iPad Initial Review
It has a keyboard.
No, I'm not talking about the standard QWERTY one (which... is admittedly kinda crappy, and annoying to write on for too long).
I mean I've been practicing musical scales because one of the apps has a freaking keyboard that is fun to simply bang on and make... some sort of hopefully vaguely-musical noise. It's been a long time since Music Theory, and I'm not an instrumentalist, heh.
(See, this is why I don't understand young-earth creationism. Because I know that, at times, I resemble nothing more than a confused ape clumsily banging on things. Which reminds me, I need to watch 2001: A Space Odyssey for the first time. Which I can do now. I'll get back to that.)
This is the one thing that the iPad, and any other tablet that'll be put out in the next year, has over a netbook: there's a lot of things for which a touchscreen is a better choice for interface. But I'll get back to that later, as I want to start with......
First, the drawbacks of the iPad, as I've seen them thus far:
Ok, you know how I said the touchscreen is a better, easier, faster, cooler interface for a lot of things? Well, there's also a lot of things that the classic mouse-and-keyboard are better for, and, sometimes, they still show up. I'm having a lot of fun with Civilization Revolutions, but the fact that you can't side-scroll with a unit selected (as if to move long distances) is majorly ANNOYING. And, yes, the onscreen keyboard is... obnoxious. To be a laptop replacement, an ideal tablet would need a portable keyboard and mouse, to be taken out to do work. And, of course, it would be NICE if the tablet took freaking USB. That's a whole 'nother rant.
I do think that most of the interface issues will become less and less annoying, as developers get it through their heads that they're working in a different medium. Interface designers haven't quite learned the new language properly, and haven't fully utilized the potential of touch-centric control, and it really really shows. When people do get it, it's freaking beautiful.
Similarly, content producers (which includes app developers, but also, say, newspaper/magazine publishers) haven't quite figured out all these electronic whozawhatsits work yet. I do think enough people on the internets have been yelling "Hey! You can't charge MORE for e-delivery than for print and expect people to pay it! OMGWTF?!?" that, maybe, the WSJ (....of all entities) will realize it's being a dumbass. I'm certainly not subscribing until that lesson sinks in.
The Apple/Adobe pissing match over Flash. Ay yi bloody yi. I get a headache just reading about it. It'd be nice if corporate personhood advanced to the point that you could smack their heads together and send them to their rooms with no supper. It'd solve a lot of problems.
Multitasking. The lack thereof is less annoying than I thought it would be, but it is still aggravating to, say, browse through search results for apartments in the nifty Craigsphone app, switch to the browser for the google map of one you like, switch back to Craigsphone, and then scroll through the history page (which lists both individual listing pages AND search results, in a single list) for the search results you'd been browsing through, and then scroll down to your previous place looking through those results.
Ok, not sure I explained that example right. Short version: you lose your place in an app when you switch to another. Some apps make getting back to your last position easier, some make it harder.... it's an unnecessary hassle either way. And if Apple's genuinely worried about stability, they could, say, limit the number of apps that could run (like how Android has a max of six). That would make sense. Ah well,
iP* OS 4.0 will probably fix that up.
Lack of tabs. I have N.A.D.D., I miss tabs. If someone makes a tabbed browser for the iPad, I will bear their children. Then again, I'd probably crash the thing. Sigh.
Now that we've got the downsides out of the way, here's what I'm loving about this thing!
Back to the GOOD things about the interface! When developers actually grok the new world they're working in, the results are exceptionally spiffy. Like that keyboard I was talking about. Or Tap Tap Radiation, a really fun rhythm game that involves tapping circles that move across the screen. Browsing through webpages or PDFs is also easier and more natural, once you get the hang of it, with the swiping and the pinching on the screen itself rather than a mouse, and certainly rather than the tiny single-touch touchpad on a laptop. It's different, and it's not yet being taken advantage of fully.... but it will be. And this'll get more and more awesome as time goes by. Yay!
The accelerometer is useful, too. I haven't actually tried a racing game on the iPad, but I HAVE played Super Monkey Ball. With the steering by the tilting. And it was fun. :-D
One app that's getting a lot of critical interest is The Elements: A Visual Exploration. It's exactly what it says on the tin, except the label doesn't quite indicate that it's incredibly shiny, it's informative, it's honestly fun to flip through and learn from. It opens with a clever (and skippable, for future uses) video of Tom Lehrer's Element Song with pictures of all the elements (the really rare ones get their namesakes). It has videos and moving pictures that do things when you poke them. All the elements, being all spinny and shiny... whee! If nothing else, the iPad weighs one hell of a lot less than a stack of textbooks, and the ability to embed video and interactive stuff IS rather nifty. I know every new technological advance is presented as a pedagogical revolution, and they almost never are, but... hey, remember what I said about how I'm practicing my scales, because it's genuinely fun on this thing? Yeah.
