The iPad – Apple’s Joke or Should You Really Buy This Thing

Posted by Zephaniah Washington on April 5, 2010 · 5 Comments 

April 3, 2010

Well today Apple released their new iPad to the masses, and wow were their some masses. Over at the flagship Apple store on Fifth Avenue in New York, people had camped not just one night but two! Some people just can’t wait to get the newest in Apple tech. I am an apple fan boy my self but not quite that extreme. I went over to my local Bestbuy, this one happened to have a mini Apple store inside. I managed to get a hands on with the non 3G version of the “Jesus Pad”. The 3G model on AT&T is slated for release late this month, I forecast the 26th.

From the short amount of time that I had with the iPad I managed to explore the key features of this “magical” device as Apple call’s it. I am personally really excited for the iWork suit on the tablet, I managed to get about 10 minutes with the pages app. Which does work as advertised, and the keyboard “is a dream to type on” says Steve Jobs and it is. Now most of the time I had with the iPad was using this app, so this review is limited and most of my opinion come’s from using this app.  As you can see from the picture the keyboard is fair sized, it was pretty easy to type on, the hardest part is remembering not to rest you fingers on any key’s while you are typing as it will jump to the newest tap. The layout is very much the same as on my 15 inch MacBook Pro, those coming from using a Netbook will have to get used to the key spacing, and the lack of number row at the top of the main keyboard is a let down, but I would not mind writing this on the iPad.

As this is a near full version of the Pages application, you would expect text reflowing and wrapping when using pictures of graphs to be as simple as putting in and moving the graphic around until you like the way that it look’s and guess what, it is! Unfortunately I did not have enough time to type enough text to have the text reflow around the image, I did open one of Apple’s demo document’s which had plenty of text. Placing an image is as simple as clicking the image button. Moving and resizing it is the same as if you had a mouse just touch and drag. And what is a word processor without spell check, well the iPad has it.  This review of the iPad has turned into a review of Pages, I did use the rest of the iWork suit and all the app’s work very well. I pulled up the Web browser and navigated to a few pages, some pages like ESPN or The New York Times, come up in iPad Optimized version’s or as I call them IOV. Other site’s like Amazon come up in the full version and Amazon put’s video’s on their page so you can see the product in action, and yes they will play. There is NO flash support though so you will get the occasional ? mark icon, and alas no Hulu.com. If you are a Netflix subscriber however you will be happy as their is a Netflix app in the iPad app store, you can watch and add movie’s and TV show’s to your queue. I did not get to use this as I only had about 15 minutes with the iPad and I don’t have a Netflix account, though I will be getting one soon.  One of the thing’s advertised with the tablet by Mr. Jobs was that you could run iPhone apps on the iPad either in original size or in 2x mode, which is accessed by a button that says 2x at the bottom of the screen. When scaling up the iPad does tend to pixilate images. So not great for gaming but not a deal breaker either and with most major game makers like Gameloft developing and modifying their games for the iPad you will soon have full iPad versions of games. Another major feature of the iPad is it’s book store and Mr. Jobs is taking on the Kindle with this one, and I am selling mine when I get the iPad it is a much nicer reading experience, I also tend to travel a lot so in poorly lit or unlit area’s you just can not see the Kindle, but the iPad has a backlight. Another feature is that the iPad has magazine subscriptions (although at the same price as print or more. The New York Times is charging US $18.00 for a subscription which is more than the print version, however it does have videos).

Now if you don’t mind paying a little more for a magazine than this is no problem as they look great… Except for the occasional black bar at the bottom of freshly loaded pages. This is probably just the fact that the wireless network I was on was swamped or a minor glitch, again not a deal breaker as it fixes it self after a few seconds. Something that is not a glitch how ever is the ad’s in the magazines, now how is this a problem? Every magazine had ad’s. Well in a normal magazine I could flip by it as fast as possible or even rip the damn thing out if I want, well the iPad appears to intentionally make the ad’s lag where you can not swipe by them for several seconds, it is like youtube ad’s. It is a small price to pay for convince, and if the magazine’s were lower cost I would ignore it all together. I did only view the Time magazine, so it could be that both the black bar glitch and the hanging ad’s is just a Time magazine thing.  Overall the device is amazing and I am going to buy one ASAP (ASAP when the 3G comes out). If you don’t mind the occasional glitch or the fact that media companies are going to charge more for their product, at least for now than by all means go get on.

~Zephaniah WashingtonJust another dude being honest and reviewing anything I think is cool.

EDIT:

Wanted to include the price range for the Wi-fi only model of the and look for my review of 3G version when it becomes available.

Prices:

$499 – 16GB

$599 – 32GB

$699 – 64GB

The 3G + Wi-fi models will cost and additional $130 for the same GB amount, that is on top of the AT&T pay as you go 3G service at $14.99 for 250 MB and $29.99 for Unlimited.

EDIT: check out my quick hands on video on youtube

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