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Apple iPad Reviewed
adeelarshad82 writes "Since the iPad's initial introduction back in January, many of us still wonder why we should drop hundreds of dollars for what is termed as a large iPod. Missing features like support for multitasking, a built-in camera for video chats, and Flash support in Safari only add to the dilemma. However, a recently published review of the iPad starts to clear up these doubts. To begin with, the iPad is packing some real quality gear under the hood. Even though the in-house-designed 1GHz A4 chip got little official comment from Apple, the touch screen's instantaneous responses prove that it is outstandingly fast. Furthermore, the iPad runs iPhone OS 3.2, and is currently the only device that runs this version of the operating system. iPad's graphics capabilities come from a PowerVR SGX GPU, similar to the one found in the iPhone 3GS and iPod Touch. It can render about 28 million polygons/second, which is more powerful than the Qualcomm Snapdragon found in devices like the HTC HD2. Also, iPad's extraordinary battery life is not just a myth. According to the lab tests, the battery netted a respectable 9 hours and 25 minutes, very close to Apple's claims of 10 hours."
I ordered the 64GB 3G model so I have to wait. Shouldn't the people who paid the most get theirs first? Of course I'd have paid $100 more for a video camera built-in.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
Yep, I can't see any real practical use for this.
I can't think of a single situation where I wouldn't be far better served by an iphone, a netbook or an e-reader.
You can't pocket it, you're gonna need a carrying case for it (may as well carry a netbook/laptop). It's not a great portable.
As an e-reader; in the dark it burns out your eyes spending time reading it, in the sun, you can't read it at all.
Using it for work? Typing on a touchscreen is painful for large amounts of text. There is no comfortable way of holding the ipad and still being able to type with more than a single finger at a time. No multitasking makes it an utter joke for any real work. Imagine you're doing a company flier. You want to put in an image that needs some light editing so it blends in properly. Imagine the workflow for that without having more than one application open.
Gaming? How stupid are you going to look on a train using a tilt sensor in a 10" device? How tired will your arms get?
Not true, I had a big breakfast, give me about half a day and I will give you a good review
And none of these are more important than my time. Sure, they're useful to have in the background, but the priority should always be where the user's attention is.
And I'm saying that the first time you have to spend 45 seconds thinking about which folder you put that document in or where that configuration file is, you will already be losing (timewise) to the OS that indexes and lets the user just type the name into a search bar. That's a huge productivity gain.
I don't care about performance, I care about UI latency. Whatever I'm doing at the computer only I use is by definition the most important job the computer has at the moment. Shame nobody in the OS design business realizes this.
Which is why Linux, Windows and OSX recently included IO priority scheduling. OS designers care, but they aren't going to sacrifice functionality to make it happen.
UI latency is a wonderful thing, don't get me wrong, it's just not the *only* thing that should inform design choices. I reckon most users would prefer a full-featured system with indexing and VSC than one that's a bit faster.