One of the best points I've seen made by internet talking heads is that the iPad is definitely more of a content-CONSUMPTION device than a content-PRODUCING one. That is, while the on-screen keyboard should probably not be used to right the next great novel, the shiny box is damn, damnably damned good at getting the information and content that you are seeking from the human creatosphere, and injecting it directly into your brain.
For example, I just joined Netflix because, hey, I've got a shiny little box that streams the movies wherever I want! Sure, a netbook could do this, too, but I don't HAVE a netbook. I have a desktop and a laptank, and neither of them can cuddle in bed with me. Or leave the sweet teat of mains power behind for long. The iPad can. Besides, the screen is qualitatively shinier-resolutioned than any netbook I've ever seen.
(Let it henceforth be decreed and known across the land that "resolutioned" is a perfectly cromulent verb form.)
And with shiny screens, comes great picture quality.
The iPad is a fantabulous e-reader. I'm not getting strained by the screen, like some online reviewers have claimed they have been. The not-so-worky-in-direct-sunlight thing *is* annoying, to be sure, but for the most part, I'm loving it as a source of books. I'm disinclined to buy e-books from the Apple Store, just as I'm disinclined to buy music or videos from there, because of my general gun-shyness around DRM. On the OTHER hand, the iBooks app links directly to freaking Project Gutenberg! Any in-public-domain book I could ever bloody want, right there, with 7 clicks and a typed search string between home screen and front page (I just counted). Plus, it has one *major* advantage over other e-readers, which the enlightened should've seen coming after that last paragraph fragment:
It has color. Shiny, wonderful, high-resolutioned COLOR. Color that makes comis and magazines look amaaaaazingly shiny.
I'm not actually likely to buy that many comics, because DRM. But if any publishers want to put out first-issues or other teaser promo things out for their serieses, I'll totally download them and become more likely to buy things in person. I *am* planning on subscribing to magazines on the thing, because there's a lot of magazines I'm interested in reading but NOT interested in having stacks around the house of (or of filling landfills with). Plus, it's easy to take screenshots on, which will make getting home-renovation-design-decisions from them easier than, say, my dad's gf trying to corral her incredibly chaotic paper-magazine-clippings mess.
With the exception of the WSJ (and I do not know WHAT they are thinking), most newspaper media folks seem to get it. I've got free apps from NYTimes, AP, BBC, and a few others, and they're all rather well done at presenting all the news even *I* could want with the touch of buttons and swipes of fingers. Another nifty free news app I'm enjoying is SkyGrid, which sort of works like Twitter's trending topic list, crossed with Google News. That is, if a lot of folks are talking about, say, the Pulitzer Prize (to use an example from today), that will appear in the app's list of topics, and you can tap on the topic for a list of short blurbs of current articles on the subject, and tap through to the original article if you want. Simple to use, and in my opinion, quite, quite quite useful. News junkie's paradise!
And I don't think it can be overlooked that, just by getting developers excited about a new system to work on applications for, creativity in general is being encouraged. I mean, something akin to that Elements app really *could* have been made for a PC. But... it wasn't. Similarly, there could have been a nifty and speedy way to download anything of Project Gutenberg directly to your PC. But.... there wasn't. And, sure, you could go there and get stuff to read directly, but.... I almost never did (And I couldn't take them on airplanes, either).
Is the iPad a perfect device? Hell, no. That requires USB. And Flash. And multitasking. And the ability to run Linux. *shakes curmudgeonly fist*
BUT, I do think this whole 'tablet' idea DOES have merit, and the iPad is the first of many worthwhile entries in the category. They're exceptionally shiny e-reader and media-consumption devices, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. It's more portable than any but the smallest of netbooks, with a better screen and (for consumption purposes) better interface, and I'd certainly rather carry it around than a single-task-sans-color Kindle.
I will be watching the future with interest. The Notion Ink Adam excites me greatly. I'm also curious what Google will ultimately bring to the fight (or if they just buy out Notion Ink or something, which would work too). HP gets a resounding "meh" for now, but that's largely preconceived notions talking, and could change.
