iPad Review 750
The packaging is minimal and sleek. Almost nothing comes inside the box: just a cable, power cube and some minuscule documentation that nobody will read. The iPad itself arrived fully charged. It is usable out of the box without any syncing, but I chose almost immediately to pair it with my laptop just to get all my apps and data on it. This syncing process took forever. It's kind of amazing how long it takes to sync 20 or so gigs of movies and mp3s. This isn't unique to the iPad of course, but I never really noticed it on the phone since I don't sync video there.
The UI and functionality is pretty much as expected: It's a big iPhone. There are some minor differences (like being able to drag different numbers of items to the sticky footer menu). The new calendar application is nice. But the star is the mail client. Reading mail on my iPhone has been the "Last Resort," but the speed and clean layout and usability of the iPad mail app makes me prefer it to my desktop. I need a faster way to mark spam, but that's not necessarily the end of the world. Writing mail on the iPad is a different story. More on that below.
The new photo app is decent, but if you have a large number of albums and events it gets tough to find specific stuff quickly. I can't figure out why the iPhone and now the iPad don't make use of folders. Their mac equivalents both let you create nicely nested hierarchies of albums or playlists, but those both get lost on their little cousins where screen real estate is even MORE important. The video app seems to do strange things with thumbnails: it seemed to want to give videos the same thumbnail icon if they share an "Album." This means navigating my home movies category is lame because all 15 or so videos have the same thumbnail. It shouldn't be that way.
My iPad has no 3G, therefore it has no GPS. But applications were constantly asking me for permission to use my location. This seems like an oversight: if you don't have a location sensor, don't ask! Even the built-in Map app asked me for information that it could not possibly have.
Finally, time to test Safari: I tested out Slashdot first, and it renders pretty well. There are a couple of minor layout glitches and a few trickier functionality problems. The problems are mostly the same as the iPhone, but having the larger screen makes it a lot more obvious. I'll probably get some tickets into the system this week to clean up these bugs.
When I started browsing the net at large I noticed a few interesting problems: The first is that a lot of websites are serving iPhone pages to the iPad. So you get a number of ridiculously minimalistic pages on the big bright screen. It's laughably annoying to see these teeny tiny menus. Most sites seem fine, but I was surprised at the number of mainstream sites that thought I needed this. The lack of Flash is MUCH more noticeable than I thought it would be. The good news is that YouTube seems to embed cleanly and in-place, so a lot of video oriented websites still work fine. But the lack of Flash hurts. Apple has made their position known on the subject, so I'm not expecting anything to change. The lack of a real scroll bar make sites that make use of frames for navigation not really work properly. At the end of the day, I was surprised at the number of sites that actually had SOME problem with them. Most worked fine, but when something fails, I noticed more than I do on the iPhone. I think this is simply a user expectation thing: on my phone I expect things NOT to work and am happy when they do. On the iPad I expect things to work as well as they do in Safari in my desktop, and am irritated when they don't.
I tried out a good number of apps. The NetFlix app is really nice, but it doesn't let me rate selections using their little star system. Since I'm OCD about that, this bugs me. Epicurious is a fantastically elegant little recipe system that really shines on the system. ABCs app works but meh. The Weather Channel has a nice little app, and several of my old favorites have ports that make at least some use of the big screen. I suspect it'll be a few months before we really see what the unit has to offer since many of the most popular apps haven't been ported yet. I'm thinking Facebook and even the Apple Remote are very overdue. But hey, the old versions work, they just look like crap.
Let me talk about User Accounts. An iPhone doesn't have them, which is fine because one phone sits in one person's pocket. But your laptop is passed around, and the user account system on a Mac is necessary in any place where you want multiple people sharing a computer with any regularity. The iPad needs it: since this machine wants to be seen in a public place and be handed around, my wife shouldn't have to keep logging out of Gmail and Facebook. And I shouldn't have to leave my iPad on the coffee table signed into my mail. And I shouldn't have to sign out every time I put it down, leaving a brick on the table unusable by guests.
