Wi-Fi

Lowest price

: 829.98

Manufacturer

: Apple

Model

: A1219

Reviewer: Jeffery A. Lewis| Date:2010-04-09

There has been a lot of hype about iPad being a Kindle killer. There are three reasons why the iPad will not make a good book reader. You should be aware of these reasons if you are buying the iPad expecting to read books on it.

Reason 1) You will want to read outside and the iPad will not look good outside. Lets face it. Readings a novel is relaxing. Reading outside on a beatiful day is really relaxing. An ebook has to address reading outside. iPad has an LCD screen which will wash out in sunlight. Devices like Kindle and Sony Reader use e-ink technology, a completely different rendering technology, that actually looks better in daylight.

Reason 2) iPad is too heavy. The iPad weighs 1.6 pounds. That's about 26 ounces. A Sony Reader and Kindle weigh about 9 to 10 ounces. The iPad weighs almost three times as much. You should be able to hold an ebook with one hand suspended in the air. This will maximize the number of comfortable positions you can achieve with the device. At 1.6 pounds, you will find you cannot hold it up for long with one hand and will have to rest it on something. This severly limits the ergonomic possibilities for the device. You may think this is not important, but you should not overlook how important this is for the reading experience. As matters go, the iPad is not a good device to watch a two hour movie on. Since it is heavy, you will tend to rest it on your lap. That will force you to look down on it. Two hours of doing that, your neck will be sore.

Reason 3) Battery life is too short. Ten hours seems like a long time, but for an ebook, it is a hassle to keep it charged to just read, especially when you are on the go. When you toss a small 10 ounce Kindle in your suit case before leaving for a week vacation, you will not have to take the charger, and you will not have to be concerned about plugging it in at the hotel. Devices that use e-ink use power to render the page and to say on standby, but do not use power to leave the page displayed. E-ink devices essentially sip power compared to LCD technology that has to constantly backlight the screen and constantly render the screen. This takes much more power.

In iPads defence, iPad could be the better device to read a newspaper. You generally don't read the paper for very long, and you don't read a newspaper linearly like a book. Beautiful layout, color, and multi-touch input could lead to a better newspaper experience. Plus a newspaper is updated daily. An easy way to get daily editions is essential to reading a paper. I think iPad wins out for reading a paper, but not for reading a book.

Review from Review from Amazon

Reviewer: Sandy D. Lamison| Date:2010-04-08

The iPad is a joke. When looking at the word iPad what comes to mind? If you said a typo you are correct.
When I first heard of this new gadget by Apple, I thought it was a typo and not true. (laughs) So yeah. I
am avoiding this one at all costs. It's way too expensive anyway. I'll stick to my iPod. It's not as heavy
(as one reviewer said" and it easily fits in my pocket. Do you want something big that doesn't fit in your
pocket when you're on the go? I didn't think so. I guess this thing was not meant for travel. Maybe for car
traveling but, not for walks and stuff. You'd look pretty foolish carying an iPad while jogging. I doubt this
one can fit in an arm strap it's so big. Plus you'd feel like you were carying weights. Skip this one. You'd save
your bank account.

Review from Review from Amazon

Reviewer: Daniel G. Lebryk| Date:2010-04-04

From the first announcement of this device, I was prepared to dislike the iPad, on paper it has way too many flaws. With one in hand and actually using the device, I can honestly say it is an excellent, gorgeous, piece of hardware. The biggest flaw, it weighs a ton. The weight doesn't sound like a bad thing, but after I held this device in both hands while laying down, my arms got sore. It's a small thing, but you should be aware that it is heavy.

Set up was super simple. Connect the unit to your computer, run iTunes, follow the wizard. About 5 minutes later the iPad is set up and activated. The wizard does call it an iPhone for some strange reason. If you have an iPhone already, the set up is a bit easier. It will inherit most of your settings.

Once activated, you have to unplug the unit and then go through the settings application to set up your wireless network and a variety of other settings. All pretty obvious, top to bottom, essentially all the same as the iPhone.

