Before the iPad even came out, I wasn’t sold on the idea. Just the concept of no keyboard makes me twitch. I have to give it to Apple tho, taking away the buttons on my phone turned out pretty well, but doing the same on a computer just seemed to go against the laws of nature.


    That all being said, I am an Apple fan, and as such faithfully logged on and watched the presentation. Steve looked like he was starting to feel like himself again, which was nice to see. As for the iPad. Well, I’ll say this, it was better than what I expected, and I wasn’t expecting much. It was clear that Apple had put some time in to tweaking their applications so that they would really compliment the user interface, and they did so brilliantly, their applications looked and performed great.


    Apple also designed their own chip for this. It runs at 1gHz and is designated the “A4”. How well it performs and measures up to a mobile Intel offering in the real world remains to be seen. The iPad comes with WiFi standard, 3G is optional, and its supposed to get around 10 hours of battery life. We’ll have to wait for the real world tests results on this one too, but even if it hits 6 or 8, that would still be really nice. It’ll connect to your computer using the same iPod / iPhone connector that we’ve all become accustom to. There’s a joke of a speaker, a headphone jack and a built in mic. I know, you’re getting all excited thinking about how cool skype and iChat will be on this, well you can forget it - no web-cam for you.  :(


    The display is a backlight LED IPS display which should offer a really good viewing angle, and color replication. I’m not worried about this, as Apple’s displays have always looked great.


    If you are wondering why I stopped listing ports, and moved on to the display, it’s because there aren’t any others to talk about. That’s right, no USB for you either!  You can if you choose purchase an “iPad Camera Connection Kit”, that isn’t free... (the no usb thing is really bugging me...)

 

Apple’s new ipad

Here’s the Address Book:

So, am I sold on the idea?....


    There are many things that it does that I really like. I really like their applications, and am impressed of how friendly they’ve made a touch interface.


    Apple is selling this as a device that sits between a smart phone, and computer. In this category I think it fails. On the phone side that is communication, it doesn’t have a web-cam, so skype is out, and this device is begging for it. I’m sure we’ll see that added in the next version. As a computer, it does a few things that annoy me. It’s running some flavor of the iPhone OS. Based on the Mac OS, yes, but not the Mac OS. This means that you can’t run multiple applications at once. Want to browse the web, and be notified when an e-mail comes in? Sorry, you’ll have to close out the web application and open up Mail. On a smart phone where battery life is one of the primary concerns, I can see the logic in this. However, this device is going to end up being a couch buddy. Sure it might tag along for the occasional trip, but it seems more at home on the couch, where I’d want more than one application running at the same time. Personally, I feel that this should have been introduced as Apple’s Book reader, that reads books and much, much more. Under this classification the critics wouldn’t have had much to say. Once you get into the standards of “computer”, at any level, this device falls short.



Here’s Mail:

    Other things on the “computer” side that leave me itching for more. There aren’t any usb ports, only the standard iPod connector. It doesn’t have a kick-stand. They do sell a nice book case for it that really completes the package, but it’s not included. I’m also annoyed by the touch screen keyboard. It works on the iPhone, mainly because we all type with our thumbs on a phone. The iPad however would require two hands. I’m not ready to pass judgement on this just yet tho, I’ll have to try it out in a store. That being said, I can’t imagine it being a wanted experience.


   I loved picture browsing and movie watching. Although movie watching looked and preformed great, movie files are huge. So I guess this would have to be more of a pick which ones you want to take with you, and sync them up for the trip. Storage isn’t exactly abundant, max capacity is at 64-gig. Granted SSD aren’t cheep right now, but I think the option should have at least been made available.


    So, am I sold or not? Honestly, I’m not sure. I keep going back and forth. The deal breaker will be seeing and using it at the store. This is one that needs to be tried out first.

Here’s a picture of what they did with iCal: