Photo: iPad. The official laptop of the Obama White House...

[onehandle]

[MineralMan]

1. Not really. It's the the tool they're using.

The White House does not endorse products. It uses them, though, just like the rest of us. Why use an iPad? Because it does what it needs to do, and is well supported with apps, etc.

There's one in my house. My wife uses it. She bought it because she writes about computer applications, and there are tons of them for the iPad.

[Atman]

3. My wife has one, too. She lives it.

I meant lives, not loves. Although she seems to love it, too. She's avid cook and has a little stand for it. Always calling up recipes and pictures of stuff she wants to make. Same with sewing. She's also an APRN, and keep her drug references and Epocrates on it. Like the White House, she doesn't seem to care that it's an Apple. It's the right size, it's got a brilliant display (even better on the new ones), and it just works. Apps and music she downloads are automatically synced to her phone and our home computer. The design is perfect.

[onehandle]

6. Hey! That's my wife.

I have had iPad envy for the months that she's had her v2.

[MineralMan]

7. I use my wife's from time to time when we're away from home.

I detest touch screen keyboards. I'm a very fast touch typist and they just seem impossibly slow to use. I'm thinking that keyboard skills are going to go away completely before long. Speech recognition software is getting better, too. Eventually we'll all be in our little cubicles talking to ourselves, I suppose. Fortunately, I'm a geezer, and won't have to take that step, I hope.

[riderinthestorm]

15. I just borrowed an IPad for a week to see if I wanted it. No way - same complaint - the keyboard!

I know you can get the accessory to have a regular keyboard but they're still really small. My husband has big hands, big fingers and he struggles typing on a regular keyboard. I can't imagine him trying to use the tablet sized one....

I was really aggravated by the Ipad's keyboard for any kind of lengthy writing. I'm glad i "test drove" one before I committed to buying. Now I know I'll stick with a regular laptop instead. I hadn't realized how much I love and need that size and speed for typing.

[Atman]

18. LAME. Like the old "one button mouse" bullshit.

My wife bought the Apple bluetooth keyboard with her iPad. Way better than the touch screen, but still limited. BUT...as the other poster said, ANY Bluetooth keyboard will work. Buy a $9 Chinese one from Walmart...it will work.

As my sub line suggests, this is all so reminiscent of the days when people said they couldn't use a Mac computer because it came with a one-button mouse, even though you could use a generic multi-button mouse and it would work just fine.

[Shankapotomus]

22. Actually, the one button mouse myth

was never true. You just go into settings for the mouse (can't recall exactly where now) and change it to the two button setting. The one button was just the factory setting.

[Snake Alchemist]

29. No, there literally used to be mice with a single button.

What setting would you use for this?

[Shankapotomus]

30. Wow, you're going way back

Now I see. I was talking about the mighty mouse but, yea, now I remember those. I have an old macintosh with the one click mouse stored away. I should have known.

[riderinthestorm]

23. Okay but that doesn't change the fact that the bluetooth keyboard is smaller

than a regular laptop computer and if you have big fingers, it's tough.

My husband really had trouble. Why would I pay that much extra money to just make problems for us?

[riderinthestorm]

40. He can't efficiently use any laptop keyboard. He almost always uses the desktop computer at home

We make it a point to pull out the keyboard on anything we're looking to buy and we try them all. My dad gave us his excellent Sony Vaio (the one with the full number keypad along the side) and even that's barely usable for him but it's the one he takes when he travels. Its definitely a larger keyboard than a Macbook, I know. We've tried.

Furthermore, we need the full number keypad alongside for facilitating spreadsheets, and the ability to download youtube videos ,and put things on flashdrives for potential sales. Our whole industry is based on this. Anyone at competitions who has an IPad has it as a gadget and not as a work tool. If I have a horse to sell, they want a disc, youtube link, and flashdrive to carry home to their clients and keep for their future reference.

[riderinthestorm]

44. We want to cart around one machine with all parts together. Not separate parts when we travel

If he says he has difficulty with that keypad, I believe him, why wouldn't I? He has to use it out in the field as often as I so it has to work for both of us. The Sony Vaio has worked really well for us (even as he prefers a desktop computer).

And as I've stated before several times already, virtually our entire industry operates off flashdrives, videos, discs and youtube for sale horses, importing, exporting, data forms like Excel, and document processing like sales contracts etc. In 30 years in this business, I have yet to discover anyone who isn't using a PC based system. That's just the way it is for us. If the industry shifts to Apple products, of course we'll shift but for now, it is what it is.

A word to you as well from a master horse trader, when a salesperson gets too pushy, I walk away from them and the product as well. Clearly you believe in your product but the aggressive attitude isn't persuasive and can often be a turnoff.

[DisgustipatedinCA]

51. Apple's Blutooth keyboard is full-sized. Not almost full-sized, but completely full-sized

There is a known problem with this, however. On the iPad, when using a bluetooth keyboard, IOS loses the ability to spell check. The red underlines disappear, but come back as soon as you un-pair the keyboard from the iPad. Hopefully this will be fixed soon, if it hasn't already been fixed with the 5.1 release.

[hobbit709]

2. Still not enough reason for me to buy one.

[Renew Deal]

4. You know you want it...

Just try it a little.

[hobbit709]

5. I'm not an iPOS FAD.

It doesn't do anything my $270 tablet does that I use it for for far less cost.

