nothing to do with the cult of the Mac but were all about the implications of the iPad.

There's some very informed comments in there.

yes, the iPad is for lounging about [that's what lots of folks do now with iPhones, iPod touches, and laptops, and now they can do it bigger and easier]; but there is so much more potential in this product: sketching and drawing at home or in meetings?with the finger or a 3rd party stylus; architects and construction crews on-site; doctors and other hospital staff; schoolteachers and coaches, and on and on... anyone who needs to make, store and retrieve data. and the beauty part is that applications are easy to find, cheap to buy, and usually easy to use. and apple makes it easier for those developers to develop and distribute their wares. it's a win-win-win situation for users, apple, and program designers.
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It seems to me that Apple made it very clear that the iPad is a creative tool - with their invite picture (the one behind Steve Jobs in your article) but not just for adults, but their children as well. iPad seems the ideal tool to take to vacation - hundreds of books and children's books, in color, without the weight. What better tool for mom waiting in the airport to occupy her children, or during the flight.

And the greatest asset: for school children. It will make it possible for schools to distribute e-books to their students, from the science tome to the world atlas, all for 1.5 pounds weight, because i-pad can render these books in color and pages can be flipped by hand as before. All the heavy weight is off the children's back pack. What a great invention. Because the ipad has iworks on it, and access to the web, the homework and creative learning in any field can, be done on it too.

Not to forget the painting - intuitively, with a child's hands, but without the mess.

I see this tool as having a great future in education, from Kindergarten to High School.
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oh sorry, didn't realise you were talking about the comments. tbf I rarely read them
 
My dad will be reading his footy news on the internet for the first time, on an ipad, by the end of the year, stone fact. Cos I'll buy him one.

And he won't even realise he's on the internet.

that, i think, is the winning genius of the concept.
 
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