10 Days with the iPad: 10 Likes and 10 Dislikes
Overall I’m very impressed and I think the iPad really does represent the future of one type of computing - I can readily see one or two of these devices in every household. But it’s far from perfect. So here are my first impressions: 10 things I like and 10 things I don’t like about the iPad after 10 days.
Things I like:
1. Screen quality. It’s fantastic - bright, crisp, and clear. It just draws you in. A little small at 1024x768 (and the 4:3 aspect ratio means that 16:9 movies are letterboxed and therefore even smaller) but it sure beats an iPhone.
2. Battery life. I can use it all day without coming close to draining it.
3. Reading. It’s a great device for reading. I read my email in the Mail app, books in the iBooks or Kindle apps, PDFs and Word docs in Good Reader, magazines in Zinio, and news I get from the New York Times Editor’s Choice, Wall Street Journal, BBC News, and NPR for iPad apps. Plus, there are dedicated book-centric interactive applications like Alice for the iPad and Jack and the Beanstalk.
4. Drawing. For myself and for my son, there are a slew of great drawing and coloring apps - for example, I am using Adobe Ideas 1.0 for iPad and Penultimate; my son likes Color & Draw for Kids and 123 Color HD Talking Coloring Book for iPad.
5. Watching movies. The portability and long battery life make it ideal for watching video anywhere. I’m using Safari, Netflix, YouTube, and Air Video (to stream movies from my Mac so they don’t have to be loaded on the iPad).
6. Studying maps. The large touch screen makes it a joy to play with the Maps app. I haven’t seen Google Earth for the iPad yet, but the iPhone version works on the iPad, and looks surprisingly good at 2x resolution.
7. Playing music. If you are into playing music at all, you’ll love the iPad. A few apps I’ve been experimenting with include JamPad, Virtuoso Piano Free 2 HD, TabToolkit, and Magic Piano.
8. Playing games. Sort of a no-brainer. I’m not a big gamer, but I enjoy Labyrinth 2 HD Lite quite a bit, and Real Racing HD. For my son, My first Tangrams HD, Checkers Free HD, and Tic Tac Toe Free HD.
9. Access to our Macs. I have a Mac Book Pro and a Mac Pro for my business; my wife has a MacBook; and we have an old Powerbook in the kitchen that we use for general internet surfing and playing music. With Apple’s Remote iphone app I can control our music from anywhere in the house, and with the Mocha VNC app, I can screen share any Mac right on the iPad - it’s a little kludgy, but it works.
10. The Apple iPad case. It makes it much easier to carry the iPad, it protects the screen, and it props up the iPad for easier viewing.
Things I don’t like:
1. Fingerprints. As you can see in the top photo, the iPad collects them like mad. However, they wipe off easily and when it’s turned on, the bright screen makes them disappear. Still, it looks gross.
2. Typing. The keyboard is certainly better than the one on the iPhone, but I’m having a hard time getting used to it. If I hang my hands over it in normal typing position, I tend to accidentally touch the screen and enter stray characters - leading me to do more hunt-and-peck typing. I’ll probably be getting a USB keyboard at some point. Another thing is that the virtual keyboard changes depending on which application you are using, which can be quite annoying. For example, sometimes holding down the period key will bring up a “.com” alternate key - but sometimes not. The bottom line is I don’t do too much communication (email, IM, Facebook, etc.) on it because I can type so much faster on the laptop.
3. Ergonomics. It’s sleek and beautiful, but it’s too heavy to hold in one hand for any length of time, and it’s hard to get into a long-term comfortable position using it. At a table, propped up in the Apple iPad case, it does fine. On the couch, a chair, or in bed, I find myself frequently changing positions. Still, it’s great to be able to do some of my computer work, read, and watch movies on this device without sitting at a desk.
4. No Flash. I understand all the reasons for Apple excluding Flash, but it’s still a pain to navigate to one of my regular sites and discover I can’t use it on the iPad. For example, Ustream is an application for live streaming of video and many folks I follow now use it to hold live video “meetings” - it works, but the comments section does not, because it uses Flash.
5. Entering passwords. On my laptop, I use the excellent 1Password to automatically enter my passwords into sites from a pop-up menu right in Safari. 1Password has an iPad app but it works just like the iPhone version - you have to launch the 1Password application and go find the site you want in that application - not in Safari. I don’t bother.
6. Application issues. Most applications seem to work great, but I’ve had few issues. For example, the audio for streaming Netflix instant queue movies is much lower than audio in other applications - so much so that my wife and I cannot watch a movie together on the iPad without plugging in speakers or shared earphones. The Weather Channel application crashes frequently. The New York Times Editor’s Choice application only includes a small subset of the published articles (thus the “Editor’s Choice” amendment to the name). And while it’s great that iphone apps work on the iPad, most of them don’t look very good blown up to double size, and really need an iPad version. I’m sure that will change in the coming weeks and months.
7. Interface. Although I love the overall touchscreen experience, now that I have about 7 pages of apps, it’s very hard to find a specific app. Yes, I can use the search function, but I prefer to swipe through the pages. And I have spent some time reorganizing the icons, but it’s a tedious process - either directly on the iPad or in iTunes. It would be nice to be able to space them more closely together. Finally, there is no indication of what application is currently running - this can be confusing. For example, many apps have built-in browsers - sometimes I think I’m in Safari when I’m actually looking at an app-specific browser - so I have no access to things like my bookmarks or history.
8. Sunlight. Not only is the screen quite difficult to see in direct sunlight (especially when it’s covered with fingerprints), within less than 10 minutes I found the iPad heated up so much that it alerted me with an overheating warning and shut down. So using it outside is limited to shady areas only.
9. No separate user accounts. I gave the iPad to my wife to try - the first thing she wanted to do was check her email. Well, she can’t use Mail to do that unless I set up a separate account and log in and out each time to switch users. And she can’t use me.com because with Safari, it automatically logs into my user account and won’t allow me to switch. The workaround is to use another browser (I’ve used Atomic Web Browser Lite successfully). What would be nice is to have separate user sign-ins just like OSX so we can each have our own apps and settings.
10. The Apple iPad case. Although I included in the Like list above, I have to include here too because a) it collects dust and crumbs in the crevices like crazy and b) it’s quite difficult to remove the iPad once you’ve jammed it in there. Our iPad spends a lot of time in the kitchen and in kid’s hands so collects all kinds of crud.
So that’s my 2 cents after 10 days - let’s see how things develop from here. It’s a fascinating little device.
Filed under: Editorial •GentryMedia •Apps4Tablets •OS •Apple •
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