Wow, lots of hate for this thing.
When you say "it's just an iPod with a bigger screen", I say "wow! It's an iPod with a bigger screen!" (plus 3G and GPS).
Saying an iPod with a bigger screen, is like saying my 17" laptop is just a netbook with a bigger screen. Why the hell would I want a 17" laptop, when I can just get a netbook?
Who the hell wants to run photoshop on a netbook? Same goes for this. There will be thousands of apps that come out that will be new and useful, that no one would ever want to run on the iPod because the screen is too small. Some things about this that I like:
- It has a much better onscreen keyboard
- It has a public folder system for each app, and when you plug it into a computer, those show of as USB file shares. This means all the apps can share files between each other, and it's easy to transfer data to/from it.
- iTunes will support ePub books, and when you sync with iTunes, those books go into iBooks. So you can get free books on it (something you can't do with a Kindle).
- It has iWorks.
- I can use a real keyboard with it if I chose.
Aside from all the things it does, the exciting thing, is all the things it will do. Think about what the iPhone was when it came out, and think about what that same device is today. The phone people bought 3 years ago, today is 1000x better then the day they bought it (thanks to the app store).
This will be the same. Apps will come out for it that make it an even more amazing device. It's great that it runs the 150,000 apps that the iPhone runs, but I am more excited about the apps made for this device.
As for multitasking, I am confident OS4.0 will have it. These things already multi task, Apple has just not allowed 3rd party devs to utilize it. The last thing they want, is an app running in the background that you know nothing about, collecting all your data. Security is why they have not turned it on. There are rumors that the next OS has multi tasking.
Also, on a side note, I am shocked that so many people on a gaming site don't like this thing. It's a gammers dream. I have 30 games on my iPhone.
