As of this writing, Apple has sold over 2,000,000 iPads in just the first two months that it has been on the market. By any measure, this product is a sales and marketing hit of incredible proportions. I recently acquired a 16GB WiFi version of the iPad and have been finding out how to adapt it into my workflow and communications needs. The iPad is likely a game-changing device which will completely redefine personal computing. But is this redefinition a good thing?

Spaghetti Dinner App on the Apple iPad

Full disclosure: I won my iPad in a drawing at the office. I've been very intrigued by the iPad and have been thinking very seriously about getting one, but the drawing moved the acquisition schedule up a couple of months. Secondly, I've been a Palm Pilot and Palm cellphone user for over ten years now. My experience in handheld communication and personal organizers dates back to around 1989 and have been carrying laptop computers around since 1987. My personal bias in favor of the Palm OS is no secret and my Centro cellphone is my most "complete" device to date.

Initial Impressions

The iPad is a beautifully engineered and packaged product. The box it comes in is simple, yet mirrors the contents inside. The iPad itself is all metal and "glass" with only a few tiny controls along the outer edge. A buss port is on one end and a headphone jack on the other. That's it. Nothing more. No USB port, no Video Out, no memory card slot. Very clean, very smooth, very simple. The case itself has one ergonomic design flaw. The beveled edges are not sufficiently rounded and can press into your flesh in an uncomfortable manner when used for any length of time. Another aspect of the case is the smoothness of metal and glass make the iPad rather slippery and makes it a little more likely to go sliding off your lap to an untimely meeting with the floor.

The screen is relatively bright and very contrasty. The resolution is listed as 1024x768 and 132 pixels per inch. I'm not going to list all the specs, as you can get them all easily enough on the Apple website. (specs linked here). Although the screen does dim a little bit as you view at highly oblique angles, the screen remains very easy to read and see from any angle. Hidden behind the glass at the top of the unit is a light sensor which is used for the auto-dimming function. This works very well, however, when the iPad is held with both hands in the horizontal position the thumb will obscure the sensor.

The most impressive aspect of the iPad is most certainly the touch-screen. Unlike the pressure-sensitive screens of Palm devices, the iPad, along with the iPod Touch and iPhone use a capacitive-sensing screen matrix which is not pressure sensitive, but uses the conductive nature of flesh to identify where the screen is being touched. If you touch the screen with a non-conducting device, like a pencil, pen or the pointer from a Palm device, nothing happens. In fact, if you touch the screen with your finger-nail, it will probably ignore you. Unlike most touch-sensitive devices to date, these Apple devices recognize multiple simultaneous touches.

The Web Surfing Experience

The iPad uses a modified and limited version of Safari, which normally would be considered to be a competent browser. However, the iPad's version sets a flag inherited from the iPhone and iPod Touch that identifies the device as a mobile device with a shrunken screen. If you reach a site that configures itself differently for mobile vs. traditional computers, you will usually see the mobile version which is usually dumbed down from the regular site. This is a known problem and many of the CMS (content management systems) have already had code revisions to address this issue.

The one glaring omision in the iPad is the failure to support Adobe Flash Media. Much has been written about this and much more is yet to come. I've read the arguments against Flash support and I personally think this is a case of one autocratic company trying to duke it out with another autocratic company in the industry and the consumer ends up suffering. This will probably all resolve itself when Apple and Adobe sign some cross-licensing agreement or an Android "tablet" appears on the market with Flash support. To many, this is a show-stopper and if you frequent sites like CNN, you will be disappointed to not be able to view the video content. Of course, you can get other content from the iTunes Store for a fee... Like the saying goes, "Follow the Money".

The surfing experience is very pleasurable with the touch screen. To scroll the page, just swipe your finger up, down, left or right. To zoom in, take two fingers and touch and spread them. To zoom back out just bring the fingers back closer together. As you zoom in and out the text redraws with a different font size which preserves legibility. From the perspective of the casual user, the web surfing interface is simply revolutionary.

Email

As with most mobile devices, there is an inherent flaw in the built-in email application. If you like most of us, you have a Yahoo or GMail account along with an account from your ISP, an employer and maybe your own commercial domain name. If the iPad was your only computing device used for email, there is no problem because you can setup multiple accounts to pull from. But if you use GMail to pull together all of your accounts into one and then use the email app to query that account you can lose the proper sourcing of an individual email for replying to. For example, if you participate in a listserv mailing list, which uses one address, if you reply from the app you'll end up replying from another address which will cause your post to get bounced. The obvious solution is to use the web browser for accessing the GMail account and do your mailing list emails from there. This problem is not unique to the iPad, but is common with all mobile devices with a built-in email application.