Finally let me talk about the device itself. It's heavy. I mean, surprisingly heavy. The specs say that it is 1.5lbs, which sounded very light on paper. For the first few minutes, I liked the heft; I felt that I was holding a solid, well-crafted item in my hands. But then I started trying to figuring out ways to type. I wrote a number of emails of moderate length and slowly realized that I just don't like typing on this thing. It's fine for URLs and names and passwords and a sentence here and there. But to actually sit down and write a thousand-word review well, there's just no way. I tried many different angles, but in order to hold it in your lap and type, you sorta need to prop it against your belly. Holding it up one handed made my arm kinda tired fairly quickly: unless I'm willing to squish my thumb against the center of the screen. When I do this, the center of gravity shifts and it's much more comfortable to hold, but there's a giant thumb blocking my screen, making it impossible to type. You can cradle it in your arm and type one-handed. That seems like the only way to use it while standing. But I just don't see myself writing anything lengthy. After a day of heavy usage, I felt a little sore. The size and shape is nearly perfect. But all that screen and battery sure feels heavy when it's spread out like this.
But I'll tell you what I like: Having a casual PC at arm's length for a quick lookup of something. Working within the screen size of the iPhone often makes simple internet tasks unwieldy, but provided whatever you need doesn't use Flash, this is a great little web browser. Fast and pretty.
Since the announcement of the iPad, I've wondered what its role could be. My first big question was whether it be a complete replacement PC for "Grandma." Like many of you, I'm occasionally called upon to do little tech support tasks on PCs that do very little, and I was hoping that this might be the solution. After just one day I know this is not going to work for them. The difficulty of using the keyboard. The missing Flash. And the lack of video camera for chatting with the grandkids make this device simply not ready for them.
My other big question is how much of a replacement PC it could be for a power user. Now I can work around Flash and rarely need a camera, but what is clear to me is that a huge percentage of my screen time is spent staring at iChat. While I don't usually need a camera or microphone, my iChat is connected to 4 different networks, and I simply can't do my job without the steady stream of co-worker notes and bot notifications that I rely on. I've yet to find an app that lives in the background and is capable of connecting to the 4 distinct networks that I use. (AIM, SSL'd Jabber and Non-SSL'd Jabber)
I'm not expecting a WoW client or anything, but Chat? Seriously, Apple: You're on iPhone 3.something-or-other and you can't give us a chat client? I can only hope that the end of the exclusive AT&T era means that Apple will no longer be tied to some secret back room deal that forced iPhones to try to shove users to the crap SMS network to pad a telco profit margin despite the fact that our devices are living on a Wi-Fi network.
So, what does Apple need to fix?
- Lose several ounces. PLEASE.
- Video Camera
- iChat
- User switching (or at least an Anonymous mode)
I used it for a day and a half and think that it will be an excellent couch companion PC. I'm also certain that on planes, long car rides, and vacations it will be a great little machine. The battery life is pretty dang amazing. But this is a 1.0 piece of hardware running 3.0 software. The size/shape is great. The speed is wonderful. And 2 years of Moore's law might make this a device to be reckoned with if Apple sells enough of them to continue heavy development on the software and hardware. This version isn't a replacement PC for anyone yet, but future versions might be. You probably want to save your cash until then.
Re:Location without GPS (Score:5, Informative)
Correct me if I'm wrong but I'm pretty sure that the iPhone, and therefore most likely the iPad, can get location without GPS via Skyhook and the known locations of wireless access points.
You are correct. I was surprised when my iPod Touch was able to identify my location. It took some research before I figured out that it was getting it from Skyhook Wireless [skyhookwireless.com]. It actually put my position on the street just outside the house, presumably where someone drove by with a sniffer and picked up the SSID of the WiFi AP I was using.
where you at (Score:4, Informative)
This seems like an oversight: if you don't have a location sensor, don't ask! Even the built-in Map app asked me for information that it could not possibly have.
google wardrives everyone's wifi while they update streetview; your unique 48 bit mac address uniquely identifies your location if you are on a recorded wifi hotspot.
