So after poo poking the iPad for quite some time I finally broke down and got one. I never could justify one as frankly my laptop did everything I needed. The one thing the iPad did better – games – wasn't something I did a lot. I ended up needed to port a library I support to iOS and needed to test it on both the iPad and iPhone. So I got one. I took it with me on my vacation last week to California and here are my thoughts.
1. Keyboard support is haphazard. It's nice to use a keyboard if you are doing a lot of typing. But applications don't (yet) do a good job with keyboard shortcuts or even supporting tabbing between fields intelligently. Coming from OSX it was frustrating to have to keep touching the screen just to get in the right field. I also think a lot of developers don't bother testing their apps with a keyboard. Come on – get a cheap bluetooth keyboard and see what works.
2. It really is a joy for media consumption. After using it a bit I got what all the fuss was about. However a lot of these apps honestly could be ported to OSX easily without much problem. (And in some cases have been) My favorites was plugging my Twitter, Facebook and RSS feeds into Flipboard. I still prefer the dedicated Twitter app (which I think makes fantastic use of the iPad) but I know others who prefer Flipboard for everything. I also really liked ShowYou which scans Facebook and Twitter to see videos it can play. I'm not a big Facebook person but my wife really liked it for that. Movies work great.
3. There are some surprising omissions of iPhone ports. While iPhone apps look surprisingly good I was surprised that many apps hadn't bothered with iPad ports.
4. I wish there was a better way to get video on without using Dropbox or syncing iTunes. I don't like video on my laptop as I have limited space but often do want it on the iPad. There's not a good way of doing this that I saw.
5. Apple's Remote app for the Apple TV was surprisingly disappointing on the iPad. No list view – just icons. Still no grouping by genre, category or group. With the added space I think there's a ton they could have done and it's a bit surprising they didn't do more.
6. iBooks is great. It's a major disappointment that they don't have it for OSX when Kindle has an app. (Admittedly the Kindle app for the Mac is a bit disappointing though) Using both the Kindle app and the iBook app I prefer the iBook one. However the Kindle does have that cross platform appeal. You can find a surprising number of free ebooks if you look around although often the formatting is pretty horrendous. (Particularly bad with poetry where formatting makes a big difference) I have to admit that despite the problem of not being able to take an iPad into the tub after a long day or hard workout I'll probably be buying more ebooks than paper. It does a nice job with PDF books too. (I had a few philosophy books in PDF – some I put in iBooks and some in DropBox)
7. DropBox really is a necessity for this device. iCloud just isn't there yet in usability or design. I never used DropBox much with my laptop. I use it constantly with the iPad.
8. Fieldrunners is great on the iPad. I've not played it in a long time but have been playing it a lot.
9. It's much lighter than I imagined.
10. I now find Evernote, which I rarely used, quite valuable. It's great for random notes. I came close to getting Circus Ponies Notebook which is my note taking app of choice for long notes on OSX. However it had really mixed reviews at best on the iPad – usually complaining about complexity. It's hard to justify $30 for something I may not like. Anyone like it? There is a great drawing note taking app that syncs with Evernote that I use a lot though.
11. I know Steve Job hates styluses but I got a cheap one at Staples and it is great for notes. I really, really wish iOS 6 comes with a stylus API to support pressure sensitive styluses. The iPad is heads and shoulders above a Mac with a graphics pad like the Bamboo. However using drawing speed to emulate pressure really sucks.
12. Verizon LTE isn't all it's cracked up to be. I got LTE a few times. In downtown San Deigo. In parts of LA. And in parts of Las Vegas. It was great when it works. However the iPad prefers one bar LTE to three bars 3G which is a problem. (Since you can't jailbreak the iPad 3 and add SBSettings to turn these sorts of things on and off quickly) I also found that my AT&T coverage was better pretty much the entire drive from Utah through California. The area where our hotel in San Diego was we couldn't get proper Verizon coverage at all. It'd show we were connected but nothing would work. Since only a few areas have LTE but AT&T 3G is considerably faster than Verizon 3G I think AT&T might actually be better for many people. (I can't speak for San Francisco, New York or Florida where I know AT&T sucks – I haven't tried it there) For here in Utah it's pretty good though and very fast. It's just that from the media you think AT&T was slaughtered by Verizon whereas I found AT&T actually much better for travel. I frequently had no Verizon coverage and fairly good AT&T coverage as I drove I-15. I'm driving to Seattle this weekend and we'll see how things go on that drive.
13. Outside during the day it really, really shows fingerprints badly. Yuck. However it is better visible than I was expecting outside at noon.
14. Moreso than the iPhone I really wish I could jailbreak this.
15. This is the perfect Netflix device. Too bad Netflix's selection kind of sucks. I know people gripe about the music player on it but I found myself preferring that UI to the current iTunes one a great deal.
Related posts:
- Salesforce on iPad
- iPad Jailbreak
- iPad has Camera?
- Why a "Retina" Display Might Not Come to iPad Until Next Year
- Your iPad Is an Arcade Cabinet: The Journey From Joke to Product
- Use an iPad 2 with an ADB keyboard
- Programming the iPad
- Scroll to Bottom on iPhone/iPad
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