Photo Browser

I'm still coming to grips with this, but as a nice personal browser it is nice, but as a professional tool, I'm highly underwhelmed as the image management is worthless. The same touch control experienced in surfing applies to the photo browser and makes looking at pictures easy and fun. There are apps which extend functionality to editing, emailing and other image management, but to get what should have been an inherent feature of the iPad is an app--most likely one which has to be paid for.

Video and iPod Functionality

As a personal entertainment device, I will hand it to Apple. The iPad is worth the price of admission for how it seamlessly combines content through iTunes and online content. I can't really find any fault with the iPad in this regard and will say that this sets the standard on content integration.

Keyboard

The on-screen "keyboard" is easily the biggest weakness of the iPad. You cannot "touch-type" on the screen and must resort to a hybrid "texting" method. The "buttons" are large and extremely easy and fast to type on, but there is just not enough real-estate for a proper keyboard layout. Worse yet, the keyboard is divided into three different categories: letters, numbers, characters. When typing anything that is a mix of letters and numbers you have to switch keyboard modes. I'm surprised at how bad the keyboard layout is on the iPad and would consider this the most poorly designed aspect of the iPad. Anybody who is interested in doing any serious typing should consider a BlueTooth keyboard.

Battery Life

Battery life is absolutely insane. Eight to ten hours of active usage time should be considered the norm. The design spec is for 10 hours, but if you are actively surfing a lot during that time you will see some decrease in runtime from the WiFi transceiver. The iPad is recharged through the USB cable, but won't do so from most computers or USB power sources. For those of us using non-Apple computers, you'll have to use the small AC power adapter included with the iPad.

Location Service

The iPad has the ability to make a decent guesstimate as to where it is located. It uses technology licensed from SKYHOOK Wireless which combines triangulation from three or more access points with a massive database of known locations. If it doesn't see more than one access point, it just places you at the location of the access point you are on. From my testing, even here in the hinterlands of Iowa, it has successfully guessed my location within 50 meters at every place tested. In a major city where the database is more complete, the system is capable of placing you almost exactly in the correct place. This is both exciting and yet scary as "Big Brother" probably has the ability to find you using this exact same technology. I would suppose that if you are on the lam, that the iPad should be avoided. The location service integrates extremely well with the mapping programs as well as weather radar apps.

The Apps

The feature that made Palm devices so successful for so many years was the OS which allowed for custom applications to be written for the devices. The iPad runs nearly all iPhone and iPod Touch apps but also runs apps specifically written for the larger screen. Just with the Palm, the iPad is pretty limited without the apps. Now we have Android applications showing up on the scene which add features and capabilities to devices running that OS. Unlike Palm OS/WebOS and Android OS, Apple runs a very tight ship and all apps have to be acquired through the app store. Apple controls the availability of the apps and restricts from public consumption apps which reach down inside the system and bypass the drivers.

There are many apps available for free, but more often than not they are demos or restricted subsets of the paid versions. The apps are the reason to select the iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch device. Once the excitement of the touch screen and smooth scrolling wear off, you discover that these devices are rather limited in what they can do. As even the browser is so weak in comparison to what you may be used to on a regular computer, the lack of some features may get old in a hurry. The apps are what "complete" the system. But this is where the value for the individual comes in.

As a professional photographer, I would be interested in running Photoshop or Lightroom on the iPad. Alas, other than some lowball image manipulation apps, there is nothing yet for us. There are at least three apps for model releases, one of which is insanely priced, another which has such poorly written legalese as to make the agreement unenforceable, but the third is actually quite good and is pretty inexpensive.

My first purchased app, is a bargain at 99 cents and I rank as an absolutely must have. That's the Emerald Observatory clock from Emerald Sequoia. It all comes down to the "killer app". The value of the iPad is in the one app which answers your specific needs. Without the apps the iPad is just an email, web surfing and entertainment device. That's it.

Conclusion

The iPad, in its current incarnation, will probably have a short shelf-life as king of the hill. It will continue to be an obscenely good seller for quite a while, but will get squeezed by Android devices on one side and a true "Tablet PC" on the other. If a tablet PC had the instant startup and amazing battery life of the iPad, but provided the functionality of a full-blown operating system with multitasking, then the iPad's days are numbered.

The iPad has replaced my notebook which I carry around at work to meetings and use at my desk. I do most of my note taking on the iPad now. It has become my go-everywhere device along with my cellphone. So far, my most important apps are the previously mentioned Emerald Observatory clock, VNC, email, a notebook and weather radar. Oh, and Topos2Go.

Back to the title of this article, the iPad is a "Cultured Computer". It is a very nicely refined consumer device aimed directly at the "gotta have it" crowd, but lacks the muscle and openness of a robust operating system.

Ken Norton

June 8, 2010