iPad. The review

6 April, 2010

It’s been a long time coming. Not just this product - the one we first heard whispers about last summer. The idea has been around forever. It was around before Steve Jobs said that people wouldn’t want to watch video in an iPod… then subsequently released a product that was exactly that. it was around when Jobs famously said that the optimum use case for a tablet was the bathroom, the mythical Apple tablet is here.

It’s been a long time coming. So, is it any good?

In a word: yes.

Before my review, I think the best summary of the iPad has already been noted on Twitter by John Gruber:

“OMG my iPhone is a piece of crap.”

And it’s completely true. Because, even though the iPhone is a wonderful product, it is lacking in three major ways that the iPad excels - three areas which are more than a little important for a mobile device: battery life, performance, and an area that is impossible to recreate on a smaller product; screen real-estate. All three will be described in-depth in their respective sections.

Form Factor

First, it’s nothing short of beautiful. The tv spots, keynote and pictures on the Internet do not do it justice. The appearance is about why you’d expect to see if Apple made a net book, then chopped the screen away from the keyboard. The materials and shape of the tablet prevent it from reinforcing the most common criticism of the product: that it’s just a big iPod touch. The machine feels heavy for its size, a potential issue, but this heft also makes the iPad feel sturdy. In short it “feels” like an Apple product.

The screen is very glossy, but not more so than a MacBook or iPhone and I would place it between them so far as maneuverability to keep the glare off the screen. As anyone trying to use a glossy MacBook in a sunny place knows there are times when it’s just not going to happen. And as anyone who has used an iPhone on that same sunny day knows that it’s is just a matter of slightly changing the angle to avoid the glare - the form of the iPad allows this, but it is not quite as instinctive as with an iPhone. This is probably because of the tendency to rest the iPad in a surface, or lean the arm holding it’s weight against something. Either way, it’s an issue to be aware of, but not a major one.

The screen

Several reviews have complained that the pixels aren’t dense enough. Frankly I don’t see that. Text and videos are clear and sharp. Perhaps they could be better, but I guess I’ll have to see a screen like that in real life because this one looks fine.

The colors are bright. The screen is brighter than my MacBook Pro, so that in itself says something.

Of course the most noticeable thing about the screen is it’s size. It’s beautifully big (that’s what she said, sorry). Every single thing you do in the iPad is faster and easier on this screen because of the size. Maps showing the same data, loading at the same speed are suddenly exponentially more useful. Now you can zoom all the way in and see more than one building, it’s almost stunning how much the extra screen makes every task easier and better.

All-in-all I have no complaints about the screen.

The battery

Do I really need to say more than that on the day I got the device I used it for 10 straight (network intense) hours and still had 12% left on the battery? The battery life is impressive though the teardown done by ifixit did reveal that most of the guts of the machine are battery. Still it seems like a great move by Apple to trade some weight for the extra time. Several other reviews have said that the iPad gets 12 hours of video. Apparently it gets hundreds of hours of audio play… Think about that for a second.

Performance

It snaps. Or, in Steve Jobsian, everything is “boom, done.” When something gets tapped or scrolled you see it immediately. On an iPhone it always seemed immediate, but now, after only three days with the ipad, my 3GS just seems slow. This is even more impressive when you read that there is only 256mb of ram. And remember the A4 chip is only running at 1ghz. The only conclusion is that there is some serious software behind that beautiful glass.

The performance carries over to nearly all of the apps, including third party, but there are a few rotten eggs. iTunes seems very slow to load and sort music. This might be a side effect of my huge library, but with how quick the rest of the apps are it makes iTunes issues much more noticeable.

Several third party apps had short episodes of crashiness. I assume this was mainly due to the very limited (if any) time developers had to test their apps on an actual device.

The heat

Remember when you first put a scorching hot MacBook on your lap and almost caught your pants on fire? Well, that’s not an issue with this device. After my launch day nerd-off of constant use the tablet was as cool as when it came out of the box.

The Keyboard

It’s not as bad as you might think. It’s responsiveness is the same as an iPhone, but without the intermittent lag the iPhone gets from time to time.

The positioning of the iPad while typing can be a bit tricky, I’ve found it can be difficult to get into a good position, but once you get there it’s easy enough to get some work done.

Proof of the usability: this review is being written via the software keyboard right now. Bam. Blew your mind, right?

Well, anyways it’s not great, but it is very usable, and all the experience Apple gained in making text entry as painless as possible has gone into this product. You’ll probably want the Bluetooth keyboard if you plan on using the iPad for any extended writing. I was too cheap to get a keyboard/dock or keyboard-dock so I can’t speak on how well pairing works.

Apps

The built in apps are all acceptable, but with the execution of a very nice mail client, that is all that really can be said.

There are a few amazing third party apps already. Notably, NetNewsWire on the iPad has quickly become my favorite application, on any platform. I’ve already taken to find great enjoyment in coming home from work, grabbing the iPad and sitting down and reading RSS feeds for an hour - nothing helps relax after work like a lolcat and some links from Kottke.

Twitterriffic is great too. I liked the iPhone version, but it lost out to Tweetie. I don’t see how that can happen again, the bar has been set that high.

Conclusion

So, that’s the review. Do I think it’s the “future of computing” like some people are saying? Well, no. It definitely could be, but it’s way to early to tell. Adoption by users is the only thing that can truly anoint a technology like that.

What I can say is this, it’s great to have a computer around all the time, and smart phones are trying, and failing, to fill that gap as well as many of us would like them to. The iPad fills this gap, and fills it convincingly.