Tuesday 25 May 2010

Episode I: A New Toy


A week ago today, I received a text message from PRGeek, who was on holiday in the States. He was holding the last 2 unsold iPads in the USA. Did I want one?
Prior to this, I hadconvinced myself that I would wait until the frenzy had died down after the UK launch. There were too many teething problems with it, no iS
ight camera, no flash, too expensive in the UK, (and of course I couldn't actually get my hands on one).

Did I want one? I organised a "Family trip to the London Eye" so that we could meet him fo
r lunch the day after he got back.

And after a nearly a week, I still can't put it down. And unlikely as it sounds, I'm actually doing a lot of productive thingswith it. Like write my first ever Blog. Here's what I think of it so far:

Surfing (most of) the Internet
Websites load quickly, and look great. A page will fit to a screen really neatly, and although this makes some links too small for fat fingers like mine, the standard pinch/zoom that we all know from our iPhones makes this a non issue. What IS an issue is a lack of Flash.
As a consumer, I don't care about Steve Jobs' personal gripes with Adobe, I want my Inter
net to work. And if I can'twatch an embedded video, or open a page that safari handles perfectly well on my laptop,then I'm going to assume it's a problem with the iPad, not the website!

Typing
The keyboard in portrait mode is the perfect size for my crappy 2 fingered typing style, and the numbers and punctuationon separate keyboards will be familiar to anyone with an iPhone. In landscape the keys are a bit bigger an wider spaced. I suspect this is better for a touch typist, but I find it a bit patronising.
I don't remember ever setting it but the autocorrect is using British English, I presume because I synched with an English iTunes account. I like Apple for things like this.

IPod function
The great thing about an iPod is that it's portable. You can carry thousands of tracks in your pocket. You can clip it into a holder on your dashboard, and it doesn't get in the way. By contrast the iPad is never going to be practical as a music device. If you already have an iPod, (and I'm guessing that you do) then this feature is virtually redundant.

Video
On the other hand, the video player is fantastic. Even on a 16Gb I have found enough space amongst my apps for 8 movies. The picture is sharp and the sound quality better and louder than I was expecting, too. This is going to be a lifesaver on long car journeys with a three year old!

The Apps
The app store is still surprisingly sparse considering the US iPad release was month ago. The ability to use iPhone apps is of some benefit, but the way the iPad deals with them is not ideal: when you start an iPhone app, it runs in a virtual iPhone sat in the middle of the screen surrounded by a huge blackborder; your new huge screen is wasted and makes using the floating app a bit clumsy. You are given the option to expand the app to double size,filling the screen, but the app is left pixellated so that text-rich apps look dreadful. Sadly, the worst examples of this that I have used so far are two of my favourite apps on the smaller platform, Flixter and Stanza. The latter is totally unusable on the iPad, and there seem to be no plans to make an iPad version (as it would compete with Kindle).

Some of the graphic-rich apps, particularly the games, do work quite well as expanded versions. Touchgrind, Talking Carl and Topple all cope well with a larger screen. Flight Control and Angry birds work well too, but the HD versions of these work even better, and are not expensive.

There are also a few developers who care enough about their customers to have made their apps iPad friendly in free updates, so congratulations must go to Ancient Frog, IMDb, First Words (for people brave enough to let toddlers near an iPad!) and to the totally awesome Acceleroto Air Hockey.

The productivity apps are looking to be someof the most interesting. I can now link my iPhone camera to the iPad via Bluetooth. I can use my iPad as a second screen on my Mac, and I can even remotely access the desktop on my laptop (which incidentally means that I can use a Flash enabled version of Safari!) but the pick of these has to be Good Reader. Good Reader on the iPhone the screen was just too small to view PDFs reasonably. But the ipad version clearly doesnt have this drawback. It doesn't have the prettiest UI, but its functionality on theiPad is brilliant. You can store and view PDFs, plain text, photos, and play music files. When browsing in Safari, simply add a "g" to thestart of any url, the app will automatically launch and store the page to read later offline.

But some apps have been designed to showcase what the iPad is truly capable of. Beautifully produced, stunning to look at, full of useful information and drawing internet resources for up to date and accurate information, you MUST look at Theodore Gray's "The Elements" (now available as a UK version and spelt properly!). (and reviewed here
Art Authority is an art museum on your iPad, and Solar walk will take you on a flight to the edges of the Solar system. All three of these apps show how beautiful the iPad can be.


So There you have it!
I picked up my iPhone and it felt tiny in my hand. The home screen seemed cramped and the display looked tiny. I switched on my laptop, and felt disconnected from the display by a physical keyboard and mouse.
The iPad is much more visually satisfying than an iPod touch, but not as portable. It is much more and interactive than a laptop, but a little less powerful. You do not need an iPad, but by god you will want one, and rightly so!

Sent from my iPad

1 comment:

  1. Great Review Chris.
    Thanks for bringing it into the office to show it off :)

    It's a lovely piece of kit, I especially love the comic app

    For me it needs few more features to make it a must buy but for now i'll stick with my iPod Touch

    ReplyDelete