Do note that the charger is a 10W charger - much larger and different from the iPhone's 5W charger. So you'll have to use that charger. There is a big negative, you'll have to cart around that charger, most USB ports will not charge this device. My beast of a PC has plently of power on all the USB ports, and it will not charge my iPad. External battery packs will work with no trouble charging, or extending the use.

Battery life - I ran video, downloaded a ton of apps, and played with this thing for a solid 2 hours - 10% of the battery life was used. I would guess that reported battery life is right accurate.

Typing is easier than on an iPhone, but still not keyboard easy. There's a big problem with how to hold the device and type at the same time. I was a master at Blackberry typing with my thumbs. I can't seem to get it with the iPad. The other problem, the device has a rounded back, so if you place it on a table and try to type, the thing rocks back and forth annoyingly. I don't think I will spend a lot of time typing long emails on this device.

Apps that are built for or converted to the iPad format are simply gorgeous. They are full of detail and easy to read. Old iPhone apps that have not been upgraded are all blocky and not so great (useable but not great). You have the option to click the app back to native size if the jaggies bother you.

Safari works really well on this device. The browser is a real live browser that displays WebPages beautifully. Bookmarks snap up in an instant. Pages load at almost lightning speed, actually faster than on my desktop computer (quad core 3GHz, gigabit wired connection). There is almost no need to have multiple pages open, since load times are so fast and the favorites menu is so easy to access. There is just no comparison to the iPhone's horrible display of WebPages.

Email takes on a whole new look. Embedded pictures display beautifully. There is a pop up ribbon to select email from your inbox. Navigation is just a pleasure. Account switching is a little different from the iPhone, but still very intuitive. Apple seems to have figured out how to make the email experience more intuitive and remove the unnecessary from view.

Video is stunning. Netflix over high speed WiFi (my connection is 22Mbps) delivers full screen, highly detailed, smooth video with good sound. Any video created for the iPhone plays, but they are significantly pixilated or blocky, basically you've blown up a video designed for a three inch screen to three times that size. Those videos are viewable, but I will be reconverting my source video to the larger size.

Some of the free apps I've tried. ABC is simple and stunning for watching video, but lacks a lot of programs. Craigslist adds the ability to view pictures in the preview of a listing, something not available on any other computer - very handy feature. USA Today has done an awful job, the interface is horribly confusing and pretty well useless. Weatherbug is incredible, simple and to the point, but with a ton of forecast information (including webcams for different weatherbug stations). NASA is silly, an enlarged version of their iPhone app. Pandora works perfectly as expected.

The iPod / music side plays like I expected. Nothing really new there. The oddity though, iPod / music is on the home base menu, but video is a separate application. Everyone would expect that Apple got the music player right.

I've had an iPhone 3G for almost two years and have hated almost every minute of use. I got it for work email and it sort of delivers on that promise. The iPad is what the iPhone should have been all along - fast, simple to use, and a gorgeous screen. I also own a netbook. The iPad is a much better device.

I love this device. Is it a revolution in computing? Only time will tell. For the moment, this is the best video, audio, email, web browsing device I've ever seen.

Go try it at a store. I think you will fall in love.

Review from Review from Amazon

Reviewer: Glenn R. Howes| Date:2010-04-04

I've had the device I'm typing this on for a few days and I am convinced it delivers an unmatched content delivery capability. The browsing experience alone is worth the price of admission, but it does so many other activities so well and with such beauty and an organic interaction between user and content that just scratches the surface of what can be done.

This is not a general purpose computer. I am not going to write much source code on it or transcode video or those other activities my laptop and desktop computers do so well. And while text entry is markedly better than on an iPhone, I would not look forward to writing anything longer than this review on its keyboard, although with each sentence of experience I achieve that gets less true. No, what this is is a viewing computer without peer.

You have not browsed the web until you do it with the firm swipes of mobile Safari. I know people have fixated on the lack of Flash and Flash advertising, games and video. And maybe for some people that is a big loss. For me, the only loss is the occasional home improvement show on Hulu, and it seems likely there will be an app for that just as there are ones for Netflix, ABC, Youtube, etc, while sites like CBS put some, but not all, content into DRM free HTML 5 video. What you lose in Flash you more then make up for in the amazing speed of browsing and how natural it all seems. (Having said this, the first time I asked my wife to try answering her e-mail on the device, the first message was to a Flash greeting card.)

