I was watching one of the many technology video podcasts that get downloaded each day to my TiVo and they were talking about the, at that time, upcoming iPad from Apple. My wife walked into the room, glanced at the television for a moment or two, and said, "You're not getting one." Ouch! Apparently, the WAF (Wife Acceptance Factor) for this device is quite low. Actually, while they look incredibly cool, I'm not all that convinced I even want an iPad right now! I decided to call upon Justin Snider, our ELCA Youth Ministry Network friend for all things Apple, and ask him to join me in thinking through the pros and cons of the iPad.
There are many places you can find the technical specifics about the iPad, such as Apple's website, so I'm not going to rehash those here. Suffice it to say, it's a blazingly fast, beautiful to look at, touch-screen computer. Or you could think of it as a really big iPhone/iPod Touch or a setup roughly the size of gluing 4 of them together on a piece of cardboard! It features the same touch screen technology and ease of use that have made the iPhone and iPod Touch so popular. The first models to be released only connect via wi-fi (like the iPod Touch) and later models will have wi-fi and 3G connectivity, via the AT&T network.
What's great about the iPad is that it's a really big iPod Touch. What's not great about the iPad is that it's only a really big iPod Touch. It does not include a camera for video chatting. It does have a microphone, but it's really too big to hold up against your face and make a call! The rest of the buttons and features are pretty similar to the iPod Touch, with a really big screen. The speed of the device is quite snappy because Apple is making the hardware and software, and it is not running a desktop operating system, but rather a proven mobile graphical user interface.
Because the iPad is built upon these previous devices, it has access to over 185,000 apps right out of the box with thousands of those designed especially for the larger iPad screen. In addition, Apple has developed iPad iWork apps that allow you to work on presentations, documents, and spreadsheets right on the iPad. If you're doing a lot of typing, you may want to get either an iPad Keyboard Dock or use any bluetooth compatible keyboard with the iPad. Although the iPad doesn't come with a camera, tom Merritt has found a couple of ways to use an iPhone as a camera for an iPad.
The iPad is an excellent e-reader, supporting the formats and bookstores of Amazon's Kindle, Barnes & Noble eReader, Stanza, Marvel Comics, and other common formats like PDF as well as, of course, Apple's new iBook format. It is the one device that will pull together electronic books from a variety of sources and let you read them wherever you are. It's comfortable to hold onto on the couch and the screen-lock feature even lets you read on your side in bed! But the screen is not electronic paper and may cause eye-strain after awhile. The battery life is claimed as ten hours, but many reviewers have said they're getting as much as twelve hours before it's totally drained, which is a nice change of pace from the usual practice of over-estimating battery life.
One significant knock against the iPad is that it is a walled garden device. The only applications you can run on it are the ones that Apple approves and sells through the iTunes store. It may be possible to jailbreak an iPad so that you can run unlicensed applications, but this isn't a process for the feint of heart. There are other devices which run versions of Windows or Android that are, or will be, more open to a wider range of software. One major missing application if Flash. Websites that use Flash for video or game content won't work on an iPad. There will just be a blank square where Farmville is supposed to be!
The iPad uses wi-fi to connect. That, along with going through iTunes, is about the only way of getting data on or off the device. There are no USB ports or card readers built into the iPad, though Apple is selling a $29 Camera Connection Kit that will allow you to connect a camera via USB or SD Card. To get your movies, applications, or anything else onto or off of the device, you have to hook it up with a cable to your computer with iTunes or pull them over wi-fi. Coming later this month will be a version that uses AT&T's 3G network as well as wi-fi, but still no physical media support out of the box.
Then there is also the fact that Apple has a history of releasing second generation products that build very well upon the first version of a product. There are lots of rumors about what the iPad Second Generation will have and how it may be better than the current one. The iPad may end up being a case where the early adopters feel slighted by what the next device has that theirs doesn't. One of those things is a webcamera. Most netbooks let you videochat, but you won't be able to do that on an iPad, at least not without some iPhone magic.
The two of us both love the look and feel of the iPad and, if someone offered, either one of us would love to have one. But we're also recommending that folks proceed with caution if they're thinking about getting one for themselves. Make sure you're happy with what it does and doesn't do before plopping down your cash!
And, for the record, both of us watch Brian Cooley talk about $75,000 cars all the time and we're not all that interested in those either!
Finally, here's a link to a comparison of the iPad and the iPod Touch.
