Anyone else here in the post-PC era?

It depends what you mean by "toy." People are getting useful work done on these devices, in part because sometimes work is more useful when you don't have to do it chained to your desk. I mean, let's look at your family gathering again - what did you pull out to answer the question?Oh, that's right - nothing at all, because your PC, which you could have used to answer the question, was back at your house instead of with you. It was literally useless to you because of a trick of geography - it was somewhere you weren't.I know we're talking about "post-PC", but in fact we're not really talking about phones and tablets that are exactly the same as PC's. We're talking about devices that are a lot more useful than a PC at home when I'm at the store (that is, useless.) My iPhone isn't as capable as my PC, not by a long shot. But when I'm waiting at the bus stop, my iPhone can come out and be used. My PC can't, because it's not there.None of this is meant as a defense of Apple devices in particular - as an aside, though, the criticism that Apple products are too hard to use is just bizarre - but as a defense of limited mobile devices in general. Of course you have to use an iPad with your fingers - if you're sitting at a bus stop, what are you going to use a mouse on? If you're sitting on a beach, where are you going to put the keyboard? Think it through.Also, just curious, since your post doesn't say: what kind of phone did you get? (And, like, on what planet did you live that Win XP Search ever did anything useful?)

O ... K ... . So a device that you have in your hands that cannot do the job is somehow superior to a device that can do the job but which you don't have your hands on.That's bizaare. No, they are most definitely not the same as PCs. And yet the OP of this topic has them replacing PCs. They cannot replace PCs, as the crippled iPad2 version of Google Earth illustrates. Smartphones and pads can have their uses, but not to replace PCs. Unless one does nothing useful on one's PC. What? No touchpad? All the laptops I've had had touchpads (except for the first one, which had a trackball). And they all had two buttons, a left one and a right one. I have to explain it to you? Does "Programming with a one-button bar of soap." ring a bell? With my digital camera (this was pre-smartphone), I video'd the routine so that I could replay it for everyone in the next week's class. I transfered it to a USB drive and brought it in. The studio had a brand-new Mac with a one-button bar of soap attached to it. I plugged the USB drive in and then tried to figure out how to get to the file so I could play it. I forget what double-clicking on the folder icon did, but it was the entirely wrong thing. Now if only I could pull up a context menu for that icon, but how the frak do you right-click with a fracking stupid one-button mouse? I forget how I eventually managed to get to the file. Then it turned out that Macs refuse to recognize AVI files, even though it's been an established video format for over a decade. (Wait for it!)As I said, I have an iPod nano. Trying to work with the iTunes app was a series of headaches. And my nano has a lot of features built into it, like FM radio, sound recorder, video camera, pedometer, etc. The instructions that came with it was a folded card that was mainly pictures and only a few words. Virtually no explanation of how to use those other features and especially nothing for the things that you couldn't figure out from the menus. I had to Google to find a third party set of instructions for how to use my Apple product! Am I the only one to find that disturbing? I also had to go to a third party, Wikipedia, to learn how to "right-click" on a Mac. Turns out there's a secret key on the keyboard that you're to press, only you have to have already been a Mac user to know that.I let my friend know about that "right-click" trick. She's been a tech writer for decades and her brother just passed his Mac on to her. She gave it a try and went back to her Windows laptop, which she find to work far better than a Mac. Oh, I'm sure that Macs are good computers for people who don't know anything about computers and who don't want to do anything useful outside of writing and graphics. Android, a Thunderbolt. Works well for what it's intended to do. I use Maps for look up routes, checking the traffic, and even the very basic Google Earth functionality. I use the web browser at times, usually with Wikipedia, though it's more laborious to type in than it should be (I'm a touch-typist, so hunt-and-peck is slow and laborious for me). I use the video camera and have looked up a couple videos on YouTube. I installed a text editor for typing notes, but mainly to write shopping lists. My Android can hook up to my PC as an external drive so that I can transfer files in and out; what about on an iPhone or an iPad?However, I also have found that "we're not going to tell you anything" mentality with it. I did get a quick start card with the phone and downloaded a PDF instruction manual from HTC, but even that was cursory and did not tell me everything. Apps are even worse about that. It came preloaded with a number of common apps, but there's no explanation how to use those apps or even what they are supposed to do. Yet again, one must go to a third party for any information. Either that or one has to go exploring and experimenting, like when I found buried away the menu option to display on the map where you had taken a particular photo. Com'on, you're just jerking me around, aren't you? You can't really be serious.In XP and a couple earlier versions, Search worked just fine, rather well actually. With a wildcard specification, you tell it which files to look for (eg, *.txt); you can even give it multiple filename specifications. Then you tell it what string to look for in those files. In addition, you could tell it what drives or directory subtrees to search in and you could even restrict the search to a range of dates. And Search would only look in those files and report back the ones containing the string that you specified.Now, that is useful!Now with Win7 Search is all fracked up. You try to tell it to look for a string in specific files and it will apply that string to file names and the file name spec to strings to search for, thus loading you down with a lot of false hits. It's not even clear how to restrict it to a particular directory subtree. I've positioned Windows Explorer right on a directory containing a specific file. I told it to search for that file. It couldn't find it. I copied the file name and pasted it in the search box. Search still couldn't find it. That file was sitting right there in front of its face and Search could not see it!Win7 Search is fracked up!