Some might have forgotten... (Score:5, Informative)
The post behind this joke. [slashdot.org] Here it is:
Apple releases iPod
No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame.
Also missing besides folders: file protocol (Score:5, Informative)
In all other browsers, you can open a file on the device's file system. It's called the file protocol because the URL begins "file:". This allows offline prototyping of websites. I use it to define a "jump page" that's crammed full of all the hotlinks I normally use, organized to find them easily. Since we don't have the file protocol in multi-touch Safari, I have to put my jump page out to the actual Internet via iWeb and access it as an unpublished URL. In a sense, that makes sense, because I would only be able to use it if I were connected to the Internet, but it's not as private as keeping it on your own hard drive.
Also no View Source.
Also no default home page (short of saving the URL as an icon in the iPad's home).
Also no back arrow history (have to go back only one page at a time).
Also no Firefox allowed in the App store, which is what would REALLY force multi-touch Safari to get more usable.
Re:Bluetooth keyboard (Score:4, Informative)
Horrible [engadget.com]...
Re:Location without GPS (Score:3, Informative)
It's works many places. I just travelled to a bunch of countries in asia, australia and new zealand with an IPod touch and the maps app invariably gave me an exact location. In places like Singapore it was outstanding, it could give me precise location down to the street corner as I walked along.
Re:where you at and one more correction. (Score:3, Informative)
"My iPad has no 3G, therefore it has no GPS. "... Huh?
You don't need 3G to have GPS. Heck you don't have to have any cell phone connection to have a GPS. You need a GPS to have GPS.
Works with standard iMac bluetooth keyboard (Score:4, Informative)
The original announcement said that there would be a Bluetooth keyboard available, although I haven't bothered to check if it's available now.
The standard iMac bluetooth keyboard [apple.com] works with the iPad. [intomobile.com]
Not a laptop (Score:3, Informative)
Apple don't intend this to be a replacement for a laptop. You want a nice comfy keyboard, iChat and a camera? Apple make that: it's a MacBook Pro - no, seriously, it's a MacBook Pro.
A lot of people have said it feels heavy - OK, I'll accept that, not seen one, but sure it's heavy. So why does it need a camera? What you said about it being heavy is going to count double if I'm going to hold it at arm's length in front of me. Otherwise I'm either going to be in extreme close up (and trust me, I'm not the kind of person who does well in extreme close up) or a really nice view up my nose (and even Brad Pitt can't make that look good). Honestly, I'll pass on the camera - I also do work in places where cameras aren't allowed (defence and education).
Re:iChat? Really? What about multi-tasking? (Score:4, Informative)
Does gmail chat/facebook chat not work in the iPad browser? If it does, this is probably better for most than some proprietary chat client. Quite frankly, I'm inclined to place the unavailability of multi-task greater than iChat.
But what about when you want to quickly use some other app? Then you have to close your chat. It's things like this that demand multitasking.
Okay, let me provide a little clarification. The OS multitasks. Third party apps don't, because Apple has not provided an API. They have provided a push messaging API, however, so the OS can get a notification and flag a chat client so you know you have a new message, which will appear as soon as you switch back to the chat client. This is pretty much the same as Blackberry's push notification, except third parties use it, instead of just RIM. This is the right way to handle resource allocation and push notifications on devices with limited resources, limited bandwidth, and where UI responsiveness is important. So multitasking is not really related to the feasibility of implementing chat. Even if it was, that limitation has never applied to apps pre-installed by Apple.
As a side note, Apple is demoing the next version of the iPhone OS to developers on Thursday. The new version (by almost all accounts) provides third party apps the ability to run in the background, but it is questionable that Apple will accept a chat client app submission that does not use the push notification in any case.