Andy hasn’t gotten to play with one yet, but Justin has! One of my church members pre-ordered one, and brought it to church this last Sunday, and let me play with it for a bit. It is truly a gorgeous device, that is really snappy to use. I currently own an iPhone 3GS, and see many of the same great qualities in the iPad, but with way more screen real estate. My wife actually has been eyeing one simply as a couch device for email, web-surfing, and Facebook, I would love to see what Apple improves in the second generation model, then we may jump at the chance to get one!
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Comments
I have to admit -- before the January announcement -- when all the rampant rumors were about an Apple tablet -- I simply couldn't care less. It was a 'tweener' product as far as I was concerned. Something that would have to fall between the iPod/iPhone and a MacBook. I have them all so I didn't care and I couldn't imagine that I would even consider one. Then came the announcement and I knew right away I had to have it. The morning it was available for pre-order, I ordered two. (I had already talked a family member into getting one of these rather than a MacBook).
My big screen HDTV broke just before Lent and that seemed like a good time to decide to give up TV for Lent. And since the iPad arrived the day before Easter, I still haven't worried about fixing the TV. The iPad has become my media delivery device. It's awesome to be able to stream movies thru Netflix. Watching and listening to baseball games thru the MLB app. Gaming is also incredible with size of the iPad screen. The list goes on and on.
A couple of apps that I picked up for reading documents include Readdle and Good Reader. Both of these apps let me load and read most any kind of document -- PDF, Word, Excel, text, etc. But one of the amazing things is just how easy it is to move documents onto and off the iPad for these apps. You see, the app runs a file server so you mount the iPad as a disk wirelessly and then you can drag and drop files to the iPad. I mention this because of a unique way I'm going to be using it this weekend. I have download all the PDF reports and bios for our upcoming Synod Assembly. I have loaded them on the iPad and my parents, as delegates, are going to be using one of my iPads for all that "paperwork" rather than lugging around the huge three ring binder that everyone else will have. That, along with things like calendars, notepads, and many other apps, I hope that it will prove to be an invaluable tool for just such an event.
I am expecting my 3G iPad to be arriving this Friday and look forward to the addition of GPS capabilities which I will use extensively next week while taking 25 students to Washington DC.
I know that the second generation iPad is probably not too far off. But even if it came as early as this fall with the release of version 4.0 of the OS, I have no regrets.
Speaking of OS 4.0, I am a bit disappointed that Apple will not be releasing the iPad version at the same time as the iPhone. Personally, I think the iPad will benefit from 4.0 more than the iPhone.
I did want to comment on a couple of points you made in the blog entry. First is the issue of the "walled garden" approach. Personally, I have no problem with Apple's approach here. It has been an incredible opportunity for the small developer and it really levels the playing field. There are so many great apps that never would have made it to market if Apple didn't set it up this way. There have been those that don't like that Apple doesn't approve every app -- but that's actually a good thing. When you look at the app stores that allow anything and everything, that meant that there were trojan horse apps and other apps that did bad things or opened security holes were appearing from almost the day those stores opened. This was the reason that Apple took a year to open the App store after releasing the first iPhone. They wanted to come up with a system that protects the user and I feel that, although the system isn't perfect, it has been doing a pretty good job.
The second comment is about "Flash". I wish to offer a different perspective. Do you remember floppy disks? Sony officially stopped producing them this week. Do you remember the original iMac? When Steve announced that he was releasing a personal computer without a floppy disk drive, the industry said it wouldn't work. Also, he only put USB ports and Ethernet on those iMacs. People thought that there had to be a SCSI for hard drives, Serial ports for modems, and Parallel ports for printers. Steve saw that those technologies were dying and he was right. USB would probably never got off the ground had he not done that. As soon as the iMac hit the streets, manufacturers saw an instant market of people that HAD to have USB devices and the industry finally took notice. He was ahead of his time. I think the same thing is happening here with Flash. Steve sees that Flash isn't needed anymore. It's a technology that programs to the least common denominator and as there are more devices that it works for, it tries to be a jack of all trades but a master of none. One of the best comments I have seen as to why it should not be allowed on the iPod/iPhone/iPad is simply because it is a tech that is based on a mouse driven interface and the iDevices are touch based interfaces where there is no cursor (things like mouse-over just don't work). The other issue is that there are so many good apps out there that are truly made for the iDevices -- why clutter the app store with thousands more that don't take full advantage of the device? Just like with the iMac and USB issue, people are seeing that they have to adapt if they want to keep up. Video sites that want to stay around are converting the HTML5 which is an open standard (unlike Flash). Just my 2 cents.