iPad trainspotters divine e-book prices, My Documents and more from Oscar night commercial
By Joseph L. Flatley 
posted March 8th 2010 5:51PM
posted March 8th 2010 5:51PM
Trainspotters, eagle-eyed bloggers, and tech detectives of all stripes have had a field day with last night's iPad commercial. At the very least, we got a pretty good look at some e-book prices, ranging from Ted Kennedy's True Compass: A Memoir ($14.99) to Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Journey to Change the World... One Child at a Time by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin ($7.99). All gripping reads, for sure, and all more expensive than Amazon. In addition to all that, TUAW has made note of a New York Times button, possibly to bring up NYT bestsellers in the iBookstore. Delving deeper into the UI, a look at the Pages iWork app has revealed a button labeled My Documents (where have we heard that one before?). But Oscar night is not the only place for iPad leaks: according to a tipster named James Barcellano, close viewing of the iPad keynote video has revealed an "Open In..." button during the viewing of a PDF attachment in mail. Perhaps this is an indication that the device's file system will be a tad more open than we were expecting. Or maybe not! You know how these things go. One more pic after the break.
I"m sure it will be a great device... after you jailbreak it.
Get to work, geohot! =D
@Neosubu Unfortunately, that's how Apple products always are. Not [i]quite[/i] what everyone wants ... but nearly there.
PS. A jailbroken iPad would be awesome
@timmytenga
The popularity of the iPhone would tend to disagree with your assessment.
Damn, just bought a bloody PAPER map of Napa wineries couple weeks back. :P
@Neosubu *Holds up sign* Will Jailbreak Ipad for flash lol
@Neosubu hell yes you are so right.
i was really confused at first, because i thought "divine" was an adjective to "e-book prices", which really contradicts the actual post. i thought i was going to have to go urbandictionary this new verb "to trainspot"
@Neosubu
That makes no sense...you'd still be running the same old iPhone OS on a tablet. It's pointless! Are you willing to pay at least $500 for what is essentially the iPhone in your pocket?
If you already have an iPhone\iTouch it doesn't make sense to get an iPad...if you don't have either of those, then it still doesn't make sense to get an iPad. MS Courier FTW!
@Benjulious
Unless you want a bigger screen or the apps not available on iphone.
@Jack No, even though you are highly ranked this is an ignorant comment. The iPad can sell like gangbusters, still millions want an [i]option[i] to run flash. He said not quite what everyone wants. Many people want real multitasking. Many people want an ability to teather to an iPhone. Some of these are very easy, some will never happen, some just need some things to fall in place. iPad can outsell the iPhone, still people will almost unanimously want things like USB ports...sorry, Jack, but you're wrong.
My Documents? awww yeah.
@NoToApple Okay, to everyone... Every time I hear the mention of "Flash" I'm going to keep posting this:
Please, once and for all, here is a quote from Morgan Adams, an interactive content developer who knows a lot about building Flash and what he had to say:
Current Flash sites could never be made work well on any touchscreen device, and this cannot be solved by Apple, Adobe, or magical new hardware.
That’s not because of slow mobile performance, battery drain or crashes. It’s because of the hover or mouseover problem.
Many (if not most) current Flash games, menus, and even video players require a visible mouse pointer. They are coded to rely on the difference between hovering over something (mouseover) vs. actually clicking. This distinction is not rare. It’s pervasive, fundamental to interactive design, and vital to the basic use of Flash content. New Flash content designed just for touchscreens can be done, but people want existing Flash sites to work. All of them—not just some here and there—and in a usable manner. That’s impossible no matter what.
All that Apple and Adobe could ever do is make current Flash content visible. It would be seen, but very often would not work. Users would hate that broken promise much more than they hate gaps in pages, missing banner ads, and the need to download a game once from the App Store instead of re-downloading it every time they visit a Flash game page.
@commonman I'm not sure the poster below me mentioned Flash.
@commonman
I just checked out http://flashgordon.ws on my Nexus One... Seems to work fine for me. I don't understand your problem.
@commonman I mentioned flash below. And, umm, did you know that Javascript and all DHTML sites make a distinction between mouseover/mouseout and mouseclick events, too?? Touchscreen apps simply don't fire the over/out events. They just do clicks. It doesn't break anything. This is a ridiculous argument. There are some good ones, but this ain't one of them. Sorry.
@commonman Perhaps you should revisit that Web deveoper quote you posted and then look at this: http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/08/hp-slate-makes-an-appearance-to-show-off-flash-stays-for-a-rock/?s=t5
I've been using Flash in my browser on a 6 year old Windows Tablet PC with Wacom digitizer and no mouse emulation - works just fine, and doubly so for Flash-based games. Only Roll-over adds would be affected in the way described in your posted quote. Flash is bigger than roll-over ads; unfortunately, Apple wants to convince all of us otherwise.
@commonman
RIM Sure-press much?
@LeJay Flash! - a-ah - Savior of the Universe
@commonman Hmm. Good point with the mouseover problem. I wonder how the HP Slate solves this? I think Adobe 'forgot' to mention this in their otherwise very elaborate new video demo of Flash running on the HP Slate.
