The State of iPad Satisfaction 443
harrymcc writes "We know that the iPad is selling like hotcakes, but how satisfied are the people who buy it? Over at Technologizer, we conducted a survey of 6,000 iPad early adopters. There are a few places where they were critical — the majority, for instance, aren't happy with Apple's App Store approval process. Overall, however, they're overwhelmingly upbeat."
a new way of programming (Score:3, Interesting)
Where I work, we were really upset there was no way to use wireshark on the ipad. So we made cloudshark [cloudshark.org], and I bet a lot of other people are doing identical things -- the beauty of jQuery and other APIs like that is that you can replace 90% of a regular desktop app with a simple web page. There are probably tons of other examples of this sort of thing. There's all sorts of CSS hooks for ipad to accomplish the new modes of use, scolling, double fingers, et cetera. It's frankly very fun.
Re:Flawed survey (Score:2, Interesting)
Because it limits what apps an end user might want to use. For example, an ad blocking plugin for safari. It exists for jailbroken ipads/iphones and should exist in the app store but Apple will never allow it, thus it's a problem with the approval process for end users.
pardon? (Score:4, Interesting)
Surveying a subset and generalizing the population from which it's drawn is what we call inferential statistics; it's a cornerstone of modern science and social research.
There may be some significant problems with the survey design, however. There's no information about how the survey was conducted (internet? email? something else?), or how the respondents for it were chosen (self-selection? something else?). The information's a bit to sketchy to tell how reliable the survey is.
Private life (Score:0, Interesting)
They forgot to ask how many times the customers held hand of another male iPad owner, and whether or not the touching got "serious" at any point.
If you happened to buy one: fuck you. Several respectable people did buy one, but if you are not a scumbag, you could have waited a LITTLE while for affordable Android tablets that don't support the Apple reign of terror. Enjoy your shiny thing, but don't come back complaining when we have a dystopia worse than what microsoft would ever dare to envision.
Pretty much sums it up (Score:4, Interesting)
I have a 16Gb iPad 3G and I must say that their survey matches my experience.
I don't care about a camera on it. Front or back. And find the only things I wish it had were native print function, and built in SD card reader. The 3G service is OK except at work where my building seems to be some sort of Faraday cage for anything radio related.
I was kind of surprised that iBooks wasn't showing as highly rated as I thought. For me that is the killer app. It makes access to the Project Gutenberg material flat out painless. I know that there are other ways I could get those titles on there and read them if it wasn't built into the app, but this makes it easy.
Survey has built in bias (Score:3, Interesting)
We aren’t trying to capture a demographically representative sample of all iPad owners and we didn’t normalize the results. The opinions you’re about to read reflect only the experiences of the folks who took our survey–readers of Technologizer and other sites (such as Daring Fireball) that linked to it. Which is fine by us: We were dying to learn what you thought.
Not scientific, not normalized, not statistically meaningful.
Becomming more satisfied... (Score:5, Interesting)
I was about 80-90% satisfied at launch; I could use my bluetooth keyboard from my ancient Palm, take it with me as a laptop substitute when traveling for work or personal, and in a crunch write a report in the notepad app and e-mail it to a co-worker to format and PDF. Now, I'm closer to 95% satisfied after getting a spreadsheet/word processor app and a few other gems.
What I hate is the absurd organization and search capability of the AppStore. Yes, I know about 3rd party tracking/review sites, yes, I am willing to waste hours searching... and ultimately, yes, I am willing to pay $5-10 to try something that may not meet my expectations.
But, I am quickly getting to the point where expensive ($30-80) apps have reviews that state they don't live up to stated functionality, and it is becoming impossible to really experiment with different use-cases.
By far though, I get more satisfaction using the device as a content-creation vehicle rather than a consumption device. Consumption is lost on the ads that cannot be blocked that in turn screw up the page formatting.
(Oh, and it pisses the living sh!t out of me that Slashdot jumps down half a page when you expand a comment!)
Re:Personally (Score:4, Interesting)
Funny, because we replaced all our Dell laptops with MacBook Pros over the last 3 years here because the Dell's started having a number of problems after 18 - 24 months. And these were serious hardware problems like motherboards cracking. It wasn't quite the systemic problems we had with HP laptops, but that was 2 generations of PC laptops from two different manufactures both with quality control problems. And these were $1,500 Dell/HP laptops, not the super cheap $500 consumer laptops.
Since switching to the Mac's the only hardware problems across a dozen laptops we've had is folks have broken a number of power supplies at our favourite coffee shop when they fall from the tall tables onto the ceramic tile floor.
As far as the iPad goes, I've had my 3G model over a month now and I've only gone to my Mac Mini for computer stuff twice. Both times relating to MS Office Documents that iWork couldn't open. (I still use the Mac Mini as a media center attached to my TV at home). I've given up my MacBook Pro and have docking stations, one at the office and the other at home. It does exactly what I need a device to do: Email, Skype chat, web surfing, and document editing with iWork.
