David Pogue’s Review of the iPad from 2 Angles
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
This is one thing I've always found interesting. Apple underestimates their battery life in every product I've laid hands on, even under relatively high-power operations. And they claim longer battery life than any other similar product.
I don't have hard numbers, but my experience says yes. However, it's not really in the same category. Developer's can't directly control the screen brightness, and the device is essentially unusable when the screen is off (except for the case of playing music).
http://www.apple.com/macbookpro/overlays/battery-video.html#...
Stuff like: how the device feels to sit with for longer periods of time, is it more natural to type with one finger or both thumbs when sitting, can i read while lying down... All the stuff that isn't just "it has this amount of ram, you can view videos and the web on it and...."
This hardly seems like a hard-nosed, critical appraisal: "The iPad is so fast and light, the multitouch screen so bright and responsive, the software so easy to navigate, that it really does qualify as a new category of gadget." "brighter brights" and "whiter whites" indeed.
Conversely, not being able to type comfortably or hold the device for more than 10 minutes without getting cramps--these are major usability issues that will affect everyone. iPad proponents seem to think people won't need to type on these things. Aren't they for casual web use? How do you write emails, blog posts, comments, usernames and passwords, URIs, google queries, tweets, IMs, etc. without typing? These tasks are trivial on regular keyboards, I'm not sure that will be the case on the iPad (I know it's not the case on my iPhone).
BTW: "Nomad" was so appropriate, being appealing to techies but not to normal people.
I'm curious to try out the iPad after reading his and Mossberg's review, but can't imagine shelling out a lot of money for what is essentially a leisure device that doesn't fit in my pocket.
I think it's just what he said: people really seem to love or hate the iPad, based mostly on their background.
Personally, the iPad isn't for me. I want less screen time in my life, not more - and the iPad doesn't fill any gaps that warrants me purchasing one for myself.
That being said, I did order one for my grandmother. She's been pestering me about getting the Internet and I felt like it would be a device that was less daunting for her than a mouse/keyboard combination.
Apologies if I've drifted off topic.
I might as well have asked her to do Differential Calculus.
However, I think the iPad will be different. If she's playing say, solitaire and wants to move something - she touches it with her finger and moves it. Easy.
The first issue is whether it is significantly less confusing than a PC. Sure, it is simpler (no multitasking), but when I was teaching my grandmother, multitasking was a 10% problem. She was mostly confused by the concept of hyperlinks, urls (when they weren't correctly formatted in emails, esp.), how to print, how to adjust font sizes, copy/paste, etc. The iPad certainly makes the concept of multiple windows easier to understand (by not allowing them), but there are still tons of issues with learning a computer.
On the negative side, it doesn't seem to be that good for an elderly person who may have some mobility issues. A desktop allows someone to position their head and hands in a reasonably comfortable way (head upright, hands below heart); I'm still not sure how the iPad is supposed to be used in a comfortable way. The iPad also has a significantly smaller screen and moving hands across the device might be a lot harder than using a mouse.
I'm surprised because a) that's one hell of a long time, and b) Apple, like everyone else I guess, tend to overstate battery life and reviewers seem to find it almost impossible to replicate the published claims.
Luckily, there are many developers who have a lot of financial incentive to do just that. I'm really looking forward to seeing what they come up with.
If that number is true -- only a measly thousand -- then I'm pretty excited. Based on the buzz I've heard in the blogosphere, and the chatter on Apple's own dev forums, I would have guessed more like ten thousand. At that number, competition for eyeballs is pretty fierce. But if it's really only a thousand, then I stand a real chance of making some money.
I wonder if there is a killer app in algorithm-assisted sketching and drawing with your fingers on the iPad. Consider zooming, automatically having lines meet perfectly, having the "artistic" filters from Photoshop, different drawing tools, etc.
The bulk of OpenShapes is in JavaScript - so should be good fun making the editor work with the touch interface.
http://vimeo.com/1669862?pg=embed&sec=1669862
It looks cool, and would be suited to the ipad.
Ugg, NYT style guide.
When your style guide requires you to misspell proper names, that's when you know it's total crap.
U.S.B. is in the same boat... it's an acronym. If they really want to get the NYT on board, they'll have to change the name.
Side note: this isn't the case with AT&T (anymore) as that is the company's official name. AT&T doesn't actually stand for anything (officially).
I know it's pedantic, but if the New York Times stops caring about such things, who will?
Too bad they dropped the name completely; they could have just changed "telegraph" to "[wire]tap" and they would have been totally up to date.
Review for Everyone Else - The Apple iPad is basically a gigantic iPod Touch.
Big Surprise.
Love the concept- But I'll wait until HTC/Google come along and give it some missing features (webcam, expandable storage) and the extra oomph that the geek in me appreciates (multi tasking, maybe a keyboard (maybe a sliding one like the HTC Tilt?))