You really think an iPad can't tell you the distance between two cities? (Hint: it's called "Maps." It was probably right there on the home screen. The name should have indicated that it had something to do with geography and maybe directions and distances. Why did you think you needed to use Google Earth?) Couldn't it maybe be that you couldn't figure it out, because it's not exactly like a PC? Yes.Why do they have to be exactly like PC's to replace a PC? Sorry, I hate touchpads and find them so generally unusable that I tend to forget that laptops have them. And, of course, desktop PC's don't have them at all. So, yeah - no touchpad. Control-click, but Macs have two-button mice. Have for ages. Your "brand new studio Mac" did, too. Double-clicking on folder icons opens folders, same as any other computer. Quicktime plays AVI and has for decades. Except that you don't seem to know anything about computers except how to use them in very specific, very circumscribed ways. The issue you have seems to be that if it doesn't work exactly the same way it works in a specific version of Windows XP, you can't learn any new way to do it. That's the problem you're having with Vista/Win7, that's the problem you seem to have with Macs - you learned to do things one specific way, and if that way doesn't work, you have no idea what to do.It's something you see a lot in the way senior citizens use computers. They don't understand the conceptual basis of what they're doing, they only understand it as a list of concrete actions. They don't understand "check your email, write a letter, upload to YouTube", they only understand "double-click the envelope, press the Start menu, bwa-bwa You-what?" iPhone and iPad does that too. And "play around with it" never occurred to you? Again, that's something that you see in technology users of a certain age - they're convinced that any deviation from a specific, circumscribed set of routines will "break it", so they're just not capable of exploratory learning. Anybody who's had the experience of having to fix their relatives' computers knows what I'm talking about.That's the reason your criticism is so bizarre. That's the reason your iPod didn't come with a full instruction manual - you're supposed to fuck around with it for a few minutes, make mistakes, discover serendipitously. ("Oh, it does that too! Awesome!") Anybody younger than about 45, at this point, is completely comfortable with this process, because it works better than reading the manual. You remember more because you worked for it, and because you got the "reward" from independent discovery. Apple products really are verifiably easier to use - there's all kinds of videos of pre-verbal infants, for instance, using iPads with a great degree of proficiency - it's just that it's not any easier for you because of the flawed way in which you approach technology. Dead-on serious. Never in my life has Search in Windows done anything useful. If I want to search my computer for a file, I have to install Google desktop. Of course, they're not making that any more. (Fuck!)

Now, that's not entirely true, is it. Try getting something off of or onto an iPhone/iPad by just hooking them up to your pc via USB and going into explorer. That ain't gonna work. You'll need to use the dreaded iTunes to do something like that, or jailbreak it. Android however, it's just "hook it up and drag and drop".

yeah I have been playing them since 1982, there is nothing childish about them, once again i can see you do not have the capacity to understand many things in this thread. evidence you haven't a clue what you are talking about. that was probably the stupidest post in this whole thread.

