My girlfriend and I watch Deep Space Nine DVD's from Netflix with dinner every night. Wednesday, after the iPad announcement, I remember watching them use their PADD's on DS9 and thinking, "yes, I get it now".

What I really want is for the iPad to get cheap enough that you can leave three or four laying around the house or carry them around with you. You can leave one in the kitchen and use it for recipes, browse on the couch, and so forth.

Also, a long forgotten comment of mine becomes suddenly relevant! http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=726950

The cool thing is that the real ones now look better than the fictional ones ever did.

Oh come on now, it's Star Trek. Besides the low budgets, the fans expected it to be cheesy!

Why the hell do you think i want one so badly?

Ditto. I posted this mostly because I was suprised the comparison hasn't come up more in discussion, so I figured maybe not as many people were familiar with it as I assumed. Discussion of the various benefits and short-comings aside, I am so ready to pretend like I'm on the bridge of the Enterprise...

It wasn't lost on me. I did, however get some quizzical glaces when I brought it up in less geeky settings.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1081099

Hah. Yeah. It definitely pre-disposed me to liking the concept.

I've already been tinkering with a little LCARS library for my iPhone. I got seriously inspired this Wednesday to pursue it further!

This just enforces that I'm going to wait for an "iPad Mini", (7"-ish screen possibly smaller when you factor in the border used on the iPad). Star Trek didn't really have to think about user interface, but they needed actors to be able comfortable holding and operating the devices.

Offtopic: Look at the rectangle shown here http://tinyurl.com/yduybaf The size shown is an iPod Touch; I wanted to add one of the smaller newtons and the iPad. When you add multiple sets of measurements it drops the rectangles and just compares areas. Anyone know how to fix this?

I'd like to see a real-word implementation of a sonic screwdriver: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonic_screwdriver

Or the digital multi-tool, from the old show ReBoot: http://reboot.wikia.com/wiki/Glitch

The best part of that page is definitely the appropriate advertisers. http://imgur.com/EdH8L.png

Does it have multitasking?

I don't think so. We always see the PAD running the same application/GUI which seems to be an all-in-one reader supporting video, photos, and text. I can't remember any instances of the PAD being used for much more. Not even audio/video chat which was reserved for the personal communicators and wall/desk consoles. At one point we see Picard's desk covered with multiple pads further suggesting they were uni-taskers. Multi-tasking certainly existed in the 80's so the vision of future technology in Star Trek TNG seems to be one of mainframe computing, data in the cloud, and multiple specialized task-centric devices (personal communicator, tricorder, PADS) and good ole' fashion desktops (consoles) being used for more advanced tasks.

No Flash? Phht...

No, but it was easy to jail brake!

http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Borderland_(episode)