Re:Pound and a half and its too heavy? (Score:5, Informative)
Yes. Even a magazine is too heavy, but usually you can rest it on your chair/lap until you need to turn the page. Now you have this gadget that needs lots of user input/interaction...hello gorilla arms. It isn't the ability to lift and hold the device or media, it is the need to continuously hold it and interact with it for long periods of time that becomes the problem. Sure, you can life a 20lbs or even 30lbs dumbbell a few times with one arm. But can you hold it there for 10 to 15 minutes with no effort? It is the reason why we don't have touch screen monitors for work and we continue to use keyboards and mice. Keyboards and mice simply take less muscle effort.
Now from the article:
Finally let me talk about the device itself. It's heavy. I mean, surprisingly heavy. The specs say that it is 1.5lbs, which sounded very light on paper. For the first few minutes, I liked the heft; I felt that I was holding a solid, well-crafted item in my hands. But then I started trying to figuring out ways to type. I wrote a number of emails of moderate length and slowly realized that I just don't like typing on this thing.
I saw this a mile away. The reason an "pad" device will never work is because of weight. Even a plain plastic clip board is annoying without a desk or surface to support it. Similarly it is why devices the size of a cell phone will continue to dominate. You can comfortably hold your phone in your hand and it isn't going to feel heavy because there is no lever force. All of the weight is in your hand. Now you have this pad device in your hand but you need to hit a point on the opposite side with your hand that's not holding the device. That "tap" will feel a lot heavier than it is because of physics. Now you need to do this a 100 or 200 times? 10 minutes? Nevermind, it'll be worth it to get the laptop in 1 or 2 minutes and not have to use so much energy just to hold the device.
Sorry everyone, it is going to continue to be phone size devices or laptops and full size keyboards for a while.
Of course the ipad will have a convenient stand at the Apple store so you don't actually have to hold it. You have to admit, they do know how to sell something.
But there is a solution to the ipad input, and Apple is not going to like it. It involves using your thumbs instead of your index finger similar to a gameboy. Apple is never going to like this because it isn't "friendly" enough. Just like their one-button mice and cmd clicking.
This where I have a problem with reviews... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Let's review Firefox based on IE-only websites (Score:1, Informative)
No.
Re:Why doesn't it run OSX? (Score:2, Informative)
My question to this whole deal is why does the iPad not run true OSX?
Do we seriously need to go through this again? I'll say what countless others have said before: "the iPad isn't for you". "Code and work", like it's a dev machine? With an on-screen keyboard? That's just a cry for help.
I would have bought one the first day if it was a real tablet that ran all of the software i need.
And I would have not bothered with a pre-order and keeping my nose pressed against the living room window waiting for UPS on Saturday morning if it were what you wanted. I've got a Macbook for when I want to run OS X. I've got an iPad for when I'm not trying to write the next great American novel (or more realistically in my case, writing the next great iPhone/iPad/Mac app).
Re:where you at (Score:3, Informative)
Google drives by my house and sees a WPA2-protected wifi router. I guess they could get the MAC of the router if they want (right?). But that's all they can see.
They can also get the SSID and they know the exact location. This is more than enough to allow a wireless device to figure out its position when it sees your router.
When I go to a google.com from my wifi laptop at home, google sees the MAC of the laptop, but NOT the router.
Actually, they see neither. The MAC address is exposed on the physical layer, as your packets are routed through the internet, they take on the MAC addresses of the devices they pass through.
So how would they associate a physical location with a google user? They can see my external IP online, but they cannot see that by just wardriving. (Unless there's a way to also sniff the MAC of my laptop at the time of wardriving...now I'm paranoid.) I don't get how they could associate the two things, unless I'm ignorant on the details here.
No one is claiming that they're associating the two. Parent poster merely said they're recording the GPS location of every wifi access point they see as they take pictures for street view.
Now, the two COULD be associated on the android platform which integrates heavily into your google account, but I'm not aware of that happening.
