Reflections of my thoughts….

Steve Jobs with iPad

I was so excited about watching the keynote video of iPad launch at Apple website. I am really excited to own on iPad. The multi-touch features and hardware itself is just amazing on the demo. Also I’d be happy to see the best iPhone applications on the same platform.

Despite the pros, I noticed about the cons of the new product. Don’t think that I am owning one iPad but I am writing this based on the impression from Key note and the technical specification. Also this post is fresh and I am not influenced by any tech pundit’s writing and guesses on the iPad.

[Updated 3.00 AM JST]

iPad still doesn’t support Adobe Flash. Irony is that iPad running Mac OS X  and can’t believe it doesn’t support flash. I can’t think of a “computer” which has no flash installed in it. (During the demo, the websites which has flash is displayed as unsupported. Check it out)

Steve Jobs already said in his presentation, the netbooks are cheap laptops. I agree that iPad has a gorgeous display. But has not good storage. I hope this is to promote the mobile me services of Apple. In my opinion more storage must get for a cheap price because this is not a phone.. Almost similar to a notebook or a high form of a netbook.

The device lacks a webcam. It even doesn’t contain a basic VGA webcam. What if I need to show up myself to my friends? Apple is seamless in their user experience while they restrict of make the user handicapped in terms of storage. Also Jobs dint mention about the iChat application.

When comes in to storage, the iPad basic capacity is 16 GB and they’re not running any iPhone OS, instead it’s powered with Mac OS X 10.5.8 or above. Which means that you’ve to spend few more room for the OS out of the basic 16/32/64 GB. Apple dint mention about any external storage which can be connected through the USB port. I hope it isn’t possible.

Again comes on the hardware specification. iPad is not really great. It has a great battery life around 10 hours and also it does have a great video accelerator. But still it’s 1 Ghz processor inside it. Most of the iPhone games are too reduced version of PC/Console version and limited in many ways. I think they must have more efficient processor specification. Even the so called “cheap laptops” has 1.6 Ghz processors.

The TV out capabilities are not built-in we’ve to buy a Dock to VGA adapter for enjoying the TV/Projector connectivity.

The device is capable of playing video up-to 720p. Still it’s not full HD. Also the resolution is 1024×768. It’s not really a big room. again I believe with the multi-touch panning and zooming of course the browsing experience will be good.

Also I doubt the gaming experience and convenience beside the accelero-meter. Also I don’t think to have a great typing experience with iPad. With iPhone one hand is enough for typing, but this case is different. For heavy typing we may have to depend on external keyboard.

Despite of all drawbacks, apple knows how sell a product and make business around it, that’s how they’re grown in these years. People loves spend and own for an Apple.

One more thing, Steve Jobs presentation was not really charming this time. The updates about how things are going on literally he took the head postion of “The biggest mobile company in the world” was not accepted well I guess. Also during the end, the presentation was slow and was out of sync. He doubted in many places. Never seen this before from Jobs. Let’s wait and see till we get one in hand.

Most of us are really fond of Google transliteration service, which also incorporated in their popular services like Gmail and Blogger to compose mails and blogs in our own languages.[See Google Transliteration]

As we all know, we can add the text input support for as many languages from the regional settings menu of Windows (you can see this in the control panel)

Even if you can add the language support, in fact they’re not get going well with a transliteration manner. If you type something, Malayalam it should appear as മലയാളം. unfortunately Windows badly fails to do that.

If you’ve really enjoyed the Google transliteration service, they’re ready to provide the same text service as offline service through IME. No more copy paste from transliteration IME page your window.

Navigate to http://www.google.com/ime/transliteration/ and select your preferred language, finish download and install it.

Google Transliteration IME is currently available for 14 different languages – Arabic, Bengali, Farsi (Persian), Greek, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Nepali, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu.

Google Boasts it has

• Offline Support – No dependency with internet connection
• Easy Keyboard – Dictionary enabled keyboard to enter rare and complex words
• Word Completions – Dictionary based word completions for prefixes.
• Quick Search(you should expect this from Google) – Single click web search for highlighted word.
• Personalized Choices – Remember user corrections for personalized service.
• Customize suggestions page size, display font

More features can be found in this page

Okay here’s a simple and quick demonstration in my mother tongue.

1. Enable the language bar ( if it’s not enabled )

2. Select the language from language bar. You can see the Google Transliteration service on the right bottom of the screen (by default)

Note that This is a per Window Settings (like the normal IME operation). i.e if you’ve two notepads running and you selected Malayalam for one of them, the other will not be affected by this settings.

3. Now start typing

Now you’ve the basic education on transliteration services (if you’re a newbie). Now go ahead explore more. Chat, mail, or anything in your local language. Thanks Google for taking care of our mother tongue!!!