I was definitely a skeptic of the iPad, but after spending 30 minutes with one this afternoon at my local Apple store my opinion changed. The Apple iPad is undoubtedly a revolutionary device. Now don’t get me wrong, the device has a lot of room to grow and in its current form I will not be purchasing one, but the iPad has changed what is possible for personal computing. Apple took what to many was a far fetched dream and made it an affordable reality (starting at $499).
Form Factor
Like all Apple products the iPad felt soooo good in your hands. The styling is sleek and sexy. There are a minimal amount of buttons. The size is perfect; it is lightweight, but not so light and delicate that you feel like you have to be very careful with it.
LED Display
The 9.7″ LED screen on the iPad was very impressive. The contrast was good, the colors were brilliant and the screen was visible from almost any viewing angle. The first thing I did to test the screen was to view the images that Apple preloaded on the iPad. As expected they looked very good, but to give this an independent test I downloaded some high resolution images for work that I have viewed on very expensive and color calibrated monitors. Those images looked as good or better than I have ever seen them.
The next thing I did to test the screen was to view some movie clips that were loaded on the iPad. I choose Step Brothers, one of my favorite movies. The movie quality was great and very fluid. I could see myself watching a movie on the Ipad. According to a salesperson and Apple’s website the battery will last for 10 hours of continuous movie playback. I did not have any earphones with me so I was unable to test the audio quality, but I assume it will be similar to an iPod or iPhone.
After laughing out loud to a scene in Step Brothers I checked out the iBooks application. I read a few pages of Sun Tzu’s, “The Art of War”. The type was very crisp and easy to read, but I wonder what it would be like to read for an extended period of time? Personally I have never read anything on Amazon’s Kindle, but I hear that it is very nice because the screen is not glossy and almost looks like printed text. I asked a salesperson on his thoughts about reading a book on the iPad versus the Kindle and he had two comments, 1. the screen is back-lit so you can read in the dark; and 2. the iPad’s screen is color, so you can actually see images in books. Both valid points, but I still question what it would be like to read for an extended period of time.
Keyboard
As I suspected the keyboard will take some getting used to. The size of the keyboard is nice and can be used in landscape or portrait mode. My biggest problem is that when I type I lightly rest my fingers on the keyboard — this is a BIG NO NO. All in all it was not miserable, but I would not want to type a novel or long email on it. According to Apple, a keyboard will be released later this month.
Surfing the web
Surfing the web was a real dream. For me it makes it easier to interact with websites and if I’m going to sit on my couch and surf the web I would use the iPad over my laptop. The only drawback in my opinion is that Apple refuses to support Adobe Flash!!
Email
The email client is very similar to the one on the iPhone. It’s seems simple and easy to use. Full disclosure: since it was Apple’s iPad I did not have my mail accounts setup so I could not give the email a full test drive.
Maps
The maps work just as they do on the iPhone. The device lacks actual GPS so it relies on triangulation from cell towers to find your location just as the first iPhone did. I was anxious to check out the new terrain view, but there was some problem at the time that was not allowing me.
iWork
The iPad is not all play and can be used for work too! With the addition of iWorks you can make changes to presentations, spreadsheets and documents all on the fly. With the iPad Dock Connector to VGA Adapter you can plug your iPad into a projector for a presentation.
Biggest drawbacks of the iPad
- Even with its speedy 1 GHz processor the iPad does not multitask.
- The largest hard drive available is 64GB which by today’s standards is not very big.
- Adding to the mediocre HD, the iPad has no slots for an external memory card.
- No camera
As I said in the opening of this post, I think the iPad is a revolutionary device and look forward to seeing how it changes how people work, play and compute.
