Even though I got an iPad the first day they were available, I’m certainly not the ultimate iPad fanatic. I didn’t have a pressing need for one, other than a gift certificate at an Apple Dealer that was burning a hole in my pocket.
My envisioned use for the iPad was to read the news at the breakfast table, and some light web browsing.
I’ve already commented in this blog on the announced lack of Adobe Flash support (that’s a good thing), and the lack of any memory expansion (that’s a bad thing).
Quick summary:
- It’s a giant iPod
- It’s fast
- The Safari browser is fast.
- The battery lasts a looong time.
- It feels heavy and clumsy as a book reader.
- If you put any video on it, it will fill up fast.
Initial Setup
If you have an iPod touch, or an iPhone, you already know exactly how to work this thing. The iPad needs to connect to a computer with iTunes to be able to do anything. When I first turned it on it had a blank screen with a plea to be connected to the mothership (iTunes). You sync it with media of your choice using iTunes. No surprises there. The only thing new is the ability to sync books with the device.
Use as a Book Reader
The iTunes store features both paid and free books. The selection of paid books isn’t too exciting yet, but expect it to grow. The iPad can display books in the EPUB format. I tested this out by going to Gutenberg.org and downloading some free books. I copied these into my iTunes library where they were synced to the iPad. I’m real please with how this worked, and this opens up a very large collection of books for use by iPad owners. These books displayed with very nice formatting, and images displayed well.
The iPad rapidly adjusts the format of books (and most other media) depending on the horizontal or vertical orientation of the device. It will even work upside down.
I found the weight of the iPad to be more than I expected. It weighs more than a paperback, but less than a large hardback. I found it difficult to grasp, hold and carry. There is nothing convenient to hold it by. It feels dense, thin and slippery. These are not extremely annoying observations for me, but I think there will be a good opportunity for aftermarket covers and carrying cases. Apple is proud of how thin the iPad is, but I feel it might actually be too thin to hold comfortably.
The screen is impeccably bright and clear. There is an automatic brightness feature in the menus, but I’m not sure how it works. There is no camera, so I don’t know if or how it senses ambient light.
Considerations for Outdoor Use
The screen is reasonably visible even outside in direct sunlight. It’s way brighter than most screens would be in such circumstances. However, the screen is very shiny, and direct reflection of the sun or other bright objects will obviously make the screen unreadable.
When the WiFi Model is available, people are going to want to use it in the car for navigation. The screen is bright enough for that, but watch out for the Polaroid effect. Like the iPhone and at least some other smartphones, the iPad screen is polarized. If you view it while wearing polarized sunglasses, the screen will become invisible in some orientations. On the iPhone and my HTC phone, the vertical orientation is viewable, but the horizontal orientation is not while wearing polarized sunglasses. On the iPad, the polarization is the other way — meaning if you hold the iPad in the horizontal orientation, you can see it fine, but if you hold it in the vertical orientation while wearing polarized sunglasses, you are likely to think it is broken, because the screen looks completely black.
Using the iPad for Video
I’ve used the iPad to watch some TV shows, some YouTube videos and some movies. The screen size is pretty near optimum for hand held viewing. Everything played from the iPad’s internal memory played speedily with no hiccups. I was having some trouble watching YouTube videos, which were stopping and seizing up part way through. The YouTube material looked great, but YouTube just can’t keep up. (I know my Internet connection is up to the task.)
The iPad hasn’t really decided how it’s going to store and organize video yet. There is a Video application, but videos can also be played from within iTunes. I couldn’t figure out why some videos that i synced went to one App, while others went to the other. In iTunes, the list of videos is available in text format. But, in the Video app, the only way to view the list of videos is apparently by an icon derived from the first frame of the first video of a given series. This works okay for video from iTunes, but is completely meaningless for home video, or for shows recorded with, say, eyeTV. There is no accompanying text to tell you anything at all about the video. YouTube is another separate app.
There is a free app in the app store from ABC that lets you watch most of their prime time offerings, with limited commercials. It looks okay, but only works in the vertical orientation, with medium quality video. I’d really rather watch video in the larger horizontal orientation. You can select any episode of any of the offered shows and start watching right away.
I also downloaded and tried the Netflix app. This worked perfectly, and allows you to stream movies from your Netflix account. Audio and video quality was very good.
About the Headphone Jack
When I tried to plug in my headphones with a standard 1/8 inch plug, the plug went in about 3/4 of the way and stopped dead. I was cursing Apple for using yet another weird non-standard connector. Later I tried my Apple iPod earbuds, and the same thing happened.
Both sets of phones were unusable. Or so I thought. I really expected the earbuds to work, so I just pushed really hard. With a mighty shove, they went in all the way. They work fine now, and so does the other set of headphones. The iPad headphone jack is just really tight, at least when it is new. It took a lot more force to plug in the headphones than I expected.
Other Features and Surprises
Heads up, if you are still considering the WiFi model. It does not have a GPS receiver. The 3G model will have one. If this matters to you, wait for, and pay for, the 3G model. It really makes sense, since the main reason to have GPS is to use Google Maps. If you’re on the move, such that you don’t know where you are, you probably won’t have WiFi, therefore, you can’t download maps from Google anyway, so having the GPS wouldn’t help much. However, I didn’t know this before getting my iPad.
Another thing I didn’t know is that the 3G model will not require a contract to use the 3G network. You have the option of paying by the month. That seems more attractive to me, as I already have one phone contract, and would not be interested in having another one.
The iPad has a physical switch to lock the screen orientation. My guess is that this is for reading or watching video in bed, and when the unit is lying on a table and the orientation is ambiguous, although it will also make the iPad more useful in microgravity. Thanks, Apple for thinking of this — I’ve been hoping for HTC to add that feature to my HTC phone in the next software release.
I got the iPad on the first day through a local Apple affiliate dealer, although it was only announced for the official Apple stores, online, and through Best Buy. I thought I would have to wait a week or so. I don’t know if that means sales were slower than expected, or more likely, they just pushed product out through some unannounced channels.
If you’re thinking about buying one, but still aren’t sure, you can take a look at the user guide here (PDF iPad User Guide).
Request for Features and Fixes
I have an AppleTV. It has WiFi. It syncs with iTunes over the network (WiFi or Ethernet). The iPad also has WiFi, and syncs with iTunes, but it doesn’t do it over WiFi. You have to plug it into a USB connection. Apple should make this work on the iPad just like it works with AppleTV. That would be awesome.
I am a Flickr user. Flickr is an online site that lets you store and share your photographs. There is a serious disconnect between the user interface of the iPad, and modern web sites like Flickr. If a Flickr user goes to the Organize tab, he sees the instruction “Drag Items Here to Edit Them as a Batch”. Oops. You can’t drag anything in Safari for the iPad. The drag action is interpreted as moving the web page around and doesn’t move anything within the web page.
This is an important use case for me, and it’s totally broken. Apple needs to add a feature to Safari to allow dragging of items within web pages. After all, this is Web 2.0, right?
