iPad owners - first impressions?
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From: Woody on 28 May 2010 05:49 On 28/05/2010 10:19, Jim wrote: > Calling all iPad owners - could you post your first impressions here? > > Keep it short. Post the good. Especially post the bad. Short huh? Well, ok here is an unordered collection of things. Opening it from the box it is slightly smaller than I was expecting but to not be the same as everyone else I would say it is about as heavy as I thought it would be. I mean, it is made of metal and glass, what do you expect. Clearly it is a thing of beauty, just as an object in its own right, even ignoring what it is. Holding it in one hand, you need to find your own way really. It naturally fits in the hand but it is a little heavy after a while. Should note is is lighter than all my other tablets that I wouldn't even try to hold with one hand. The bezel is good for this, your thumb can hold it without covering the screen. The screen is gorgeous, but it is reflective as anything and it attracts fingerprints like you wouldn't believe. Considering mine is less than 24 hours old, it looks like a childs fingerpainting competition. Wireless setup is predictably easy and have had no problem with range or drop off. The home button is small and easy to lose when you have it in landscape, especially in the apple case, where it is on the left, which is the wrong side for me. Haven't had a chance to use the camera connection kit yet. Connecting it to my iTunes (that has my phone as a client) it downloaded all my apps to it. And all my photos, I didn't realise I had so many on my laptop. It took an age. Quite a lot of iPhone apps look not good, stuck in the middle of the screen, and fixed in portrait mode. 2x mode is better but then it looks very bitty. Some apps though (iDrum) work very well this way, others just look cramped. The screen (if you are used to an iPhone) looks huge, even though it is 1024x768. As a comparison, I have an HP tablet behind it at the moment, same resolution, running Windows 7. The HP looks amazingly cramped, and you are always moving things around to use it, it gets frustrating, the iPad screen in comparison looks massive and everything is clear and useable. The interface is so fluid - it is a joy to use. Sometimes apple do hammer the same UI to the point it is not so good. I have 13,000 pics in pictures. If you look at the online demos of pictures, it is like that, it is very good. However, if you want to scroll 13000 pics, it takes forever. There is no scroll bar or anything, so you are just paddling for about 30 seconds to get down it - there are also no filtering options. At the umm.. desktop? whatever you call it - I find the icons are too widely spaced, I would like an option for that. Keyboard I thought would cause a problem with the numbers not available, but it is actually really nice to use. Pages, numbers and iCal are pretty wow ish. Maps is much nicer big, youtube is good, the split view used in everything is good, less navigation. The version of newstap looks great, haven't got it yet. I think this is just starting out. I can see improvements that can be made, certainly, but I think it is the right idea for a UI, it is fast, fluid and it makes you want to use it. -- Woody
From: Ben Shimmin on 28 May 2010 06:08 Jim <jim(a)magrathea.plus.com>: > Calling all iPad owners - could you post your first impressions here? > > Keep it short. Post the good. Especially post the bad. > > Many thanks. + It's really fast. Really, really fast. Stupidly fast. + It offers the best web browsing experience of any system I've ever used, not just limited to mobile devices. (Though see the caveat below.) + It feels just the right weight to me (others may disagree, especially weaklings). + The screen is very bright. + The built-in revamped apps are much improved, especially Mail; the modal pop-ups are great. + Some of the third-party iPad apps are fantastic, and many are really beautiful. + Battery life is great. You basically just don't need to worry about it running out of charge. - Anyone who says they can type at the same speed on it as on a physical keyboard is either a liar or not capable of touch-typing. But it's still good enough, really. - Apps are more expensive (understandably). - iPhone-apps with pixel doubling are pretty unpleasant to look at; with the exception of games, you will probably just delete your old ones. - It charges pretty slowly via USB from my MacBook Pro. - iBooks is a bit buggy (I had two `Library' buttons at one point) and the selection is not very good at all. - I can't help but feel the screen should be higher resolution -- it doesn't look as crisp as my iPhone, and certainly will look a lot worse than the next generation of iPhone with the alleged crazy PPI. - Doesn't appear to have Flash (?!). b. -- <bas(a)bas.me.uk> <URL:http://bas.me.uk/> `Zombies are defined by behavior and can be "explained" by many handy shortcuts: the supernatural, radiation, a virus, space visitors, secret weapons, a Harvard education and so on.' -- Roger Ebert
From: Rob on 28 May 2010 06:21 On 28/05/2010 10:22, T i m wrote: > On Fri, 28 May 2010 10:19:03 +0100, Jim<jim(a)magrathea.plus.com> > wrote: > >> Calling all iPad owners - could you post your first impressions here? >> >> Keep it short. Post the good. Especially post the bad. >> > http://www.theonion.com/articles/apple-finally-unveils-ipad,8668/ > > T i m Onion makes me smile. Good to see the new strip 'iBores' in Private Eye. Got to laugh at yourself sometime. Not got anyone specific in mind but you know who you are :-) Rob
From: Jim on 28 May 2010 07:54 On 2010-05-28, R <me32(a)privacy.net> wrote: > >> At the umm.. desktop? whatever you call it - I find the icons are too >> widely spaced, I would like an option for that. > > I must admit my heart sank when I saw pictures of the iPad > desktop. It's as if they couldn't think of anything original to do > with it. And the icons look kind of sad and lonely being, as > you say, so widely spaced. Perhaps this will be addressed in OS4.0 Jim -- Twitter:@GreyAreaUK "If you have enough book space, I don't want to talk to you." Terry Pratchett
From: Trooper on 28 May 2010 08:29
R <me32(a)privacy.net> wrote: > Jim <jim(a)magrathea.plus.com> wrote: > > > On 2010-05-28, R <me32(a)privacy.net> wrote: > > > > > >> At the umm.. desktop? whatever you call it - I find the icons are too > > >> widely spaced, I would like an option for that. > > > > > > I must admit my heart sank when I saw pictures of the iPad > > > desktop. It's as if they couldn't think of anything original to do > > > with it. And the icons look kind of sad and lonely being, as > > > you say, so widely spaced. > > > > Perhaps this will be addressed in OS4.0 > > I hope so. I think the desktop metaphor has had its day, actually. > I'd like to see Apple kill it off completely. > > While I'm at it: the shelf is kinda kitsch. And what's it there for? > > On a Mac you could argue the Dock's shelf says "hey, there's > a Dock here!" I.e., though still kitsch it does at least serve some > limited function - it marks the presence of in-Dock icons as opposed > to a bunch of not-in-Dock icons scattered about the desktop. > > But isn't the whole home screen like the Dock on iPhones/iPads? > In which case, why have a shelf under one part? And what's special > about those 4 icons sitting on the shelf? > > It probably goes without saying: I don't know much about iPhones! You can have multiple pages of icons, the shelf ones stay constant regardless of what page you are on :) T. |