[Jake]

Originally Posted by Sughly

Jake - The idea of having a computer on your desk with a keyboard, from which one can just pick up the screen and walk around the house while continuing to use it uninterrupted, is crazy. (Quoted from Telltale)

Erm... isn't that what you do with a laptop? And besides, how can this be compared to a desktop when you look at each item's capabilities?

No that's not at all what you do with a laptop. A laptop's form and function are unsuitable for quite a lot of things. Using one in a bed or on a couch is absolutely terrible. Passing one around from person to person is also terrible. How do I know this? Because people don't do it. Laptops are used at tables and sometimes on laps (but not comfortably), and when they're used in more casual positions it's either uncomfortable, or with some sort of tray or cushion or other peripheral or inconvenience.

Seriously, what is it about this that's so great really? What's the defining point/s that exists solely for the iPad that isn't already available in formats that are more advanced or offer the same (if not more) features? I struggle to think of any. I would say that others don't have an apple logo, but even that's a false point - apple themselves have notebooks superior to this (point in case, my friend is already seeking to sell his apple laptop that was barely touched to order an iPad).

Comparing feature to feature is, again, useless. Lots of MP3 players pre iPod had an FM radio, had bigger hard drives, were sometimes cheaper than the iPod. On paper those features are way better, but the devices themselves were poor.

Apple makes notebooks which are superior now, but as tech shrinks and speed increases, gaps like that will close. It's already becoming less and less about hard specs and more and more about how you apply them when building a device. What appeals to me is the idea that the concept of "a computer" is being mutated by Apple and other tablet manufacturers.

Ever since the phrase "microcomputer" first came about, they have been defined by almost the exact same set of rules -- that they have the same basic components of an Apple II or an IBM PC XT: A big box containing CPU, graphics, memory, and I/O devices which all sits under your desk or under your monitor (or on a laptop, under your keyboard), a keyboard, a display, and (starting in the 1980s) a mouse.

The notion that all of these parts and the different functions they each imply (keyboard for data entry, mouse for precise UI manipulation, etc) are starting to being thought of as separate, and potentially non-essential, is huge. A laptop has the same basic parts and functions of a Vic20, but far faster and heavily miniaturized.

I think miniaturization for miniaturization's sake is great and has gotten us very far -- the mantra of "[do the same thing as before, but] smaller and faster" has been the driving force in computing for ages, applied across the board, from the size and thickness of laptops and screens, to CPUs themselves. Eventually, though, you miniaturize your way out of it being practical. Zoolander has a cell phone the size of a matchbook -- that's ridiculous, but is that what people want? It seems like it's what some people want, which is baffling to me. Miniaturization for its own purpose has to reach an end at some point. Once you've miniaturized a standard PC notebook to be the size of a paperback novel, to the point that a frequent complaint is that the keys are so small, it's difficult to type on with human hands, that has to mean that, at least for some customers and for some hardware manufacturers, we're at the point when it's time to try something new.

"If it's not broke, don't fix it," is a fine attitude, and probably valid for many computer applications for a long time to come, but I'm glad someone is interested in leveraging the benefits of modern industrial design, computer engineering, and software design, to see what might happen if something was built to operate in a modular fashion, no longer dependent on all the peripherals and setup from the 1970s being present at all times. It's not that complicated, and it's not particularly revolutionary as a thought -- its the way computers have worked in sci-fi for years -- but it's exciting to me to see someone pursuing this sort of thing in the mass market commercial space.

The rock pic, I also believe, wasn't exactly put up in "anger" either but probably more so as a humorous joke.

Humor is in the eye of the beholder, I guess. People generally only mock in that style when they're feeling threatened.