No, but you know what is childish?Having a big chip on your shoulder about being an adult. If you were really an adult, you'd play what you want. And you wouldn't be so threatened by people who do different things than you. So you don't have an argument that I'm wrong. Got it.

ahh i was thinking more of a flight-stick controller, not a PS joystick. so true. MW3 is probably going to be another kid's game if it follows its predecessors. I am not sure if I will get it or not. A great reason why they do not have supported online servers for the PC version, because their target audience is kids, and kinds play on consoles. which makes this more of an adult game, and a great reason why it did poorly on the console compared to on the PC.

I do that all the time. I didn't even have to jailbreak - the first time I plugged my iPhone in, it showed up as a removable storage device. I can drag and drop stuff right off of it.Now that I'm jailbroken, I don't even have to plug it in; I can SSH and SFTP into it and grab whatever I want, peruse the entire filetree, and so on.

STRAWMAN ALERT!!!!!I am not threatened, nor do I have a chip on my shoulder. You are just making shit up now.

Hmm, I never knew that. Ok, maybe off of it then, but putting something on there most definately requires itunes, at least, if you want to use it on the iPhone/iPad. I know, it's great, isn't it. That's really how it should be, even without a jailbreak. At least, that's what I think.

I agree (though FFXI was good on PS2, its was still better on the PC).in addition to the complexity of the program, you have to consider the complexity of the audience. All of the girls out there, and the users who want touch screens, and controllers (mostly kids), do not have the desire or attention span to seriously play an MMO.I really like DCUO.

You certainly wouldn't want to copy music that way, but why would you? You don't put songs on an iOS device, you put playlists on. Eh, I'm not convinced. Until I changed the root password, anybody could have gotten in and taken full control of my phone, downloaded all of my pictures, even turned the mic on and used it to spy on me. These are computers with full sense capabilities that we're carrying around at all times of the day and that are never more than a few feet from us, even during the most intimate and personal moments of our lives.I think a fair degree of out-of-the-box restriction is appropriate. Aren't we at Day Two of the ScarJo Age, due to hackers grabbing nudie pics off her phone remotely?

No, I'm reading your posts. Nobody's fooled by your childish posturing.

You're really a toolbag. "Girls" play MMO's too, genius.

First of all guys (this is to all of you), I'm almost 30 so I'm getting too old to keep up with you youngsters.Anyway... Didn't you know that apple advertises the ipad and ipad 2 as nothing but very expensive cool looking toys?At where I work, the guys all have ipad 2s. And they continually tell me I wasted my money by buying the transformer rather than the ipad 2. But when they had to do any real work, they would put away their ipad 2s and take out their laptops. For me, I just plug my transformer into my keyboard dock and work from there. I have not touched my laptop for 4 months now. I either use my desktop at home or when I'm out of the house I use my transformer. It is probably the most productive post-pc device out there.And that's my main beef with apple in general. Their PR department for years have been dumbing down people by convincing them that they couldn't be productive with their very expensive toys. Of all the ipad and ipad 2 owners that I know and know of, none have figured out a way to be productive with them.But there are ways to be productive with them. The airlines have recently switched completely to ipad. Read the following stories.United Pilots Get iPad Flight Manuals - The New York TimesSalon.comWe can’t find the page you are looking for.iPad 2 makes Qantas test flight for air travelers - CNETAttention Required! | CloudflarePilot scheme: iPads replace aeroplane instruction manuals | iPad | The GuardianMy uncle is a pilot and he told us all about it. It is the most convenient thing that's ever happened to pilots.In fact, I've replaced all my manuals with pdfs on my transformer.I managed to find a very good deal and paid $380 for brand new transformer and keyboard dock. But most people pay $550 for both parts. Most people pay $500 for the ipad. To me, it just seems like a big waste of money if you don't find something productive to do with these new devices.When I first started using my transformer at work, some people actually laughed at me. Apple had convinced them that you couldn't be productive with a tablet. To them, they couldn't imagine the tablet being anything other than fun and games.Hear that, apple users? Until apple stop this bullshit about very expensive toys that aren't useful, I will continue to be anti-apple. Tell Steve Jobs to stop advertising the tablet pc as very expensive toys and I'll support apple. In the mean time, I will continue to not use apple products.PS - It is not a coincidence that almost all apple users I know are also computer illiterates. Edited by Taz, : No reason given.