Thoughts on the iPad

So I started working at my first "real job" where I spend 40 hours a week wondering when I can leave and go do something fun. (Not anytime soon, since it takes 6+ weeks to process my first paycheck) Seriously though, it's not a bad job, it's basically the same one I've been doing the last 3 years as a student, just formalized full-time now, with a decent salary and nice benefits. It's just slow in the summer and ultimately, not a field I want to be in for long. The cool thing about working in IT though is all the toys you get, and one of them being the iPad. So I decided to review it a bit. All biases on the table out front- I don't particularly care for Apple, I own a Netbook running Ubuntu as well as an Android phone.

In general, it's a nice toy and it's relatively enjoyable to use...I just see it about as necessary as a panini maker. Nice to have, but not really something you should be breaking the bank for. My model (16gb, Wifi) costs $500. There is one that costs $830, for 64gb and 3G, not to mention the data plan. It doesn't feel particularly ergonomic either, it feels a little too thin to feel comfortable, or maybe too thick. Somewhere awkwardly in between.

Ultimately, my problem with the iPad is pretty much every problem I have with Apple. It costs far too much, and in their anal pursuit (that should get this blog some interesting Google searches) of style, greatly hinders the product. They charge $100 to double the memory available, a bit ludicrous considering a 16gb flash drive costs $45, and that's flash memory...not the traditional hard drive that is inside of the iPad. You can't buy hard drives that small anymore. And if you think any space constraint issues could be resolved by, say, plugging in that 16gb flash drive or a larger external hard drive, you're wrong. There are no USB ports, which completely rules it out of being a on-the-go troubleshooting device that one of the Associate Directors of IT uses it as. It's a bit surprising that such a large device is so constrained on physical inputs, I can fully understand why an iPhone shouldn't have a USB port, but the iPad is a computer, not a phone, and it should. Instead, you need to go out and buy a dozen new adapters for any kind of connection you want. That's probably the fundamental problem with it, as my brother said, Apple should have made a small (and cheap) Macbook, not a big iPod. Example- why doesn't it have say an onboard camera? My netbook does, and this whole new FaceTime thing that is in iPhone 4 (which is a neat idea, I agree) completely misses what could be a solid market, the iPad users. I'd rather set an iPad up and get a decent display of my friend than hold my phone up and look at a tiny resolution the whole time. (Why I don't watch movies on my phone)

Other problems- well, I'm not a big fan of iOS. Lack of multitasking (which is somewhat being resolved in iOS4) is a major pain in the butt, for someone accustomed to Android software, it's annoying as heck. I'll be listening to Pandora or something and want to go look something up on the web. But I can't. Likewise, when I was downloading a large game via a 3rd-party app store (jailbroke it immediately) I couldn't navigate away, or else it would cancel the download. So for 2 hours or so, it just sat there. Maddening. Speaking of comparisons with Android, I find Apple's obsession with the one-button very annoying. Like USB ports, I could maybe see rationale for the iPhone. But the iPad has plenty of space! One button to bring you back to the home screen is annoying. On Android, there's 4: Go back, menu, home, and search. I don't use the 4th a lot, but I use the other 3 plenty. (if you hold home down, it brings up your 6 most recently used apps. So simple, yet so useful) No widescreen. No flash, of course. Stuck with the App store unless you jailbreak it like me, and let me tell you, there's a huge difference between the App Store and Android Market. In that, if I actually had an iPhone and paid for all the apps, I'd be broke. They are much more expensive, and there are very few free ones. I'm not opposed to paying for stuff and have bought a dozen or so Android apps, but looking through the App store just made me cringe at the prices. Oh, and then of course there's the fact that you're dealing with Apple's walled garden.

A few people in my department who love it say "I love not lugging my laptop around! The iPad is brilliant!" They have never heard of netbooks, evidently. I would love the iPad too if I was used to lugging around a 7.5lbs 15.5" honker with a 2-hour battery life. Android would be better than iOS, but fundamentally I don't compare it to my phone, I compare it to my netbook. Which is what Steve Jobs wants us to do, as he said netbooks are just cheap crappy laptops. Things my netbook has/can do that the iPad can't- USB ports, front facing camera, physical keyboard, VGA out, open system, (mine came preinstalled with a crappy Linux distro, replaced it with Ubuntu netbook edition and have been very satisfied) play Flash videos, 1/2 the price with more memory....it kind of goes on. And it only weighs 1/2 a pound more. For me, the three dealbreakers are no multitasking, no USB ports, and no physical keyboard. I use my netbook for troubleshooting, which involves opening Chrome, browsing the web looking for solutions, and/or downloading files and copying them over. iPad can't do that. I'm a huge fan of the physical keyboard, I have a Motorola Droid which has a slide out one, and while brief typing (text messages, etc) is manageable on a virtual keyboard, I'd never want to use it to type anything more than 140 characters. Ditto for the iPad.

I've trashed the iPad enough, so I'll mention things I do like about it. It's fast, it is very snappy. The screen is excellent. The Wifi card is fairly strong, my Droid's wifi component occasionally craps out or has a weak connection. There are things it's good for, like reading news articles or browsing the web casually. (as long as the site doesn't have Flash, occasionally) The battery life is excellent, I can leave it running for 3 days without a charge, it seems to definitely get the reported 10-11 hours of screen time, and it doesn't suck much battery when it's running with the screen off. Though reading articles and browsing web pages is nice on it, I wouldn't want to use it to read books, the backlight would annoy me after a while, the Kindle's e-Ink feels much more natural.

So it's a nice little toy to have sitting around the house if you want to look something up, or browse the web a bit while sitting on the couch. I don't bring it to work, I have my netbook here instead. Whenever I have to return it, I won't be running out and buying one. People should look at netbooks more...but I've already written a brief ode to them in the past.