Re:CmdrTaco drags big brass ones along the ground (Score:3, Informative)
FWIW, since Saturday I've used it for:
Remote Desktop/VNC/SSH
Extra Monitor
Gaming system (most pleasant surprise: playing multiplayer games with my kids on a single screen)
Music Player
Web Browser
Television
Calendar
Ebook reader/Comic Reader/Interactive Children's Story Reader
"Interactive Educational Tool" (Exploring elements and molecules, etc with my older son)
Musical Instrument
Sketchbook
Re:CmdrTaco drags big brass ones along the ground (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Also missing besides folders: file protocol (Score:1, Informative)
Also no default home page (short of saving the URL as an icon in the iPad's home).
Look in Settings/Safari to set the homepage
Also no back arrow history (have to go back only one page at a time).
Click at the history button in the title bar
Re:CmdrTaco drags big brass ones along the ground (Score:1, Informative)
His predictions are correct. The first iPods were lame.
How do you figure? Aside from slightly different technology, they're about the same as the current iPods. They were fast, small MP3 players that synced automatically with desktop software. The only difference is that they were Mac-only, which didn't matter a whit to the Mac users who bought them.
Re:He didn't address suitability of it as a ereade (Score:4, Informative)
Taco may have skipped this issue, but other reviewers haven't:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/193389/ipad_as_ereader_glaring_problems_promising_apps.html?tk=twt_strohmy [pcworld.com]
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/ipad_ebooks_kindle_for_ipad_ibooks.php [readwriteweb.com]
Based purely on my iPhone (also known as "the precious"), I would skip the iPad and get a Kindle if reading is your primary goal. If you want to do all sorts of stuff, and read books too, then you may be happier with the iPad.
Re:CmdrTaco drags big brass ones along the ground (Score:3, Informative)
Ipod touches have had location support for a long time now (and they do not have gps or 3g chips). Google scrapes base station ID numbers from wifi points when it takes street-view photos--this was enough to put my friends dot on a map within 20-30ft of our actual room when he first got his ipod touch (it was in the right building...just not quite in the right apartment).
Re:He didn't address suitability of it as a ereade (Score:3, Informative)
Re:CmdrTaco drags big brass ones along the ground (Score:4, Informative)
> The first iPods were lame.
No, they weren't. No wireless and less space than a Nomad, sure, but they were physically smaller than other HDD-based players, transferring songs over FireWire was MUCH faster than USB at the time, and having an awesome UI (the scroll wheel, making it easy to quickly navigate your giant collection) more than made up for those other shortcomings. The net result was "not lame."
A lot of it is personal taste and preference, but for me (and many other people), the iPod was the first NON-lame MP3 player out there. Taco dismissed it over two small points. (And might I point out that no other MP3 player (AFAIK) had wireless at the time? Many people were hoping for it, sure, but no one else had it--so why was Apple deemed "lame" for not having it either?)
Re:CmdrTaco drags big brass ones along the ground (Score:3, Informative)
Wifi to location is not provided by Google. The iPhone/iPod Touch use Skyhook Wireless [skyhookwireless.com].
Even when GPS is available, this service is being used inside buildings etc.
Re:CmdrTaco drags big brass ones along the ground (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Yup. (Score:1, Informative)
no USB ports, no flash-card reader...these are things that would be very trivial to add from both a cost and engineering perspective, yet are still lacking Because adding those things would prevent it from being smooth and sleek. Jobs hates ports on devices for aesthetic reasons and he has final say on design. Thus, Apple products have the bare minimum needed for the device to function. Didn't you ever wonder why so many Apple products have the batteries are sealed inside? If a battery compartment door would spoil the lines, you're dreaming if you expect something as hideous as a USB port.
one reason the batteries are starting to be sealed in in more devices is because then they don't need to put the batteries in a row like in a laptop battery pack. they can fit the individual cells where there is room inside the unit, using the space more efficiently.