iPad – first hands on reactions
Submit to HN This week I finally got my iPad. Let’s dive right in about what I’ve experienced.
1. I got the iPad WiFi version not 3G. The reason is simple – without paying $130 for the 3G version, you can tether the iPad over wifi to any 3g wireless access point. So you could get Sprint MiFi, a jailbroken iPhone with MyWi (note: I don’t condone this, carrier charges may apply, bla bla bla), or any variety of wireless access points, and as the technology gets better you can always tether to 3G, 4G, 5G, and on and on. So no point in spending extra cash for 3G in the iPad, imho. Besides we all know AT&T is a complete fail when it comes to 3G, although that might be improving soon-ish, one would hope.
2. Reading on this screen is an absolute pleasure. Reading the web, and especially news with something like the Early Edition RSS reader which turns your feeds into a newspaper style layout, is a hell of a lot more efficient than doing it on your computer. I have a 27″ iMac. I prefer to read feeds on the iPad. Nuff said. I do have some concern with reflections in some lighting conditions so I’m considering getting an anti glare film cover.
3. Music apps. I completely didn’t think about this when I bought the iPad but it’s incredible for making music. Already tons of awesome synth, sequencing, drum machine, and other apps have been put out. Many of them as accurate emulations of very expensive hardware. A $500 device whose UI can be morphed to that of any music making machine (and beyond) is pretty incredible. For just a small taste check out the video here of just one of the midi controller Apps available. Having the iPad is like having a minimoog, a kaoss pad, a multitude of sequencers, and all kinds of apps that aren’t even possible with real hardware. All in one portable device you can take on the go and work on music. The music apps tend to be $3-$10 a piece which is very reasonable considering their multi-hundred-dollar hardware equivalents. Actually being able to touch the buttons on screen works a ton better than trying to play an onscreen keyboard with a mouse on my computer. What’s more, people have actually come with some great apps that let your iPad control your computer via MIDI/OSC, over WiFi. With computer to computer networking the latency can be reduced to 2-5ms (I haven’t tried this yet), which is apparently below perceivable threshold.
4. Feel in the hand – it’s a little too heavy to be held with one hand. Very comfortable for two hands, or while sitting down and resting in your lap area. But we still have a little ways to go until we have Star Trek style tablets that don’t seem to weigh anything at all. I expect Apple to be releasing an iPad TNG sometime in the next five years as technology improves, so no worries there :). What is absolutely certain is that this form factor is the way of the future 90% of tasks you do on your computer don’t require much typing, and for interacting with content, a touch screen is a lot more efficient and of course more fun, than messing around with a computer. I wish it had a brightness switch that was easier to access than through the settings menu. But I’m sure a jailbreak will solve that soon enough if it hasn’t already.
5. iPad as radio and tv – this is pretty great. I have it docked next to my computer so while I’m working I can listen to radio separately on this screen. Yes it’s an expensive $500 radio, but the touch interactivity and browsability of the excellent Pandora and NPR apps makes it worth it. You can also stream Netflix and ABC videos to it so it works great as a small desktop TV. The only thing I wish it had was proper iTunes video streaming (on my computer I can start watching a movie while it downloads). Couldn’t figure out how to make that happen on iPad. Probably something that will be fixed in a future software release.
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