The Board

About 3 weeks ago, I got an iPad, which I wanted to wait for but knew was more or less inevitable. It’s been a fun couple of weeks, and I’ve learned that while there are some really nice things about the iPad as a platform, there are definitely some substantial limitations.

This is a long post, so click through if you want to read the rest.

The Good

When the iPad first came out, it was pretty common to hear, “it’s just a big iPod touch,” since they run the same OS and have the same UI. While technically this is true, after using it for a while, it’s pretty clear that the iPad, or another device with about the same screen size, is the right embodiment of the “iOS.” It’s more like the iPhone/iPod touch is an “iPad mini” than the other way around — we just have our preconceived notions since the iPhone and iPod touch came out first. Gestures seem more natural to me on the larger screen — they’re not microscopic pinching, zooming, and flicking. I think this would be true of any touch interface, not just iOS — larger screens just make the gestures more solid somehow.

Also, the battery life really is incredible, and unlike most Apple products, lives up to or exceeds Apple’s claims. I’ve charged it 3 times in 3 weeks, and that’s with pretty heavy use. I haven’t fired up my netbook once since I got the iPad, and it’s been my main net surfing device around the house — not to mention video watching (see below).

By and large, the apps available for iPad are really nice, and do a great job of using the screen real estate well, rather than simply scaling up the iPhone versions. Some apps I’m really enjoying are Reeder (love the iPhone version, too), ShinyTweet, WeatherBug, Instapaper, Carcassonne (one of my favorite games in real life, and great implementation on iPad), Simplenote, Dropbox, and Wolfram Alpha. More apps below, too — not all of it good.

Most of the rest of “The Good” has to do with the screen:

• Videos are really fun. I installed Air Video on my Mac mini, and use it to serve torrents directly to the iPad over wifi. Even on the mini, there’s enough horsepower to transcode and send the video stream to the iPad in an iPad-friendly format, such that I haven’t even put a video on the iPad in the traditional manner yet. We’ve been watching the new Top Chef, and it’s fun to be able to watch it in bed.

  Also, as I said a while back, we re-signed up for Netflix, and there’s a Netflix app that allows Instant Streaming to the iPad. I’ve watched a couple of movies and I’ve been plowing through Firefly episodes. It’s really seamless — there have been zero stutters, and it’s remarkably easy.

  Streaming videos over wifi, whether from Air Video or Netflix, takes about 1% battery for every 10 minutes. So an hour-long (44 mins without commercial) TV episode takes 4%, a two-hour movie about 12%.

• The web looks great. I haven’t gotten to the point of the tagline of “the iPad just melts away” or “the best browser experience on any platform” or whatever Jobs said, but it’s seriously very good. The lack of Flash is mildly annoying sometimes, but overall I don’t really miss it.

• Books are very readable. I’ve wanted to read Michael Lewis’s new book The Big Short, and so I decided to get samples on the main eBook platforms on the iPad: iBooks, Kindle, and B&N eReader. Of the 3, I preferred the B&N program, which is much more customizable than the other two, though the Kindle was a close second, and has the advantage of syncing bookmarks across devices (something B&N has claimed, but simply doesn’t work for anybody, as far as I can find on the internet). The other nice feature of the B&N eReader is that you can lend a purchased book to a friend — so anybody interested in The Big Short, let me know (you can read it on iPad, iPhone, Mac, PC, or Android devices).

• It’s great as a photo viewer. This was a bit of a surprise to me. I bought the iPad camera connection kit and took it on a trip with some friends, and it was great to be able to pop the SD cards into the iPad, download the pictures and movies, and then sit around and look at them on a really nice, nicely-sized screen. The only issue I’ve had involves some issues with syncing movies back and forth with iTunes (nerdy description of problem here, if you’re interested).

The Bad

All the great stuff is tempered by some areas where Apple, and the whole iPad system, could improve.

• Typing on this thing, simply put, is really hard. In portrait mode, I find it nearly impossible — the screen is too wide for iPhone-like thumb typing. Landscape mode is much better, but typing on a flat touch-sensitive screen is really hard for people who are used to touch-typing, since you have to keep your fingers elevated above the screen. Some of this is due to the tablet form factor — it’s hard to type on the same plane as the screen you’re trying to read. But there are some things that I’d love to change — for example, it would be great if you could remap some of the keys, too — there are some keys that I use quite a bit that are buried in alternate keyboards.

  I’m typing this now on a Mac, since there’s next to no way to actually sit down and really crank out lots of text on the iPad (at least, not without an external keyboard, which in my opinion completely defeats the purpose of an iPad). It’s fine for banging out a quick email, typing in URLs, and tweeting, but if you’re looking to really write, you’ll need at least a Bluetooth keyboard — and at that point, may as well bring your laptop instead.

• There aren’t as many apps as you’d hope. The other reason I’m typing this on a Mac is that there’s no usable blogging client on the iPad (as confirmed recently by The Apple Blog — I’m really hopeful that there’s a MarsEdit iPad version in the near, or even distant, future!). In fact, this is a broader problem — unlike on the iPhone, there are not nearly as many apps for the iPad. In most cases (Carcassonne being the rare exception), using the pixel doubling mode for iPhone apps is incredibly bad, and some of my most-used iPhone apps (Apple’s Remote, Mint, The Guardian, an actual Twitter-sponsored Twitter client, and a VoodooPad viewer) are not available for iPad.

• Reading in direct sunlight is, in fact, a problem. I really don’t do it much, and I found that the issue wasn’t the contrast or anything like that — it’s the high glare off of the glossy screen. The only time I’ve wanted to read outside was sitting on a deck to read a book, which was hard. As a side note, the new Kindle ($139 for the wifi version) has, in my opinion, totally nailed the pure ebook-reading market — I’d bring a gadget of that price to the pool, beach, or anywhere, but wouldn’t want my iPad in most of those conditions. On the other hand, a Kindle is useless in a dark room, while an iPad can still be used. Amazon has done a great job, and will probably even sell Kindles to people who own iPads for these reasons.

• Magazines are nowhere near where they should be. I think, done correctly, this could be be the killer app for the iPad. The ones that are available are nice, but they haven’t figured out the pricing and distribution to make this easy. I want to have an iMagazine store where I can subscribe to normal magazines and have them delivered to me, replacing my print subscriptions (I’d pay the same price as print, no problem for me — the convenience factor makes it worthwhile).

• Finally, there are some other things that you know going into the iPad: No multitasking until iPad OS 4 is out. No installing non-Apple stuff (better hope your PowerPoint fonts are all in Apple’s set of default fonts if you want to present off the iPad. Note that Symbol isn’t one of them, nor is Microsoft’s Webdings, used for many of PowerPoint’s bullets). Of course, there’s always jailbreaking…

The verdict

Not surprisingly, I’m pretty pleased with the iPad, but I’d say that you have to have reasonable expectations going in. It’s not going to replace most people’s computers, in my opinon (contrary to what I’ve read, this isn’t the computer my parents need instead of their PC). But it’s great to have around the house. I can keep my work and fun stuff separate, with the iPad sufficing for most of the fun stuff (except nerdy computer stuff). The instant-on makes it ideal for leaving in the living room, and I’ve really enjoyed reading books on it.

I guess my final verdict is “recommended with reservations.” It’s definitely not for everybody, though if you’re already heavily invested into the iPhone world of apps, understand what you’re getting into, and are excited about it, you’ll love it. I do.






This entry was posted on Saturday, July 31st, 2010 at 7:44 pm by Mike and is filed under Portable Tech. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.