The speed of the device is amazing for a low power portable device. Maybe it's the Apple custom A4 processor, or maybe it's the limitation of having so few processes, or the optimization of the OS for GPU acceleration, but the iPad is liquid fast at nearly everything.

Video playback is fast. Photo browsing is fast. Mail is fast. The calendar is fast. Large games like Plants Versus Zombies HD launch in a fraction of the time they do on an iPhone. You get the idea.

Third party developers have stepped up to the plate and delivered both beauty and added functionality. The Kindle app is smooth and imported all my Kindle account books quickly--it's good that there will be competition in the iPad eBook market between Apple's own iBooks store and Amazon't Kindle. The Weather HD app is stunning as it embroiders the mundane delivery of a weather report. Wolfram Alpha is big and well laid out and more powerful than ever.

As for the hardware, I am really liking this screen. It is bright, colorful and sharp with an amazing viewing angle. It does get a little smudged which is noticeable when watching movies but its oleo-phobic screen cleans with a quick wipe.. Its wide viewing angle is a great improvement on my MacBook's screen which would be unreadably dark at the angle I'm typing this. Some people think the iPad is surprisingly heavy, while someone else was surprised how light it was (the same person also expressed remorse at having bought a Nook after about 8 seconds of playing with my iPad).

Be careful with charging this. It likely won't work with your current iPhone car charger. My wife's car charger started to burn trying to handle the extra amperage this device demands. Best to only use this with either your computer's USB ports or the charger it came with. And charging time is slow via a computer, from full empty it takes 7 minutes until reboot, and around 40 minutes per 10% charge (so you are looking at over 6 hours for a full charge from fully drained). The wall adapter is about twice as fast. Regardless, be prepared to make over night charging part of your daily routine, although you will get several days of moderate use between charges given the amazing 10+ hours of activity you get from a full charge. A decade of laptop use has not prepared me for how long you can use this to do everything. It seemingly doesn't matter what you are doing, you still get 10 hours. Or more.

It goes without saying that you do not want to charge this device from your laptop's battery like you might do to your iPhone on a lengthy plane trip.

As for the decision to buy the 64 GB model, I think it comes down to perceived usage. I plan to fill it with quality feature length movies for when my wife travels to China. At about 1.5GB per movie (720x480 h.264)--or more if you have 720p content--16GB seemed a little tight while still loading multiple gigabytes of photos and music. 32 GB would probably be sufficient, and it's going to seem insane in a couple years spending so much for 32 GB of flash memory.

If you get a chance to play with one, try to find a comfy chair where you can put your feet up and make a platform for the device. This will negate the problem of holding its heft and allow you to build up your full speed typing skills. Realize there are all sorts of tricks you will learn and that after an hour you will be a master. Lock the iPad into landscape mode using the hardware toggle switch. I find I never have a need to use portrait mode unless a piece of software makes use of a separate portrait mode. Explore. There are so many little delightful touches to discover like the lock screen photo frame mode, the dictionary in the book reader, tapping on the status bar to go to the top of a web page, etc.

This is a moving target. Every time Apple releases a new version of the OS or a 3rd party developer gets a bright idea, the device will get better. For instance, Apple has announced iPhone OS 4 which addresses many major complaints people have and adds features we didn't know we needed. This fall, you will be able to keep Pandora and Skype running the background while you are playing a game or browsing the web or whatever; this will make these apps vastly more useable. You will be able to organize your apps in folders. Better organize your e-mail. And look forward to smaller developers coming out with more social network games.

If I were to point out one misfeature it is how badly the 2x mode for legacy iPhone apps looks. It just seems as though Apple could have put more effort in making non-bitmap GUI elements look sharp instead of just stretching all the pixels. You would think they could at least have made text and the built in keyboard look better.

In summary, I am a big fan of this device for a wide variety of activities be it web browsing, game playing, enjoying media, reading email (less so composing email), and reading books. I highly recommend picking one up if you have the means, although I would wait a few weeks until they are back in stock at the normal retail prices or even until the 3G version comes out.

Review from Review from Amazon