So more and more it appears that the rumors of a 2048x1536 iPad 2 might be true.
(http://www.engadget.com/2011/01/17/ipad-...g-of-wood/)

At that resolution, most high quality manga scans will fit at full zoom
without the need to scale the image.

Even better, light novel scans will now finally fit on one screen.
(NOTE: impossible to read light novel scans with the bottom of the page chopped off, especially since the sentences are from top-to-bottom right-to-left.........)

Anyway, I guess we'll find out in a few weeks.
I'd really like to see what the battery life is like.

The 10-hour battery life of the current iPad is one of it's biggest strengths IMHO.

Tempting, but I think I'd rather have an Android tablet with that res.

Of course, for those prices, it's probably cheaper to print the books out. (Or heaven forbid, buy them!)

Actually, even on high-res screens, I still far prefer actual books for reading Japanese. It's kind of odd, since I prefer ebooks for English. Maybe if there were better readers with vertical and furigana support.

I've been thinking for a while - I might actually get one, especially if it's got a resolution like this. Mostly because it seems to be a superior format for reading, and alternatives such as the Kindle are total suck if you happen to live in Sweden. That said, I'm not entirely sure I could justify the cost.

astendra Wrote:I've been thinking for a while - I might actually get one, especially if it's got a resolution like this. Mostly because it seems to be a superior format for reading, and alternatives such as the Kindle are total suck if you happen to live in Sweden. That said, I'm not entirely sure I could justify the cost.

I agree about the cost. It's pretty steep. My friend with a pad says he pays about 28000円 a month for all the bells and wistles from DoCoMo. But then again, thanks to the power of sharing, all the books and pdf that I've collected over the years would add up had I actually bought a paper copy. So does the convenience of having a nice pad and all that legally downloaded free material add up?


As for myself, I'll probably sit back for another year or so and let the competition battle it out for a while and jump on the band wagon after lots of the early kinks and things have been worked out (and the price dropped a bit).

I'm also in the "wait and see" camp. I'm sure iPad2 will be shiny (and expensive), and I'm curious to see how the Honeycomb tablets turn out (probably buggy and feature-weird at first).

Since I'm a heavy Google/Android user, I'm leaning towards Honeycomb, but if it's a train wreck, I'll sit it out. I still have a laptop and a smart phone, and the lack of a pad device hasn't killed me...

... yet. >_>a

I have an iPad and I definitely don't regret buying one.

At first, I felt that maybe that I bought something I didn't need
and practically shelved it for a month. But over time, it's creeped
up on me and now I can't imagine not having one.

Keep in mind that I don't have an iPhone (I prefer Android for phones).

Right now I use it for:
1. Japanese dramas - I like to study drama scripts and I keep the videos on my iPad in
case my conversation partners need clarification. I convert the drama scripts to PDF using OpenOffice and annotate them with iAnnotate.

2. Google Maps (the extra screen real estate really does help IMHO)
3. Alarm Clock
4. Manga reader (I can't use it for light novels now, since the vertical resolution is too small. Novels are too annoying if they don't fit on one screen from top to bottom at a good zoom level. The iPad's increased resolution might change that.)

5. PDFs (for eBooks)
6. Japanese-Japanese and Japanese-English Dictionaries
7. Notes (using a cloud-based sticky notes app)
8. Musical ear training (using an app)
9. eTuner (you sing into it with a USB microphone and it tells you what note you are singing.)

10. Anki
11. Exercise (I use iFitness for my daily workouts and All-in Yoga for stretching)

So it's mainly little things, but together they add up to make something that I put to use
every day. I'm sure a lot of those things can be done on an iPhone or other Android tablets. Like others, I'm anxiously awaiting the arrival of Honeycomb tablets.

To be honest, I care a lot more about the android market that the tablets themselves.
I can't imagine developers flocking to the Android market since there
is so much more money to be made in Apple's App Store.

Somehow the Android Market needs to become a significant source of
cash flow in order to attract more developers. I really hope Google can
pull this off.

I'm just having trouble imagining the problem you're having with light novels. At the very least, the reader I use automatically resizes large pages to fit the screen, and I've never found a scan that isn't perfectly readable even in double-page landscape mode, unless it was significantly smaller than the iPad's resolution to begin with. And of course, if you're using Aozora Bunko formatted novels, pretty much all possible display problems are mitigated.

On a 1024x768 screen, the furigana is quite blurry. I find this on both manga and scanned novels. With text, the furigana is optimized for the screen resolution, so it isn't as bad. (Actually, on a 1440x900 monitor turned sideways, I still had the problem to a certain extent.)

Since the iPad 2 has 4x the resolution (2x each direction) it should be quite a bit easier to read from... It still remains to be seen if it's good enough, though.

Maybe I'm just too used to trying to decipher the chicken-scratch fonts that NDS games seem to be in love with. Even the blurriest scan on the iPad feels like I'm spoiling myself. :/

Mcjon01 Wrote:Maybe I'm just too used to trying to decipher the chicken-scratch fonts that NDS games seem to be in love with. Even the blurriest scan on the iPad feels like I'm spoiling myself. :/

That may very well be. Have you seen the font on Ghost Trick? The さ on that one is a killer.

[ファブリス]

This is great news. I checked out an iPad in a shop today again. Just playing around.

The book reader is very nice, but it would really benefit from a higher resolution.

I'll be very patient and wait for v2, if only because it's rumored to be thinner and have a flat back.

The Android 3.0 Preview is pretty scary, imho. Google has the money to hire the best designers out there... go figure.

I cringed the first time I saw it, to be honest. I'm not even a designer myself and the first thing I thought was "wtf, is this Arial font?".

Don't buy a Mac, it'll turn you into a design hipster before you know it.

@chamcham: Did you try Air Display? Could be really nice to have your iTunes or tweet/chat etc on a secondary monitor.

My tablet is 1280x800. Haven't had any problems so far! After 1.67 days...

I'd love to be proved wrong, but maybe not this year? This guy does kind of make sense: http://daringfireball.net/2011/01/cold_w...na_display.

Though I can't help but wonder if this is what the "strategic deal" Apple made with suppliers in the past few months is. I guess we'll have to wait until April to see, but maybe we shouldn't get too excited yet...

deebo Wrote:I'd love to be proved wrong, but maybe not this year? This guy does kind of make sense: http://daringfireball.net/2011/01/cold_w...na_display.

this guy is full of crap. The ipod touch 4g quadrupled its resolution while having the same amount of RAM (256MB) as tje Ipod Touch 3g.

if the iPad's resolution is quadrupled as well, there's no reason why the RAM (probably 512mb) should be insufficient .

That being said, it is all hearsay. We are no closer to the truth....


ps. Don't be surprised if the resolution turns out to be 1920x1280

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John Gruber is full of crap? *rollseyes*

It won't be 1920x1280. Where did you pull that off? They're going to switch from 1.6 aspect ratio to 1.5? ...

The resolution has to double to be pixel perfect scaled without blurry edges, in order to support all existing iPad apps.

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/...upply.html
"Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo of Concord Securities has prepared a report indicating that iPad 2 won't get higher resolution screen this year, using the same 1024x768 of the original iPad."

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I'll ditch this here as the general iPad thread for now

IPad Makes Space in Japan's Tiny Homes by Removing Bookshelves

ファブリス Wrote:IPad Makes Space in Japan's Tiny Homes by Removing Bookshelves

I guess there'll be more Japanese e-books in the future. Not that I'd mind...

More rumors: iPad (2nd generation)発表イベントは今月末が濃厚？

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The iPad2 is expected to be revealed at a media event tomorrow