I pre-ordered the iPad the first day anyone was able to do so. Since then I’ve been waiting in eager anticipation. Today, the iPad finally showed up at my door. Now, I will give you my thoughts and first impressions of Apple’s latest product. The following points are in a list form, and in no particular order.
Pros
The first thing to strike me when I took iPad out of the box and turned it on was the huge display. It’s sharp, and ultra bright. The multi-touch features are of course, fast and responsive just like the iPhone. As to be expected, the accelerometer is just as responsive as it’s iPhone counterpart if not more so.
Apps launch incredibly fast, especially in comparison to my first generation iPhone. Apple’s custom A4 processor really has power, and just watch out when the new iPhone gets this same chip this summer, it will be remarkable. Additionally, I can’t wait to see what developers are able to do with this device. Games like Star Wars Trench Run, work well enough on iPad, but just think if it were optimized for the device.
With all that power, one would expect the battery life to be crummy. I haven’t had the chance to run a full charge out of my iPad yet, but I’ll agree with what other reviewers are saying. iPad seems to have better battery performance than the 10 hour battery life Apple is advertising.
All of the built-in applications have the fit and finish one would expect from Apple. I haven’t noticed any major design problems with any of them. They just seem to work intuitively in your hands. The maps app is insanely fast, in fact the only thing holding it up was my data connection.
The on-screen keyboard works great in landscape mode, but in portrait mode it’s too cramped for touch typing but too big for quick thumb typing. It takes a little getting used to, but ultimately isn’t as big of a problem as some suggest. In fact, I wrote this review using that keyboard through the iPad version of Pages. Pages however, is another review for another time.
Seeing as I bought the Wi-Fi only model I can’t vouch for the 3G connectivity, but I can say the Wi-Fi connectivity works very well. I conducted the bulk of my tests in my bedroom which is notorious for being a Wi-Fi black hole. I had no trouble acquiring a strong signal. I suspect it won’t be to hard to patch into hotel Wi-Fi with this device, something I can’t say for my iPhone.
The design feels great in your hands. It’s smooth but not slick. The anodized aluminum offers the perfect amount of grip. It’s also insanely light. At 1.5 pounds you can lift the device with a single finger. As iPhone 3GS owners know, the oleophobic coating Apple now puts on their multi-touch displays really works. Few visible fingerprints are left behind.
Mobile Safari works great. It’s easily (as with the iPhone) the most important of the built-in apps. Quick, and nimble it pulls sites up really quickly. A lot of people complain, but the lack of Flash support is a performance plus.
Oddly enough, you have to download the iBooks app from the App Store. Once downloaded you can buy books. I haven’t bought any books yet, so I can’t give this app a fair review yet. I plan to review this, along with the iPad iWork apps at a later time.
Cons
The iPod app has got to be the ugliest user interface design I’ve seen Apple put out in awhile. It works intuitively, yes, but the control buttons and volume slider look puffy and unfinished. I understand they are made this size to accommodate fingers, instead of a mouse pointer, but I think they would look a lot better if they resembled the controls of iTunes desktop clients. I would also guess that Apple didn’t use UI elements similar to the iPhone’s because they would look tiny and sparse on the device’s enormous screen. That leads me to…
Empty Space. I think this is a side effect of looking at an iPhone screen for three years, but everything feels like it was ballooned to fit iPad’s big screen. The worst offender, again, is the iPod app. When looking at album art, the overlaid controls feel spread out and sparse. Another example is the lock screen. The slider is nearly the same size as the iPhone’s but feels out of place on iPad. There are many more examples of this odd, spreading-out of UI elements throughout the system.
Although the Mail app looks and works great it’s still lacks features one would expect from an email client, especially compared to desktop clients. Power users, you know exactly what I’m talking about.
The Photos app still doesn’t have batch deletion. So you have to either delete photos one-by-one or import them to your computer and then delete them there. This is a pain for someone with large photo libraries. The UI is again intuitive; you know how to use it the second you launch it, but it does feel gimmicky at times.
iPhone apps playing in the “black box” mode work well enough, but feel incomplete. Playing them in full-screen mode works well too, but it’s apparent that this is a stop gap. Just like classic apps when Apple switched from OS 9 to OS X this is a “good enough” solution until developers can optimize (or build specifically) for the iPad.
This isn’t Apple’s fault, but standard definition (to be fair most of it is below standard definition) YouTube content viewed on this device looks smudgy. Simply put, the screen is too good for the murky content uploaded by most YouTubers.
A minor quibble but the background images Apple ships with iPad are abysmal. The only one I can stand to look at is the default screen and a few of the nature scenes. The rest are crap.
Final Thoughts
The iPad clearly isn’t a large iPhone. It’s a new type of computer. Once you get your hands on the iPad it becomes apparent that the iPhone is in fact a stripped down version of the iPad that Apple chose to bring to market first instead of the iPad. Let’s face it, phones are more popular in the U.S. than tablet computers. Apple was working off of the success of the iPod to bring the iPhone to market first. Once the market was softened up, the iPad would come next. All of this is easily seen in retrospect.
This is pure speculation, but I suspect iPhone OS 4 will pick up some of the design cues from iPad and bring them to the next-generation iPhone expected this summer. I would wager that we’ll see more of the “brushed metal” look in the upcoming iPhone OS.
The only way this is going to replace Windows PC (it’s capable enough to what most users need a PC for), is if Apple pitches this as a stand-alone platform and not as a peripheral as is the case of the iPod and iPhone. In short, Apple will need to pitch iPad as a capable, portable, non-laptop form-factor computing platform for the rest of us, to really steal market share from the traditional computer market.
I suspect this is another big push by Apple to get rid of the user-accessible file system. iPad, just like the iPhone, does not have a user-accessible file system, and you don’t miss it. Apple has made using a device like this effortless. If an app creates data it will handle everything itself. No need to fish around folders to find it. I suspect Apple will be leading this push to get rid of the user-accessible file system, even on entrenched platforms like the Mac. Again, most users won’t miss it. I believe this is the future of computing. Purely a facade to the (developer-accessible) technology underneath. The file system is disappearing for the common user, and this is the start.
Although this type of device is currently (mostly, but not entirely) dependent on a computer to sync it to, I think that will change slowly as we move into the future. That said, I think we’ll always (at least professionals will) have a workstation-type machine to do the heavy lifting, but for the average user we’ll have something like iPad.
I will also point out that iPad absolutely destroys any of the attempts Microsoft has made to break into this market in the past. Microsoft has always taken the stance of glomming a touch screen on a traditional laptop and calling it a day. Much like their failed WinMo attempts, Microsoft’s tablet computer initiatives just crammed a mouse and keyboard-driven version of Windows on a device that needed a new user interface developed for it. The iPhone, and now iPad, did this. iPad really is something different, and you’ll have to experience it to understand what I mean.
All of the problems iPad has, can easily be fixed with software releases. The hardware is solid. Overall I must recommend iPad. I also recommend you try one out first before making the commitment. Play with one for a half an hour and see what you think. I’m sure you’ll love it.
This device is a game changer, just like the iPhone and iPod before it, and the original Macintosh before that. I don’t just say this because I’m an Apple fan, there is something truly different about iPad that I can’t convey with words. You have to try one for yourself.
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