No, I'm not talking about the standard QWERTY one (which... is admittedly kinda crappy, and annoying to write on for too long).
I mean I've been practicing musical scales because one of the apps has a freaking keyboard that is fun to simply bang on and make... some sort of hopefully vaguely-musical noise. It's been a long time since Music Theory, and I'm not an instrumentalist, heh.
(See, this is why I don't understand young-earth creationism. Because I know that, at times, I resemble nothing more than a confused ape clumsily banging on things. Which reminds me, I need to watch 2001: A Space Odyssey for the first time. Which I can do now. I'll get back to that.)
This is the one thing that the iPad, and any other tablet that'll be put out in the next year, has over a netbook: there's a lot of things for which a touchscreen is a better choice for interface. But I'll get back to that later, as I want to start with......
First, the drawbacks of the iPad, as I've seen them thus far:
Ok, you know how I said the touchscreen is a better, easier, faster, cooler interface for a lot of things? Well, there's also a lot of things that the classic mouse-and-keyboard are better for, and, sometimes, they still show up. I'm having a lot of fun with Civilization Revolutions, but the fact that you can't side-scroll with a unit selected (as if to move long distances) is majorly ANNOYING. And, yes, the onscreen keyboard is... obnoxious. To be a laptop replacement, an ideal tablet would need a portable keyboard and mouse, to be taken out to do work. And, of course, it would be NICE if the tablet took freaking USB. That's a whole 'nother rant.
I do think that most of the interface issues will become less and less annoying, as developers get it through their heads that they're working in a different medium. Interface designers haven't quite learned the new language properly, and haven't fully utilized the potential of touch-centric control, and it really really shows. When people do get it, it's freaking beautiful.
Similarly, content producers (which includes app developers, but also, say, newspaper/magazine publishers) haven't quite figured out all these electronic whozawhatsits work yet. I do think enough people on the internets have been yelling "Hey! You can't charge MORE for e-delivery than for print and expect people to pay it! OMGWTF?!?" that, maybe, the WSJ (....of all entities) will realize it's being a dumbass. I'm certainly not subscribing until that lesson sinks in.
The Apple/Adobe pissing match over Flash. Ay yi bloody yi. I get a headache just reading about it. It'd be nice if corporate personhood advanced to the point that you could smack their heads together and send them to their rooms with no supper. It'd solve a lot of problems.
Multitasking. The lack thereof is less annoying than I thought it would be, but it is still aggravating to, say, browse through search results for apartments in the nifty Craigsphone app, switch to the browser for the google map of one you like, switch back to Craigsphone, and then scroll through the history page (which lists both individual listing pages AND search results, in a single list) for the search results you'd been browsing through, and then scroll down to your previous place looking through those results.
Ok, not sure I explained that example right. Short version: you lose your place in an app when you switch to another. Some apps make getting back to your last position easier, some make it harder.... it's an unnecessary hassle either way. And if Apple's genuinely worried about stability, they could, say, limit the number of apps that could run (like how Android has a max of six). That would make sense. Ah well,
iP* OS 4.0 will probably fix that up.
Lack of tabs. I have N.A.D.D., I miss tabs. If someone makes a tabbed browser for the iPad, I will bear their children. Then again, I'd probably crash the thing. Sigh.
Now that we've got the downsides out of the way, here's what I'm loving about this thing!
Back to the GOOD things about the interface! When developers actually grok the new world they're working in, the results are exceptionally spiffy. Like that keyboard I was talking about. Or Tap Tap Radiation, a really fun rhythm game that involves tapping circles that move across the screen. Browsing through webpages or PDFs is also easier and more natural, once you get the hang of it, with the swiping and the pinching on the screen itself rather than a mouse, and certainly rather than the tiny single-touch touchpad on a laptop. It's different, and it's not yet being taken advantage of fully.... but it will be. And this'll get more and more awesome as time goes by. Yay!
The accelerometer is useful, too. I haven't actually tried a racing game on the iPad, but I HAVE played Super Monkey Ball. With the steering by the tilting. And it was fun. :-D
One app that's getting a lot of critical interest is The Elements: A Visual Exploration. It's exactly what it says on the tin, except the label doesn't quite indicate that it's incredibly shiny, it's informative, it's honestly fun to flip through and learn from. It opens with a clever (and skippable, for future uses) video of Tom Lehrer's Element Song with pictures of all the elements (the really rare ones get their namesakes). It has videos and moving pictures that do things when you poke them. All the elements, being all spinny and shiny... whee! If nothing else, the iPad weighs one hell of a lot less than a stack of textbooks, and the ability to embed video and interactive stuff IS rather nifty. I know every new technological advance is presented as a pedagogical revolution, and they almost never are, but... hey, remember what I said about how I'm practicing my scales, because it's genuinely fun on this thing? Yeah.
