Frozen

Well, mark your calendars. Hell has officially frozen over….yours truly bought an iPad. Lol I’ve been tinkering with it for a couple weeks now and thought I’d give you MY review on it. For the record, I don’t hate Apple, I just never cared for how proprietary they are or the lack of compatible programs. The latter isn’t so much of an issue anymore so I thought I’d give it a whirl. And considering who the hubby worked for, it was inevitable. hehehe

Hardware: Basically, its a giant iPhone w/o the actual phone. The device is sleek, trim, and very stylish. It has a very solid feel to it, albeit an adjustment for carrying it around. Apple has always gotten high marks in this area. Simply put, they produce very aesthetically pleasing products. While adding to the overall appeal, the screen is glass and just begs to be broken if you drop it. I highly recommend you get a case or cover to protect it.

We ended up with the 16 gig version. By some standards that is considered tiny but I doubt I’ll ever use all of it. I use my phone as my mp3 player and while I can see using music once the multi-tasking update comes out, it will be more of a convenience than a required feature. If you plan to use the iPad as a laptop replacement you might opt for one with a bigger drive. It comes with Bluetooth and wifi built in; however, I have yet to get the bluethooth to work for file sharing. It works fine for using a keyboard though. Overall, the hardware is of the same impeccable quality you would expect from Apple.

Software: Apple is way ahead in this arena in terms of sheer numbers. Being on the market longer, that is no surprise. Anyway, the store has a good mix of free and paid apps. I downloaded several that were equivalent to mine (on Android) and had mixed reviews. Some were equal if not better and others outright sucked. I also hate the built in email app as it takes way too many clicks to switch between email accounts. These are all style issues of course but were of particular annoyance to me.

I don’t care much for the OS at all. Granted, again, this is mostly a style and comfort issue more than functionality. The OS is responsive and has yet to crash on me. ^[1]I was only able to get the browser to crash twice.  Currently, you can only run one app at a time. There are some very small exceptions on push services but overall a total failure there. The new OS v4 coming out soon is supposed to remedy that and I eagerly await it. ^[2]Apple guy hacked ours of course so I have limited multi-tasking already. My biggest complaint with the OS is the difference in activating submenus. In Windows, no matter the version, you know its a simple right click to activate a submenu in virtually any application. Even Android borrowed from this with its long hold tap on the screen to bring up submenus, regardless of the application. Apps on the iPad seem to randomly utilize their own version of activating submenus. It gets a bit annoying trying to figure out each apps implementation of the submenu process. Again, a style issue but my biggest annoyance. The copy/past functionality, which came as add-in after the fact, is a bit odd as well. It is not at all intuitive and completely alien to what you would expect. The OS is designed from a simplistic approach and while very aesthetically pleasing, I’d argue its a tad too simple and caused more work than necessary at times. On this area, I still give Android props for better implementation.

Summary: The iPad is a sleek usable device pushing the bar on convenience and portability in our ever increasing conversion of PDA’s, phones, netbooks, and laptops. Let’s face it, Apple sets the standard that others follow. Even Android takes queues from Apple’s UI.

If you are an Apple fanboy, you’ll be right at home. Everything will be familiar and easy. Over 95% of the iPhone apps work in various levels on the iPad. On the other hand, if you a more recent user like me, you might like it but you won’t be blown away. Apple might have set the bar but Google’s Android is catching up and fast. I’d love to port Android over to the iPad. I’d be happier than a pig in slop.

If you are a long time Windows/Linux user, you will definitely find Android a tad more user friendly. And speaking of, if Microsoft doesn’t get their act together soon, they may find themselves pushed completely out of the market. Apple & Google will be the dominate players regardless IMHO.