Apple provided us with hands-on time with its new iPad after Wednesday’s big announcement, letting dozens of greasy-fingered journalists poke, swipe, and drool over the svelte hardware and the first-party built-in applications.
And while some of the software was a tad underwhelming in its prerelease state, playing with the iPad quickly revealed its potential for greatness. We simply can’t wait to see what developers make for this thing.
Picking up an iPad for the first time, you immediately notice its thin, light body, weighing in at just 0.68kg and only half an inch thick.
KEY PRESS: Testing the software keyboard, with the same hold-a-key contextual options as the iPhone’s
The aluminum backing has a graceful curve, and the smooth glass screen with its attractive black border just begs to be touched.
The iPad is well-balanced enough to hold in one hand like a tray of drinks while using the other hand to navigate, or to grip with both hands while you drive the UI with your thumbs, or even to balance on your knees while poking at it with both index fingers.
We never felt like we were going to drop it, or that our hands were too small.
IPAD PROFILES: Apple’s reps wouldn’t or couldn’t explain how Profiles work, but we’re intrigued
The 9.7-inch screen is brightly illuminated by LED backlighting, and the IPS technology kept the images viewable from wide angles without appearing to fade.
Everyone who’s ever used an iPhone with the brightness cranked up to navigate a dark room during a power outage will be glad to know the iPad gets even brighter.
OILY FINGERS? Multi-touch controls really shine in the Photos app. Unfortunately, so do fingerprints
Despite the same oleophobic coating found on the iPhone 3GS, the iPad’s screen did pick up fingerprints like mad.
In fact, a friendly Apple gadget handler had to keep wiping it clean for us, smiling politely at our jokes about how the tech press is at least 30 percent more oily than the average citizen.
The units we saw had only Wi-Fi (802.11n) and Bluetooth 2.1+EDR for connectivity, since the 3G-equipped models won’t be available at launch. Web pages loaded quickly and looked fabulous.
The new touch-optimised iWork suite is beautifully realised, making it quick and easy — and, dare I say, fun — to piece together a spreadsheet or presentation. It also helps to elevate the iPad to more than just a plaything.
As Steve Jobs said during his keynote, if you’re going to create a third category of device, between the smartphone and the laptop, then it needs to be better than either for certain tasks. In many areas, this is true for the iPad — web browsing is much better on the iPad than the iPhone, just because of the bigger screen, and physically flicking through photos, music and movies is just more enjoyable on the iPad than a laptop.
But in several crucial areas, the iPad falls short of the functionality that would have made this more than just a large iPod touch. The lack of Flash support is a major issue; the iPad’s big screen is designed to make the best of multimedia content and the full-screen browsing experience, but the sight of little blue squares dotted around web pages where embedded video should have been just makes you feel like you’re being short-changed.
The iPad’s inability to multi-task could also severely hamper its appeal. It’s being pitched as a portable device that you could kick back and use on the sofa at home, but you can’t listen to your Spotify playlists at the same time as writing an email, or browse the web while using an instant-messaging app to chat with friends. It’s one or other, just as it is on the iPhone and iPod touch, but for the extra money you’re paying for the iPad, you expect something more akin to a laptop computing experience.
I love Apple’s new e-reader application, iBooks. The virtual bookshelf, on which your digital tomes sit, is an example of Apple design at its best; elegant, simple, well-executed. The reading experience itself was also delightful, with the pages of the virtual books having the sort of patina you would expect to find on a printed novel. Turning pages is achieved with a swiping gesture, or a single tap in the right-hand margins.
But I think the backlighting of Apple’s pin-sharp display is going to cause a lot of tired eyes; e-Ink is deeply unglamorous, but it does the job superbly, and I don’t think serious bookworms will be swayed to chose the iPad over the Kindle or a Sony Reader. For the casual reader though, the inclusion of the iBooks app, and the iBookstore, is a boon, and likely to inspire impulse purchases of novels in much the same way as the iTunes music store on the iPhone and iPod touch is a constant temptation.
Before yesterday’s event, analysts were adamant that the iPad would be the saviour of newspapers and magazines, but there was little sign of that at the launch. The New York Times showed off a slick application, but it just felt like a larger-scale version of their iPhone app rather than a genuine step-change in the way printed content is delivered and consumed. I had hoped to hear more about how the iPad could be used to read magazines or shape the day’s news agenda. However, it’s still early days and Apple are only now able to talk more openly to prospective content partners about mutually beneficial deals.
The iPad is a lovely device that gadget fans will lust after, but I’m yet to be entirely convinced that it offers enough of an advantage over my smartphone or laptop. I do think it has the potential to be a game-changing device, but it will be the second- and third-generation versions that really drive the agenda, and introduce a new and innovative way of computing.