One of the best points I've seen made by internet talking heads is that the iPad is definitely more of a content-CONSUMPTION device than a content-PRODUCING one. That is, while the on-screen keyboard should probably not be used to right the next great novel, the shiny box is damn, damnably damned good at getting the information and content that you are seeking from the human creatosphere, and injecting it directly into your brain.
For example, I just joined Netflix because, hey, I've got a shiny little box that streams the movies wherever I want! Sure, a netbook could do this, too, but I don't HAVE a netbook. I have a desktop and a laptank, and neither of them can cuddle in bed with me. Or leave the sweet teat of mains power behind for long. The iPad can. Besides, the screen is qualitatively shinier-resolutioned than any netbook I've ever seen.
(Let it henceforth be decreed and known across the land that "resolutioned" is a perfectly cromulent verb form.)
And with shiny screens, comes great picture quality.
The iPad is a fantabulous e-reader. I'm not getting strained by the screen, like some online reviewers have claimed they have been. The not-so-worky-in-direct-sunlight thing *is* annoying, to be sure, but for the most part, I'm loving it as a source of books. I'm disinclined to buy e-books from the Apple Store, just as I'm disinclined to buy music or videos from there, because of my general gun-shyness around DRM. On the OTHER hand, the iBooks app links directly to freaking Project Gutenberg! Any in-public-domain book I could ever bloody want, right there, with 7 clicks and a typed search string between home screen and front page (I just counted). Plus, it has one *major* advantage over other e-readers, which the enlightened should've seen coming after that last paragraph fragment:
It has color. Shiny, wonderful, high-resolutioned COLOR. Color that makes comis and magazines look amaaaaazingly shiny.
I'm not actually likely to buy that many comics, because DRM. But if any publishers want to put out first-issues or other teaser promo things out for their serieses, I'll totally download them and become more likely to buy things in person. I *am* planning on subscribing to magazines on the thing, because there's a lot of magazines I'm interested in reading but NOT interested in having stacks around the house of (or of filling landfills with). Plus, it's easy to take screenshots on, which will make getting home-renovation-design-decisions from them easier than, say, my dad's gf trying to corral her incredibly chaotic paper-magazine-clippings mess.
With the exception of the WSJ (and I do not know WHAT they are thinking), most newspaper media folks seem to get it. I've got free apps from NYTimes, AP, BBC, and a few others, and they're all rather well done at presenting all the news even *I* could want with the touch of buttons and swipes of fingers. Another nifty free news app I'm enjoying is SkyGrid, which sort of works like Twitter's trending topic list, crossed with Google News. That is, if a lot of folks are talking about, say, the Pulitzer Prize (to use an example from today), that will appear in the app's list of topics, and you can tap on the topic for a list of short blurbs of current articles on the subject, and tap through to the original article if you want. Simple to use, and in my opinion, quite, quite quite useful. News junkie's paradise!
And I don't think it can be overlooked that, just by getting developers excited about a new system to work on applications for, creativity in general is being encouraged. I mean, something akin to that Elements app really *could* have been made for a PC. But... it wasn't. Similarly, there could have been a nifty and speedy way to download anything of Project Gutenberg directly to your PC. But.... there wasn't. And, sure, you could go there and get stuff to read directly, but.... I almost never did (And I couldn't take them on airplanes, either).
Is the iPad a perfect device? Hell, no. That requires USB. And Flash. And multitasking. And the ability to run Linux. *shakes curmudgeonly fist*
BUT, I do think this whole 'tablet' idea DOES have merit, and the iPad is the first of many worthwhile entries in the category. They're exceptionally shiny e-reader and media-consumption devices, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. It's more portable than any but the smallest of netbooks, with a better screen and (for consumption purposes) better interface, and I'd certainly rather carry it around than a single-task-sans-color Kindle.
I will be watching the future with interest. The Notion Ink Adam excites me greatly. I'm also curious what Google will ultimately bring to the fight (or if they just buy out Notion Ink or something, which would work too). HP gets a resounding "meh" for now, but that's largely preconceived notions talking, and could change.