@Widgetech
SurePress deserves credit for the way it opens up all kinds of new possibilities for touchscreen interaction, but all you ever hear is how annoying people think it is to have to physically press on the screen to do certain things! Seems like when it comes to touchscreens, people expect everything to behave just like the iPhone, and if it doesn't, they think there's something wrong.
@commonman
Guess you missed the video of the HP slate handling flash games perfectly fine with a touch screen
@NoToApple no you didn't mention flash so I'm not sure what he's ranting about , but i don't think engadget was saying that they invented anything as far as file systems go so your speal about my documents is irrelevant.
@guroth
That's not really the point. Anything that requires a mouseover will not work. In case you hadn't noticed, a lot of flash stuff uses or requires mouseovers.
@N900
Just as long as they don't put 'my videos' under My Music. I prefer to have them simply under My Videos. Of course, I hope neither of them are under My Documents.
@NoToApple Sorry man, it was supposed to go to the post below you. My apologies.
Still NOT interested!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
@satoribomb Let me ask you this, mainly because both video's you linked were simulations, are you using a device to click...like a pen of some sort? Just curious.
@NoToApple The My Documents seen in the iPad is only part of the iWork suite, specifically the Pages app. There is an My Presentations for Keynote and My Spreadsheets for Numbers. It isn't an actual My Documents folder like one you would find on an actual PC.
@commonman Users would hate that broken promise much more than they hate gaps in pages, missing banner ads, and the need to download a game once from the App Store instead of re-downloading it every time they visit a Flash game page.
We want it for video. Better might to have HTML5 yesterday, but until Hulu has it we want a flash option. I'm so sick of this long post but it's so refreshing that I know the gibberish it will contain. And, honestly, who wants banner ads to load?
@NoToApple Dude, where is the hate? I was just quoting from an experienced guy that designs flash. I made a mistake by linking it to the wrong person. Anyone else see any "hate" in my post. And it wasn't an attack, it was fact. I know the HP video is simulation cause I work in video. I'm just tired of people bashing Apple devices because they lack Flash and I was quoting one of the reasons why. As for flash "banners" I don't think I'll miss these because they are so annoying. Wow, take a chill pill!
Perfect for my mom until I get that phone call, "why can't I watch a video of my grandchildren, what do you mean flash?"
@mercnet What do you mean there's a perfectly fine Youtube app where all videos of my grandchildren would most likely be?
@EljhHck Not everyone uses youtube, my brother and his wife upload to a site similar to kodak gallery (forget which one they use), and it uses flash to play everything. Most people do not realize you can make youtube videos private.
@EljhHck actually the youtube app dosn't include every video only the ones uploaded in MP4 format (the last time i checked, which was about a year ago, apple could have done something to change that at some point) i actually remember wanting to watch a lot of youtube videos but not being able to because they weren't uploaded in MP4
@The Geek I'm pretty sure you can watch any non-MP4 ones now. I have a channel for a huge Fallout 3 mod I've been working for, and I upload them in .WMV format and they show up on my brother's iPod Touch.
@EljhHck Sorry about the misinformation then, that is just how it was when it first came out
@The Geek Yeah I had an iPod Touch for a couple of years so I remember when it was .MP4-only. Sold it for a Zune HD, and boy was that a mistake.
@EljhHck Really i'm starting a zune HD right now and i can't be happier i just hope that they give us a WP7S-ey update including all of the apps
@mercnet We don't need to use flash to watch a video that was made by the family
@The Geek It's just the lack of so many features that's disappointing. From the little things like the lack of forward button in the browser to the large things like absolutely no video support in the browser (whether it be Flash or any other video format). That means no YouTube.
Also, there's like 17 apps. Sure, the "it's a new platform, just give it a while" argument worked like 4 months ago but it doesn't hold up anymore.
@EljhHck An app for this site, an app for that site, that's the problem. I use one app for *all* sites - Firefox. Who wants to have to download a different app for every site they visit? Well, who outside the RDF that is.
Whatever you do don't buy 'Under the Dome'.
Just don't.
Seriously.
@MarkAnderson Not his best work, but not a terrible read. Much better than most trash fiction out there.
@PaulY
It starts well but it's just too long by about 400 pages.
No, it's not his worst - that would be Pet Semetary or Rose Madder - but it's not a good book.
@MarkAnderson
Bought it when it was on sale on Amazon for $9.99. Decent read, very disappointing ending. King always builds you up, slowly, tantalizingly, then the climax is completely different from what it should be, and steals away great showdowns.
@DTJ no kidding. ending was underwhelming and frankly just plain awkward
The iPad's filesystem has already been discussed elsewhere. This is how it works:
Each app has its own folder for sharing data and documents with other apps. Apps can also ask the OS “I’m looking for files of a certain type. What’s available?” and get a list of Microsoft Word documents present in all of the other apps’ shared folders.
When you connect the iPad to your computer via USB, it appears on your desktop as a mass storage device. Each of those shared folders is a standard directory ... you’re free to move stuff in and out as you please.
It's similar to how those USB stick MP3 player handles music .. you just "drag and drop" your MP3 files onto the USB stick and sync. Same with the iPad.
@taligent .. this is the article that discusses it.
http://www.suntimes.com/technology/ihnatko/2083771,ihnatko-apple-ipad-anaysis-030410.article
@taligent
Ipad doesnt have usb