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Anyone got an iPad and like it?

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Renegade:
What do you mean by multitask?
-wraith808 (October 13, 2011, 06:15 AM)
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Actually doing more than one thing at a time (not just allowing you to swap between tasks but have background tasks dormant).
-Carol Haynes (October 13, 2011, 09:05 AM)
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That's a fallacy.  No one works in more than one app at the same time.  If you'd said background task (i.e. kick something off, and go into another program while that's still processing) I'd agree with you; though some apps can be backgrounded and still work, others can't, and it's something that I do find limiting in some cases.  But other than for reference purposes, or sharing information by drag/drop, no one actually works in more than one program at the same time- the mouse related interface that we have on computers doesn't allow it.  I hope in the future multi-touch does allow this (a la Minority Report), but for now, it's an illusion that's been propagated, and doesn't survive the light of reason.
-wraith808 (October 13, 2011, 10:19 AM)
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For the most part, I think you're right there.

But... (you knew that was coming)... If you have say a Word document and a PDF open, and you type in the Word document while reading the PDF, are you "using more than one app at the same time"?

A for multi-touch as in the Minority Report, isn't that all just one big app?

I think that by our nature, we are incapable of proactively using 2 apps at the same time. Passive? Sure. Just like the PDF above. We all use LOTS of them, and even ones we don't know about. Drivers, daemons, services, agents, etc. etc. But proactively? That requires multiple input devices/sources.

If you had a sensor to detect your heartbeat, and that was hooked into an app, that would still be passive.

If you are typing or clicking with a mouse or speaking into a speech recognition powered app, that's clearly proactive.

Let's take Star Trek for an example. You're the ship's navigator and you're all alone on the deserted ship... cue spooky music please... You're frantically typing/tapping things into the computer console to avoid some Klingons pursing you... All the while you're shouting commands to the ship's computer...

Are your voice commands active? Well, yes. But how much concentration do they take? Is that using multiple applications? Or is it using one interface (the console) and intermittently actively using another interface?

I think our powers of concentration are limited, and that is the absolute limiting factor. i.e. How much concentration does an application require to use as a percentage of the users available, productive attention/concentration amount?

I think that at the end of the day, we're mostly just quickly switching between applications and that we're never really using multiple applications, no matter what the interface. (Unless it's cybernetic, but then it's still passive...)

Kind of like how mobile phones are illegal to use while driving. People don't have enough concentration/attention to do both reliably.

wraith808:
But... (you knew that was coming)... If you have say a Word document and a PDF open, and you type in the Word document while reading the PDF, are you "using more than one app at the same time"?
-Renegade (October 13, 2011, 10:34 AM)
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But other than for reference purposes, or sharing information by drag/drop, no one actually works in more than one program at the same time
-wraith808 (October 13, 2011, 10:19 AM)
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I think that falls under reference purposes  ;D

I think that at the end of the day, we're mostly just quickly switching between applications and that we're never really using multiple applications, no matter what the interface. (Unless it's cybernetic, but then it's still passive...)
-Renegade (October 13, 2011, 10:34 AM)
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I don't think it's even just computer use.  When people say they're multi-tasking, they're really just spinning up and down (and taking the appropriate hit for spin-up/spin-down time).  Right now, I'm on hold, typing this.  But am I multi-tasking?  No... when someone comes on the line, even though I have a headset, I won't be able to type this message and converse with the person on the phone about something different at the same time.  That's true for most actions, though there are few complementary actions that can be reliably done at the same time.

Arguing against my point (schizophrenic much?), sometimes I'm on nefsis and typing notes at the same time on the same computer.  But I guess that falls into the reference bit- just in a different paradigm.

Renegade:
I think there are things that we can do simultaneously, but many of them require training to do. Some don't.

Like listening to music is a pretty good example. When you know something pretty well, you can pretty much listen and ignore at the same time. blah blah blah -- I expect other people have different takes on what they can do at the same time.

I think that we're each just wired/trained to be able to do certain things, and some things are just beyond our grasp. e.g. Editing in Photoshop while dictating mathematical lectures on the deeper lovelinesses of string theory and why time doesn't exist. :)

Carol Haynes:
Example - I get lots of emails so open email app to download latest bunch of crap and then go and do something else while I am waiting - like surf the internet or read a book .....

Renegade:
We only use the iPad at home, so there's no point in having 3G when the telcos have no sane plans for light usage. -Renegade (October 12, 2011, 10:15 PM)
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What do you class as 'light usage' ?

$1/month for 50MB, (150MB if you're with TPG - which you were), and 2.75cents per excess MB is hardly a deal-breaker - this is what I use in my Android phone when I want to look up something and don't have WiFi available.

TPG Budget Plan

And the phone/SMS charges are reasonable also.

It even says: Pay As You Go Plans - Recommended for your iPad  :P
-4wd (October 13, 2011, 02:05 AM)
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I didn't see any of that when we bought it. Other plans we saw were idiotically expensive. The device was far more, and the plan was the same as regular phone plans. I gave up there.

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