As far as that goes though, my iPhone had largely replaced my MacBook a year ago. The only problem was composing any emails that required a long response was impractical. With the iPad docking station, that problem is resolved since it has a full keyboard.
Re:3G Reception? (Score:3, Interesting)
The N900 is more of an iPod or iPhone competitor than an iPad competitor, isn't it? Your comment about the iPad being unable to do half the things some other product can do reminds me of CmdrTaco's famous critique of the iPod when it first came out.
I think the iPad is well designed. Deciding what not to include in a product is often a more difficult decision than deciding what to include. Apple is very good at this and I think they have mostly nailed it with the iPad (I don't have one but my wife does). You don't like it and guess what? Thanks to Apple, the slate format is super hot right now and you will likely be able to get what you want from a different manufacturer.
Lookup the iPhone / iPad demographics some day. The people who own these things are mostly quite well off. A $500 purchase for many of these people does not make them "invested heavily".
Re:Screw the iPad (Score:1, Interesting)
This is only going to get worst. Apple should really take advantage of their piles of cash right now and bring manufacturing back to good'old America.
P.S.: Steve, remember that it's cheaper to manufacture things in Canada than in the USA. ;)
Self-serving description much? (Score:3, Interesting)
That's sure a self-serving post that's been rating Informative.
Each time the iPhone has changed its hardware "it's been way ahead of any Android devices"?
You point to the resolution of the display and the better camera, and the gyroscope. Those are pretty arbitrary criteria.
I say 4G data connection and a bigger, MUCH more vibrant screen are way more important than the criteria you named, does that now make Android devices "way ahead of" the iPhone hardware?
Or are those not as important as the factors you named?
Heck, let's play the game your way, and just go back one year, to the iPhone 3GS. At that point, it had an inferior resolution display to what was available on Android, it had an inferior camera to the best available on android. So that would make Android devices "way ahead of" the iPhone 3GS when it came out right? Or were a different set of arbitrary characteristics the most important back then?
There are times when one piece of hardware is significantly better than another. Right now, neither the Android nor the iPhone camp is able to claim being the clear cut winner of hardware.
Re:Personally (Score:4, Interesting)
The specs I'm seeing are 8GB built in + 16GB SD card as standard. That's 24GB total. You could up it to 8+32 = 40GB, but that will add to the cost. You can only put applications on the 8GB. And if an application does offer the option of saving to either disk, then that must add complexity to the UI. iPhone is easy - you don't have to worry about where to save data.
For a significantly larger screen. The resolution improvement is far better than simply looking at the screen pixel counts would suggest.
You're comparing a yet to be released Android device with a recently released iPhone. And the Android device is behind. That's my point. Sure at some future time a new DroidX will come out and it might have caught up on the screen res. But by then it'll be up against the iPhone 5, which will have progressed again in various areas - not necessarily the screen. Android will always be playing catch up.
Dont forget the superior optics in the iPhone, the second front facing camera in the iPhone, or the gyroscope in the iPhone. Don't forget the iPhone is smaller in all dimensions, and lighter too. Don't forget the iPhone has videoconferencing. Don't forget the iPhone offers tap-to-focus for both stills and video. etc.
So what do you get with the iPhone? A cool shiny device that works well in many situations and gives bragging rights. What do you get with Android phones? well pretty much unlimited possibilities, wherever the market wants to go and whatever carrier you want to use.
WIth the iPhone you get a 98% satisfaction rating and a 96% good value rating. You get better designed hardware and software. You get hardware that's more advanced than any Android phone, and a wider range of higher quality apps. You have the peace of mind that if there's a phone app that people are talking about, you're almost certainly going to be able to run it, because it'll be an iPhone app.
Great around the office (Score:5, Interesting)
I admit I originally bought an iPad as little more than an expensive toy, figured I'd just have it sitting on the coffee table at home for casual surfing, email, etc.
But you know what? I'm finding it a wonderful device to have around the office. Being able to combine typing and freeform sketching on something with the same form factor as a pad of paper is great for taking notes, without "separating" you from other people by having a laptop screen in the way. iThoughts is fantastic for brainstorming and more structured note-taking. I can pull up a design flat, walk over to a designer, ask some questions, and scribble notes or sketch right on top of the design. Just as good as a full colour printer and a box of crayons. ;)
And where it really kills? Meetings. The other day someone asked a question about our new site's stats, so I pulled up a table of figures in Google Analytics and passed it around the meeting, just like a piece of paper. Try THAT with a laptop.
Can it replace a laptop or desktop for doing real work? Hell no. But I'm finding it invaluable for many things that have traditionally been the domain of paper & printouts. It's becoming my new "back of the napkin". When lying flat on a table it becomes far more of a shared, group experience than a laptop can ever be. No more huddling around one person's screen, everyone can see it, and even interact with it, at the same time.
Note that most of these points relate to the tablet form factor in general, not just the iPad.