iPad – Week One

Last Saturday, I received the new Apple iPad delivered to my door. That’s right, I didn’t sleep outside any stores like so many others. Now that I have had a few days to work with it, I felt the urge to share some thoughts.

First Impressions

The first thing that caught my attention was the clarity of the display. It renders beautifully and is very easy on the eyes. Whether viewing web pages or a book in the iBook application, the iPad definitely has a remarkable screen. I think the next most noticeable feature for me is the performance. The iPad is extremely responsive and the smooth transition between landscape and portrait views is the most obvious way to observe it. That being said, my iPhone demonstrated great performance when I first purchased it as well, but has become considerably more sluggish over time. I will be watching that closely.

Question: “Isn’t it just a big iPhone/iPod Touch?”

While the general look and feel is identical, but size does matter in this instance. Remember that those were devices that were all about mobility, the iPad (in my opinion) is more about entertainment with a little productivity on the side. Little screens aren’t very good when it comes to reading and watching movies. Even more important is the ability to type and as Todd Anglin so nicely put it “It’s like an iPhone that finally fits your fingers”. Thanks Todd

I had the chance to take this little gem with me on a flight earlier in the week. I thought a quick comparison to a laptop on a plane would be a good field test.

Laptop	iPad
Can be bulky unless it’s a netbook, but still not quite the same	Light weight and reasonably sized.
Startup time wastes time and battery life	No startup time, no problem
When the person in front of you puts down their seat you have to bend down to see the screen.	Easy to handle and hold, no worries about putting that seat back. Can easily lay it on the tray.
Battery life not so hot, probably 3 good hours unless you start turning on power saver options.	Battery life was not an issue for 6 hours of travel time. Still had plenty when I arrived at the hotel.
Watching movies, games and music. All good, but back to battery life and the pesky person in front of you who likes to recline	I have 5 movies on my iPad, several games and all my music. I watched a movie each way on my trip, listened to music and squeezed in a couple of games with no impact to battery and a great picture.
Will start to get hot after a while and planes aren’t the coolest place on earth. UGH!	No heat issues at all, even holding/resting it directly in the hand for hours.
I can code on it	I CAN’T code on it

Applications

The iPad has tons of applications, but a couple of useful productivity applications called “Pages” and “Numbers” are the big thing for iPad. These are Apple’s versions of Microsoft Word and Excel. I liked using both of the applications on the iPad. I used Pages for taking notes which was great just hit the button and tap and I can start capturing information. Numbers was not bad, but there is nothing like Excel to work with spreadsheets. It would be good for capturing some information while out of pocket though. Need a way to pull them back over and into Excel, now that would be productive.

In Summary

So overall I think the iPad is a great device for entertainment and it can help from a productivity standpoint as well. It does not replace a laptop and I don’t think that was Apple’s intention anyway. It is a nice piece of technology and has some great uses, but a laptop has all the bells and whistles and the iPad just doesn’t yet. The size is right and the price is high, but if you already have a laptop it can be a great companion.

I see some potential as a good field platform for enterprise applications (with 3G, of course). Unfortunately it looks like Apple is going to screw that up with their recent change to the Developer Program License Agreement which potentially excludes applications built by MonoTouch, Unity3d and other non-Apple tools. Smart move Apple, hope you come to your senses.