lostsync

So, I’ve got a new domain and blog and what better way to kick things off than with a review of a device most people have heard of but relatively few have used? The Apple iPad was launched yesterday and a friend of mine who works for Apple brought his newly acquired toy with him to an easter party today. I got to play with it for a while and these are my thoughts.

First Impression

When you pick up an iPad, it’s sort of like holding the screen from a 13″ MacBook Pro. There’s a fair amount of heft to it. It’s bright. It takes a moment to figure out exactly how you’re going to approach using this thing. If you intend to type, one hand isn’t the best solution, but a workable one. My biggest overall curiosity about the thing has been how it would be to type on a virtual keyboard of that size, so I first tried it in my lap. The back of the device is very smooth and it does not give you a particularly safe feeling for it to rest on jean clad legs, but I didn’t have any real problems with the device sliding around in practice. That said, I would definitely get a silicone skin for it as soon as humanly possible. I have a one year old child and aluminum isn’t going to offer enough friction if she decides to plow into me.

Usage

The UI is responsive and fast. Things open and close instantly, as you would expect. I noticed very little, if any, lag in performing any of the tasks that I tried out. Using the device is natural. Between the bevy of touchscreen devices flooding the market in recent years and a life of training via science fiction films, all of the ideas behind interaction are pretty second nature. I noticed that sometimes it would fail to register taps on certain things, especially toggling different views in the Maps application. It takes a fairly deliberate press to make it respond.

Typing is about what you’d expect. It’s not that hard, but as a touch typist it’s definitely alien. If you have one or two keyboards you use every day and then suddenly switch to another one, that starts to sum up the feeling. Let’s also say you use a Mac every day and this new keyboard is also attached to a PC and you’re trying to do something that requires a lot of keyboard shortcuts. That’s pretty much it, minus any sort of physical feedback. I don’t think it would take that long to get used to, but it would take some amount of adjustment for sure.

The Screen

Some applications do definitely benefit from the larger layout. Maps was one very good example of this. You get every bit of detail and clarity you would hope for in a device of this type, with the ease of use of an iPhone and minus the browser chrome and Google’s in-page UI you’d find on a laptop. If you are actually using the map to find a place or because you are lost or navigating, it would be a lot more useful to you than something the size of a phone would be. If the regular map view doesn’t do much to impress you, switching to Street View probably will. It’s pretty much like standing there, wherever there is.

Safari is another app that the immediate benefit becomes apparent. Pages render in full size, but all of the niceties of the iPhone’s Mobile Safari are still there. The experience is nice, friendly. You feel like you don’t have to try as hard to use the Internet. That’s the best way I can describe it. It’s a bit like using a MacBook’s multitouch trackpad for the first time. When you realize you can scroll, pan, zoom, and switch all without ever really clicking anything, it’s pretty amazing. This takes that idea to another level.

Other applications don’t really utilize the new space much. Wolfram|Alpha’s app isn’t particularly noteworthy. Most text and graphics are rendered in roughly the same size as an iPhone would render them in landscape mode. I didn’t really find the information it presented to be any more easy to absorb. In this case, the iPad doesn’t really offer anything over the iPhone.

Some Final Thoughts

I’ve been a big fan of Apple’s products for over a decade, when iMacs were still CRTs and the logo on a PowerBook was upside down. They have made so many things over the years that made me think, “Wow, I need that.” This iPad isn’t one of them.

My fiance decided to advocate an anti-iPad position while talking about the device with my friend from Apple. Every talking point of hers was refuted to some degree. Refuted may not be the right word. Let’s say instead that he had a retort for everything. For example, “Tablets have been around in one form or another for around a decade but have never really caught on. What makes this different?” To this he said that nobody had ever created an OS specifically for the task at hand. You always get Windows crammed in to a device where it isn’t at home. The iPad’s OS is at home.

On this point, I’m not sure I agree. Yes, Windows may have been crammed in, but I didn’t really get a distinct impression that iPhone OS had been much more than stretched out. Sure, they added a lot of things to make it more pleasant to work with than stock iPhone OS would have been, but they weren’t huge changes or anything. It really is basically scaled up.

There was another point at which she asked if it could replace her Mac or her phone, to which he of course said no. Also not really true. She’s a very casual user and the vast majority of her media is housed on either our home server or my Mac. She has an iPod, but it’s a 2nd gen Nano and she’s happy with it. Google Docs or the iPad versions of iWork could likely fill most office-type needs. The rest of what she needs it for are forums, social sites, and email, all of which it’d do quite well. Given that Apple’s two biggest sources of revenue are iPhones+iPods and Mac notebooks, it’s not surprising that he said she needed all three. You could really feel the sales pitch coming through thick, and he doesn’t even work on the sales floor.

Summary

So, the question on everyone’s mind: Is the iPad just a big iPod touch? Basically, yes. But that is cooler than it sounds.

The next question: Does anyone need this thing? No. The iPad is 100% luxury and entertainment.

And finally: Will people buy them? Some, sure. I definitely see similar devices in a lot of households in the coming years. Widespread adoption couldn’t be more than three to five years away and that might even be a bit off. There are a fair number of good uses for it but there are none that really make you need it. Apple’s set the price point fairly low for the entry model and I imagine that we’ll see a lot of OEMs attempt to compete aggressively on price. Apple generally enjoys fairly wide margins on it’s products and other companies won’t mind sacrificing that a bit if it means a piece of market share.

I see Android playing a huge role in that competition’s market. I also don’t really see Microsoft having much to do in this space for a while. Android is already developed to the point that, if you could get it to boot on an iPad or similar device, it’d already be very usable. It really wouldn’t take that much work (relatively speaking, here) to create something that was a very viable competitor. I think we’ll see a lot of interesting things come out of this in the future.

Will I buy an iPad? Definitely not right now. Personally, I work from home and live in a loft with three computers – two of which are laptops – and a an Android phone. The iPad serves no real purpose for me. I’d certainly gladly accept one as a gift, but I won’t be spending my own dough on one until the idea’s been around for long enough to be more fully exploited. Then we’ll see.