Apple’s Ipad Pleases, But Is It Essential?

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Apple’s Ipad Pleases, But Is It Essential?

Apple announced it sold 300,000 iPads on the first day it was available, so the device is off to a good start. But as I’ve said before, I think we need to see how people are really using the iPad after they’ve had it for a couple of months before we’ll know whether this is really a game-changer or just a fun gadget.

My iPad arrived mid-morning on Saturday, and despite the beautiful weekend, I was able to spend some time with it. So far, I’ve found a few annoyances, but in general, my experiences have been quite positive.

As usual, with most Apple devices, the iPad just looks great. After I got it set up, I immediately found myself fighting my family for time on the device. The metal case and the tapered sides make it look thinner and lighter than it actually is. The brushed aluminum case felt a bit slippery, but in general the iPad handled well. At 1.5 pounds, it’s notably heavier than a newspaper, magazine, or Kindle, but I don’t think that’s going to be a real barrier to people using it.

Setup was straightforward. The iPad works with iTunes, just like an iPod or iPhone, and you select the applications, music, videos, and photos you want to transfer within iTunes. However, to get your iPad to work, you need to download and install iTunes 9.1, and for some reason, that version took about 40 minutes to process my iTunes library.

So far, I’ve mostly used the device to try out a few of the media applications. I’ve found a lot to like about applications from the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, USA Today, Marvel Comics, ABC and others. In general, I have been pretty impressed by the creativity theses applications have shown, and expect we’ll see more in the future. (See my take here.) I’m still not convinced that many people will pay for these applications if the same content is available for free on Web sites, but there is something to be said for the fact that you now can take the information with you offline.

I found the iPad generally quite easy to read. In normal lighting at home and in the shade outdoors, it looked pretty good. Like most LCD screens, it doesn’t work in bright sunlight, and I found the reflections on the screen a bit annoying when trying to read newspaper applications on the train. So far I’m generally happy with the LCD display, though I haven’t really tried reading books for any length of time yet. (The book I wanted to read this week isn’t out in electronic form.)

I have tried both Exchange and Web mail on the device, and the new UI for the mail client is pretty interesting. When you hold the screen horizontally, you see a list of messages on the left and the actually message (with HTML formatting) on the right. When you hold it vertically, you see one message at a time, but you can tap on a button to see a scrolling list of all your messages, or a list of all of your folders.

My Yahoo mail account seemed to work pretty well offline, but the Exchange mail really needed a connection (as it does on the iPhone). I like the way that the iPad indexes mail messages and contacts along with files from the main search screen. In general, I’ve been pretty happy with the iPhone mail client. I find it does more than the mail client on the Motorola Droid, for example; though Mac and Windows mail clients have lots of capabilities.

The Safari Web browser works the same on the iPad as it does on the iPhone, with all the same pros and cons, except, of course, you can see a lot more of the page on the larger screen. And that does make a huge difference. A laptop will typically have at least as big a screen as an iPad, naturally, and will support Flash and Silverlight–and that’s a big deal, at least right now.

For instance, in email this weekend, I had several messages with links to YouTube videos or sites with music, and they just didn’t work on the iPad. (One of these was a link to the OK Go “This Too Shall Pass” Rube Goldberg-type video, which has over 10 million views, but clicking on it on the iPad just gets you a “could not load video” box. You can find a similar version using the YouTube application, but it’s not the same.)

The iPad doesn’t have nearly the battery life of an e-reader, owing in part to the LCD display. But it wasn’t bad. I got about 8 hours before I saw the “battery low” message, which is a bit less than what Apple claims and notable worse that many of the first reviews. My guess is that a weak Wi-Fi signal draws more power from the battery than a strong one.

Sitting on a couch using the iPad for Web surfing e-mail was a pleasant experience. The machine is relatively light and seems snappy. But did I miss features I have on my laptop? Absolutely.

The lack of a physical keyboard is obvious. The onscreen keyboard isn’t bad; it’s perfectly fine for responding to e-mail messages, but I wouldn’t have wanted to type this review on screen. Tim Gideon of PC Magazine wrote his review that way, but it’s not for me. If we all were using onscreen keyboards only, a physical keyboard would seem like a huge advance.

Multitasking is another obvious issue. You can play music from iTunes while running other applications, but not from Pandora or Rhapsody.

On the other hand, it is very easy to pick the iPad up and just use it without thinking about booting (assuming it’s charged), and I didn’t find myself really minding the absent keyboard, multitasking, or Flash all that often. I’m going to have to give this a try for a bit longer and see how often I end up reaching for the iPad and how often I’m going back to my laptop.

I’ve used other tablets before, and the iPad clearly offers a better consumer experience than what has gone before. But I think the jury is still out as to whether it will move from being a fun gadget for early adopters to a really useful addition to the technology that most people use.

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