Ultimately, the iPad is a large iPod touch: a great device to draw your inspiration from, but perhaps not the seismic shift in technology that we were expecting. But watch this space…
My first impressions of the device are largely positive. Apple has once again built a product that looks good and feels great in the hand, and the familiar user interface, borrowed from the iPhone and iPod touch, is perfectly suited to the bigger screen. The iPad whizzes along, opening applications, re-sizing web pages, and zooming in and out of maps almost instantaneously.
It’s a great, fun gaming platform, and it’s lovely to view full-size web pages while browsing the internet. Developers, no doubt, are already rubbing their hands with glee about the apps and services they could tailor specifically for this device.
iPad Software
Imagine the ease and fun of navigating websites on the multitouch iPhone or iPod touch, but with none of the frustrations of those devices’ small screen sizes. You can see the whole page at once – and actually read it – and then still zoom down to an area of interest with just one tap or pinch.
You’ll quickly stop caring that your favourite site doesn’t have an iPhone-optimized version, because on the iPad, full-size sites just work. Of course, running an iPhone OS means the iPad doesn’t have Flash, so sites that rely on Flash-based navigation interfaces, or feature Flash videos or games, are still useless here.
iPad Maps
The Maps application also benefits greatly from the increased screen real estate, with Google Street View showing half a city block comfortably (no squinting on our part).
Location Services triangulates your position based on proximity to Wi-Fi hotspots, plus uses the digital compass – only the upcoming 3G models will feature assisted GPS and cell-tower triangulation as well.
Still, it found our location in downtown San Francisco in about a second, and the compass helped the Star Walk application ($2.99 in the App Store) instantly reorientate its view of the night sky based on which way we turned.
iPad speaker and buttons
It was impossible to hear the built-in speaker in such a loud room, but a tiny speaker does reside on the bottom-right, near the 30-pin dock connector.
A Sleep/wake button, mute switch, volume rocker are all that resides on the slim slides of the device, with only the black Home button gracing the front, blending in to near-visibility, especially since the iPad works in any orientation.
PICTURE THIS: Apple’s iPad Dock has a 30-pin connector for charging and syncing, plus can automatically run a photo slideshow, acting like the best-looking digital photo frame you’ve ever seen
We ran into some problems with the first-party software, although Apple still has ample time to fix them before shipping. (These were demo units, not review units, it’s important to keep in mind.)
iPad keyboard
We spent some time with the software keyboard, for example, and found it easier to use than the iPhone’s, thanks to the larger keys and more space between them, although it’s still virtually impossible to type without looking because of the lack of tactile feedback.
Switching keyboard layouts for other languages is a snap, but after we’d fiddled with that setting and then flipped back to English, the software keyboard got a little buggy, often not rendering the whole way when we held the iPad in landscape orientation.
BIG UP: The software keyboard is easier to type on than the iPhone’s thanks to the added space
Also, the well-designed Mail client lacked a Media Browser for adding images to new messages, although we could copy and paste images from the Web, the Photos app, and other emails into new messages. The icons on one home screen stopped responding temporarily, fixed by cycling the power.
But all in all, Apple did a fabulous job of designing UI for all the iPad’s default apps – their many contextual menus providing all the control you need without cluttering up the screen with unnecessary buttons and sliders.
IPAD MAIL: Apple’s redesigned Mail app works beautifully in either orientation
iPad apps
The demo iPads were loaded with unmodified iPhone apps, so we could test the experience of blowing up an iPhone-sized app interface to fit the iPad’s screen, with a tap of the 2x button.
This works by simply doubling the pixel size, without any additional smoothing or scaling. In a text-heavy app like Facebook, the pixellation was noticeable and detracted from the ease of reading.
IPAD APPS: Unmodified iPhone apps can run full-screen on the iPad, with larger-than-normal pixels
But in fast-moving games like Super Monkey Ball and Need for Speed, we didn’t notice as much, and the tradeoff between tiny pixels and bigger ones was totally worth it for the more immersive experience of playing on a big screen. We can’t wait to see what game developers can do, programming for the big screen.
The bottom line is that the iPad has tons of potential to be a huge hit for Apple, as well loved by its users as the iPod touch and iPhone.
It’d be hard to have an iPad as your sole computer, since you need to sync it with iTunes on a traditional Mac or PC – or you’re OK with getting all of your content via the App Store, iTunes Store, and iBookstore (which wasn’t running on the demos yet).
AT HOME: Each Home screen can hold 20 app icons plus the ever-present bottom four
Still, the hardware is solid, the touchscreen works beautifully, and the potential for innovative software is through the roof. Once you pick one up, it’s hard to put down.
Just ask the patient Apple employees who gently repeated, “We’re getting ready to close it down,” over and over until we finally left the demo room.
IPAD SYNCING: An intriguing File Sharing screen in the Settings app hints at over-the-air syncing to come
All photos by Paul Curthoys at MacLife.com
