The iPad – Another Point of View

Posted: Wednesday, April 7th, 2010 by admin

Ok, so we know it’s cool, right? Video is ridiculous (right  on par with my very nice 50” Plasma TV). The built in Mail, iCal, and Contacts Apps are all good. Netflix rocks. I am trying to now take a second, more investigative look at the device. Here are my thoughts:

First off, the screen size is great. It is larger than 6 iPhone screens, so its total area is great. You can maneuver around really well and everything is so easy to read. It’s one of the the things that make it a great e-reader. There are alot of complaints about finger rpints on the screen, but I really only noticed them when the device was powered off; and, really, are you trying to impress anyone with your powered off iPad?

What I did find difficult, though, as a PC user and an iPhone user, typing on the iPad is a whole new animal. I am sure it’s a transitional thing, but it will certainly take getting used to. On the iPhone you really only type with your thumbs, so you never rest anything on the screen. When you type on a PC, you can freely rest your fingers on the keys and they don’t do anything until you apply force to the keys. On the iPad, if your fingers even slightly tap the screen, you can throw in extra characters or even jump to another part of the screen while you are typing. Also, keeping your hands off the screen all the time isn’t so ergonomically sound. This could definitely limit productivity on the device if you plan to use it as much more than a toy. Also, with a screen 6 times larger than the iPhone, you think they could have added a Caps Lock key, right?

So I got my typing experience on the iPad using the SketchPad HD app and found a couple of flaws there, too. First off, if you are typing and you get past the point of where the keyboard has popped up, it doesn’t scroll with you and you can’t force it to. So basically, you have to stop typing or assume that you are making no mistakes. That was a bummer to me, but I have to assume there are a million apps out there that won’t have this problem. The other thing that was a bummer was, when you email a note from this app to yourself, it comes as a PDF file and that file is basically just picture of your note, so you can’t copy the text out of it. Oddly, the built in Notes app is better in this respect than the SketchPad app, but SketchPad does allow you to doodle…

Let’s be honest, my only complaint so far is they keyboard, and that’s something that an iPad owner will learn to work around. The features of this device that make it an amazing toy are really, well… amazing. The ONLY other thing that keeps me from buying an iPad is the cost. $500 is alot of money for something that doesn’t do anything more than my existing, albeit larger, laptop. And if you want the handy little carrying case, that’s an additional $40. And if you want to put pictures from your camera directly to your iPad, that’s an add-on that you will have to pay for. That said, if you have the money to burn, I think this thing is alot of fun and can make road trips and vacations easier. It would even make browsing the web on your couch easier if you wanted it to. All-in-all, if you can fit in in your budget, I would say to check it out. It’s the King Kong of iPad’s and so far is living up to the hype