Architects imagine a wall of iPads

Shame their website won't load on any of them.

How would these things be powered? Would ruin the tile effect to have a dock connector sticking out the bottom of every iPad...

Ummm.... Why not just use a Microsoft Tabletop?

Ummm... maybe if you took away the bezel. Doesn't the bezel kind of ruin the effect because it wouldn't be seamless anymore.

30*10*$499=$149,700
Might be a lot cheaper to just use an acrylic wall, several HD projectors, side-lighting, several cameras and software ("Surface"-style multitouch)

I don't think a mosaic of iPads is that crazy and like the concept. Still needs something to drive and syncronize them all though.

I can just imagine a wall showing the surface of a pool of water. Touch one and you see a ripple effect radiating to all the other iPads.

Home Automation touch panels are notoriously expensive and pale in comparison to the build quality of something like the iPad. Nor do they support gestures or multi-touch. Between iPod Touch and iPad, I think these could be the prefered platform for many.

The asthetic design is based on all these displaying a part of a large image. If these are actually meant to be used though, I don't see how this is very economical. Also, talk about having an outdated room in about a year.

I think these would be great for libraries as catalog search tools. Not sure why you'd want/need a whole wall of them. What are you going to do with the one by your foot? Or the one that's ten feet up in the air?

I've spent the day pondering the iPad and I've decided it is really interesting. I don't like the name, don't like the aspect ratio but what it actually is, well that wasn't even shown and I'm not talking about next versions of hardware or OS

1) Corporate

A $499 Portrait desktop. IT will love it, it's an easy to administer, wipe, lockdown, custom app, SOE, Exchange ready, rich media device that undocks and lets the worker present, share ideas, travel, work remotely, gather data and sales. A portrait desktop makes it actually useful to write documents on because unlike a netbook, it's portrait not landscape so it actually fits a page of text.

Oh and it runs all Windows apps with touch and a virtual keyboard. How? Via the numerous VNC styled Apps already available from free out to a few bucks, or roll your own. How long do you think it will take those devs to switch up the UI to full screen res, they already have the SDK, I'd say they have already done it today within hours, maybe minutes. How many corporates are running virtualised instances of Windows already, yeah.... and how much are they going to save not needing CAL's for Exchange, oh yeah...

2) Repeat for Education, Lab, Point of Sale environments

Maybe swap out to Linux, whatever, shell doesn't matter it runs them all.

3) Pro Media

There are already apps available for iPhone/Touch that present multitouch faders, pots etc for ProTools, Logic Audio, Strand and other lighting rigs even sound desks.

These apps with minimal adjustment can now display not 8 but 48 or even 96 faders. The iPad is a $499 wireless, multitouch sound/lighting desk usable direct on stage or in studio. This kind of gear (touch screen 96 fader) is worth $50k, $100k and above. The apps aren't 99c they are more in the $100 range, so you have a $599 wireless sound/lighting desk controller replacing $50,000 to $100,000 of gear and its in your hand/s and runs for 10 hours. That's like two orders of magnitude in pricing difference.

On the iPhone/Touch they are pokey, suddenly its serious.

This doesn't even consider all the VJ and DJ style apps that exist and can now be written output direct to projector and amp.

4) Pogostick type capacitive styli

Nuff said

5) OSX interface panel

Want to turn your OSX box into a full touch screen, want to paint direct onto Photoshop. It can already do it. VNC apps and mouse apps already exist. I didn't say multitouch because I don't know the SDK and it would require a OSX side helper app of some significance.

6) Systems Administration

Connect to any box, any OS, be at the client desk from anywhere at full screen, even via 7.2 HSPDA+ (in decently networked countries). Use it as a portable handheld head for all your headless servers. No need to have a centralised panel and keyboard, stand right in front of the box and test

...

I haven't even got started with all the cases, parents buying for school children is another example. Thing is, with all the examples the apps already exist and need minimal adjustment, in many cases just a switch in the UIKit in the SDK.

We are fool to think the iPad is an eBook or a poorly aspected video screen or even a netbook that's missing stuff (yes its missing features no denying). It is actually a new format of computer, its not a tablet, its not a desktop - its both and us mob who think of desktops as related to "grunt" fail to grasp that the desktop is actually the top of a desk and many functions in companies, schools etc are already over powered by massive grunt that is never used. It's also portrait, so you can use it to write a document, or even a thesis.

iWork was a strategic show, iLife is probably already finished or on its final touches, but iLife would be just more media. iWork said something...

Also lest not forget that the iPad if not already then soon (being iPhone OS) is able to connect to 3rd party accessories. Tom Tom Car Kit runs in the background and is available to all apps. I also won't get started on that or the pass through on the desk, ie printer, hdd, blah blah blah.

Oh and I'm from Australia too, like the article, us mob we got our thinking caps on, not just the let down caps. The only let down was the way the iPad was presented (or rather what wasn't presented). Oh that and the name and aspect ratio.

I can't understand what does it use for?