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.

Review of the Motorola Droid

So I've had my Motorola Droid for a bit over two weeks now, and I thought I'd post my thoughts on it. Reviewing it immediately is a bad idea, as first of all, I was pretty giddy, second of all, I had never had a smartphone, and third of all, I hadn't gotten used to it to make a full judgement. I'll break it down simple.

The Pros:
Screen- The screen is gorgeous, and very responsive to touch. It's kind of neat that the screen turns off when you have your phone at your ear during a call, but sometimes it doesn't turn back on immediately when you go to end the call, takes a second or so. Graphics are very powerful...SNES emulator looks great on it. Contra 3, however, is still impossible.
Camera- The video is ridiculous. 720p on this thing.
Keyboard- Some people like to slam the physical keyboard, and it could be designed better, by offsetting the keys or creating small dimples, but after two weeks, I'm pretty used to it. The touch screen keyboard is great, but I like the real keyboard feel better. Haptic feedback on the main four buttons is great, and they are thought out very well- Return, Menu, Home, and Search.
Openness- Full integration and support with Google Voice. Tethering via USB/Bluetooth available through the Android Market for free. You can install apps by downloading them from the phone, or copying them to the SD card, you aren't limited to only the Android market. Tons of Apps on the Android market, not as much as for the iPhone, yet, but I haven't found anything I'm missing yet.
Battery Life- I'll be honest, I figured a phone like this with GPS, Bluetooth, Wifi, and ability to run multiple apps at a time would be a powerhog, and that it'd be difficult to get through the day without charging, though it's battery easily lasts a full day with fairly often use. I usually use it to listen to music walking around campus, (I lost my iPod at the Rochester airport, something poetic about that) browse websites occasionally, etc, and I don't have an issue with low battery. And that's with push Gmail and such running.
Verizon's 3G Network- It's fast. Impressively so. I've heard from plenty of my friends with iPhones that AT&T is iffy when you're outside of New Orleans, and even in the city their network gets overloaded sometimes, often at night, and slows to a crawl. No issue here. Back in Rochester, I got about 1mbps down in my house. I even got 3G coverage in my basement, which has poor cell reception. At the Atlanta airport, it was about 2.5mbps down. In my house here in New Orleans, I get about 1.5mbps down. For comparison, my cable internet is running at about 400kbps, which is dreadful. But what can you do, they have a monopoly? Anyways, Verizon's network is as good as they say.
Swappable Battery/SD- So the phone has 256mb memory built in, and that's where you can install apps. At first, critics questioned over whether that'd be enough. Most apps are only about 700k, the biggest one I have is 1.3mb, so you'd have to be a nutjob to fill it. It uses a MicroSD card, came with a 16gb one by default, which I say, hooray for standards. Speaking of standards, it uses MicroUSB to charge and move data to your MicroSD card. Critics also said that MicroUSB has a charge limit via computer, which is true, it charges pretty slowly, but it came with a USB-to-outlet adapter. The battery, which is swappable (and pretty inexpensive, $30 or so) charges via the wall in a bit over an hour, pretty fast.

Nice Things I Never Use
Car Mode/GPS navigation- The car mode is pretty neat, and I can see it being very useful. GPS navigation is excellent, as good as TomTom but with the benefit of Google layers, like the traffic one. I don't have a car, so I use neither, though I did get voice navigation to my friends house about 45minutes outside of Nola when another friend was driving me there.
Voice Search- It works quite well, I just don't really use it. It is odd though, that Google Voice Search and "Voice Dialer" are separate. Google Voice search goes through the internet, your contacts, your music, etc, which is nice. But as far as calling your contacts, or dialing a number by voice, you'll want to use Voice dialer. I don't really use either, though. There's been talk about Google Visual Search, where you take a picture of something and it tries to search for it. Like the voice search it's very neat, but I don't foresee myself using it much.


The Cons
There's only two I can think of.

Camera- The camera itself is amazing. 5 megapixels, as I said, it can take 720p video. But the software is crap...it takes 4-5 seconds to snap a picture, save, and then snap another one. It's just too slow, but this can be fixed by a firmware upgrade. It's received a fair amount of attention, so hopefully Google/Motorola are working on it.
Music/Movie player- The music player is adequate, though it could be better. Video player, it'd be nice to have installed by default. I use the music player a lot, since I lost my iPod, and it does the job, but there's no equalizer, and the music is organized mediocrely. Not bad, though.

All in all, I absolutely love this phone, and talking to friends, I think it's probably the best phone out there right now. It's got several features (some critical, like openness) that easily beat the iPhone, and as far as other Android phones, it's just the whole package squared together. Most of them, like the G1, G2, Droid Eris, etc, are good...but not great. I use Google Apps all the time- Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Voice, Google Reader, Google Maps, oh, and, y'know, that search engine, so for someone who is a Googler like me, it is exceptionally brilliant. It integrates great with Facebook and Gmail, merging your contacts info, which is awesome, yet occasionally creepy. For example, when I text someone, it shows their most recent Facebook status, which is neat, though odd. The price is very reasonable, $200 with a mail-in rebate, I ended up paying only $100 because my contract was up for renewal. The data plan is $30 a month, my cable internet is $52 a month, and it's slower, so it puts it into perspective for me.