[girl gone mad]

52. Porsches are made by highly skilled, highly paid unionized workers..

in a state of the art factory in beautiful, clean, democratic socialist Stuttgart Germany.

iJunk is made by underage slaves working in deplorable conditions in factories that would make Upton Sinclair heave in authoritarian police state China.

Might want to rethink the analogy.

[nadinbrzezinski]

55. So are the rest

Unless your putter is fifteen years old.

[Nedsdag]

11. I bought an iPad instead of a tablet

because I feared getting viruses on a tablet.

I'm pissed because I bought my iPad in December; now it's obsolete.

[onehandle]

12. No it's not. People are still happily using iPad 1s and iPhone 1s from 2007.

This isn't Android where new OSs make them 'obsolete' due to fragmentation.

You've got a great device and have years of mileage left.

[TrogL]

47. I've got the original iPad. Used it 7 hours last night, then today to diagnose a network problem

Seems fine to me.

Last night I was working a casino and everybody else wanted to watch idiocy on TV so I got out the iPad and surfed DU and some other stuff and played some games.

Today somebody said the wireless network was acting up. I had my iPad out, booted and diagnosed the problem before the other guy got his laptop out of his case.

[nadinbrzezinski]

56. I am still using an iPad I

I upgraded the os, no fuss no muss

In fact, I will probably wait until the iPad V hits the market before I need to upgrade. That be six years of service?

[riderinthestorm]

14. How do we know that's an IPad? Couldn't it be a Samsung Galaxy?

I've been shopping for a tablet computer and they all look pretty indistinguishable from that angle....

[onehandle]

16. It's an iPad2. Steve Jobs gave it to him personally, two weeks before it was released.

And thank for delivering more evidence in Apple's multiple suits agains Samsung, A Korean company.

The White House has scores of iPads.

[Thrill]

19. Apple Smart Cover

.

[Zalatix]

20. I hate Apple. But I'm withholding criticism until someone makes a tablet in the USA.

Then I'll say something about Obama having something made in China.

'Till then, it's all made by Chinese slave labor.

[Robb]

21. "Pew-pew-pew!! Gotcha, POTUS!!"

[Phoonzang]

24. He'll never be able to play Mass Effect 3 if he keeps using Apple products. nt

[Evasporque]

25. EIther angry birds or words with friends...

mostly useless tablet....

[Prometheus Bound]

26. They look terribly inefficient hunting and pecking like that.

They ought to just talk to each other.

[onehandle]

27. That's not hunting and pecking. They are using their fingers as the 'mouse.'

This is how iPads and iPhones work.

You can pop up a keyboard on the iPad, and when you use it, your hands are positioned just like a traditional keyboard.

[Snake Alchemist]

28. "Those jobs aren't coming back"

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/business/apple-america-and-a-squeezed-middle-class.html?pagewanted=all

[madinmaryland]

31. OH SHIT! President Obama is an iDouche.

[onehandle]

34. I'm tracking the one for my wife's birthday.

Shh.

Delivery date to her is, of course, March 16, but some people got their iPhone 4Ss as much as two days early.

[onehandle]

36. Hers says Nashville, but it's not clear if that's the first destination or the current location.

So it could be that both are actually somewhere between slave labor central and here.

Vacationing in the Aleutians or somewhere else along the flightpath?

[onehandle]

38. Ah. Ours are FedEx.

So they will probably end up on a desert island with Tom Hanks and 'Wilson.'

[onehandle]

43. Why Your New iPad Won’t Be Delivered Early

Darn.
_____

We’ve heard a few reports from readers who have contacted their local shipping agent, asking when they can expect their new iPads to be delivered. These readers all have new iPads that are already sitting, waiting for delivery, in their home states.

Unfortunately, even though the iPads may be located just a few miles away, shipping carriers like FedEx are powerless to deliver them. Why?

Because Apple has the new iPads locked up in their own private 18-wheeler trucks. These trucks are on FedEx property, and entered into FedEx’s system, but FedEx has been told that Apple will not unlock these trucks until Thursday evening.

In other words, if you’re counting on having your new iPad slip through the cracks, there’s little chance of that. With the new iPad, Apple is taking a tighter rein on the delivery process than ever before. I wonder if by the fourth-gen iPad, Apple employees will be delivering it to you themselves.

http://www.cultofmac.com/152290/why-your-new-ipad-wont-be-delivered-before-friday

[onehandle]

53. I would hope so. Last September there was a new-in-box TAM on eBay.

That would have been a fun unboxing.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-20102233-1/20th-anniversary-mac-on-ebay-is-new-in-the-box

Went for $7300.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-Rare-Apple-Twentieth-Anniversary-Macintosh-20th-Mac-/270808523176?pt=Apple_Desktops&hash=item3f0d7221a8#ht_6747wt_1398

[Cali_Democrat]

46. You seem to be knowledgeable about the ipad..I have a question....

Can you play flash video on ipad 3? Can you play youtube videos? There are also other websites besides youtube that utilize flash? How could one view these videos?

[Cali_Democrat]

57. Thanks for the info.

[Phentex]

39. It's cool. I just beat Barack2012 in a game of Words with Friends...

He doesn't get a lot of time to play, but he's pretty good.

[Dorian Gray]

42. Hah!

[CraftyGal]

48. So cool!

I still love my Playbook thouhg, even after it crashed and burned on me. RIM replaced it after we did several hours of troubleshooting with it.

Yeah!