iPad an Ipad review

[mobilewilier]

I thought it was an impartial and honest review. No need for IPAD owners to be so defensive. Nicely balanced review.

[Bremen Cole]

Originally Posted by mobilewilier;

I thought it was an impartial and honest review. No need for IPAD owners to be so defensive. Nicely balanced review.

[scottjl]

Originally Posted by mobilewilier

I thought it was an impartial and honest review. No need for IPAD owners to be so defensive. Nicely balanced review.

wasn't being defensive, simply pointing out inaccuracies. would much prefer people get correct information, and maybe the author will learn about his iPad.

[VictoriaP]

Originally Posted by Graham

Weird. All the iPad users who've posted here read this as a negative review. I don't have an iPad but thought the tone of the review was generally positive.

Look at the OP's final scores, all are 60% up to 100%, i.e. positive, except for the one supporting his clear point that the iPad is not a workhorse content creation device, a view that's certainly supported by many other industry analysts.

Graham

I wonder sometimes how many of those industry analysts spent more than an hour on this device. And yes, the reviewer's bias against the iPad is pretty clear from the condescending tone he uses at many points in his "review".

I've said it before, I'll reiterate it here: I no longer use my top of the line 17" MacBookPro for anything other than extremely complex Photoshop work and playing a Flash-based game. All of my writing is done on the iPad. 95% of my photo editing is done on the iPad. (Filterstorm is an amazing app for anyone who has previously used Photoshop.) I'm about to use another app to draft plans for a complete teardown remodel of my bathroom. How much more do you need me to "produce" solely on the iPad before it can be classed as a content creation device?

[Donnageddon]

Originally Posted by mobilewilier

I thought it was an impartial and honest review. No need for IPAD owners to be so defensive. Nicely balanced review.

Imagine I provided a review of the PRS 600 that stated it only displays Celtic Runes, and if you want to read ebooks in English it will cost you $6.00 per letter, and that the PRS 600 does a poor job of microwaving a pizza.

If you pointed out the blatant inaccuracies, and absurdities of my review, would I be correct in calling you "too defensive"?

[Graham]

He doesn't slam the device as an iBad. Read what he says again. He specifically states that before he got one he ridiculed it as the iBad, but has moved away from that. He keeps the designation IBAD for the purpose of a little humour in the writing, but makes it very clear that it stands for Internet and Basic Application Device - which is the thrust of his review. That is not slamming it at all.

Also, please note that I'm not contending whether or not his facts are correct. I was surprised at the perception as negative of what I read as a generally positive article.

Graham

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by Graham

Also, please note that I'm not contending whether or not his facts are correct. I was surprised at the perception as negative of what I read as a generally positive article.

I wasn't commenting on the review generally, but there were several points which simply weren't true, and would mislead anyone reading it.
There were several good points as well. I would certainly appreciate better video format support, for example.

[GeoffC]

Thank you everyone who posted in the thread.

After reading the original review and then all the other comments; the total picture thus built answers a lot of questions.

Very valuable .....

[darknessangel]

Originally Posted by VictoriaP

... I've said it before, I'll reiterate it here: I no longer use my top of the line 17" MacBookPro for anything other than extremely complex Photoshop work and playing a Flash-based game. All of my writing is done on the iPad....

I may not have an iPad but THIS I don't believe. I write faster on a keyboard than I can write on paper. And unless you write on an external keyboard I wouldn't say that I can write all my stuff on an iPad... >_> ... seriously. I mean...for people that do something more than twitter and surf the web.

GJMS

[Bremen Cole]

Originally Posted by darknessangel

I may not have an iPad but THIS I don't believe. I write faster on a keyboard than I can write on paper. And unless you write on an external keyboard I wouldn't say that I can write all my stuff on an iPad... >_> ... seriously. I mean...for people that do something more than twitter and surf the web.

GJMS

Maybe you should try an iPad before not believing someone who actually owns and uses one. There is a learning curve with the keyboard, as with anything new, but it is very usable. Some people adapt quicker and more completely than others.... No need to diminish other peoples experiences, simply because you don't think you could do what they do....

[kissyfish]

Security and infrastructure mainly, I dabble in programming.

I got an iPad upon launch, as I had a Sony which was within the 30 day return limit, and I found it unable to do what I mainly got it for, oreilly pdf manuals and books.

I got the wifi only, least memory model, and an external KB.

I use this device for hours every day, and has become one of my favorite devices ever. It has it's restrictions, but the simplicity and speed to turn on, get/create data (email, edit docs, etc) is fantastic. During the typical day I;

Wake up, check my personal email with built in client.
Check weather
Download NYtimes for my lunch break.
listen to NPR

During the day I reference technical manuals, NIST docs, statutes and such (I work in gov't security), read the nytimes. listen to security and technical podcasts.

I go home, and I recheck email
listen to the bbc stream (I live in the US, but I lived in London for a number of years, Radio 4 is a great pleasure to listen to).
Let the kids use kidpix for fun, maybe let them play a game.
telnet to my home systems (I develop open source voip on the side).
Check work email via web
Go to bed, and read a book for a while (I like old books, they are free up at google, and some on itunes).
Listen to podcasts/books on tape while I go to sleep.

and the thing fits into my briefcase, and leaves room for my lunch, I walk to work.

I would like to check out the android stuff, as I do love open source and all, but I am not terribly unhappy with it's current functionality, in fact I was considering jail-breaking it, but I have not found any compelling reason to do so yet.

[pagansoul]

I have a Macbook Pro and a Mac Pro at home for heavy duty stuff like ripping movies and CDs. I have a Kindle2 but have not used it in months other than to keep the battery healthy. I take my iPad to work with me every day and it sits next to my desktop HP. I play its ipod and read off my news apps all day along with doing my work. I also have an iPhone which I tend to use just for calls and taking pictures. My iPad (64GB/3G) is by far my favorite device right now, more that my iPhone 4, more than my Blu-ray player that hooks up to the internet with Netflix/Pandora etc... heck of a lot more than my ebook reader. I just wish it came with more HD space but my reader only had 2GB and no expension card and not in color.

[VictoriaP]

Originally Posted by darknessangel

I may not have an iPad but THIS I don't believe. I write faster on a keyboard than I can write on paper. And unless you write on an external keyboard I wouldn't say that I can write all my stuff on an iPad... >_> ... seriously. I mean...for people that do something more than twitter and surf the web.

GJMS

Judgmental much?

I don't use twitter at all, and while I obviously surf the web, I've been more than once accused of using a thousand words where ten will do in my posts.

When I say I do all my writing on the iPad, I mean it. Posts like this. Three thousand word reviews. Short stories. Emails. Communications to companies. Literary analysis. Journaling. Some of these, yes, are done with the wireless BT keyboard, but I find I'm using that less and less, certainly a lot less than I expected to when I bought it. I'm an 85 WPM touch typist with a regular keyboard and over time, I've learned that I can in fact type pretty decently on the iPad surface. It's not as fast, but it does work.

The last time I actually opened Word on my laptop was over a month ago. I didn't actually type anything in it, I merely transferred a number of long term docs I've been working on over to the iPad. Now that they're on this device, I may never need to open Word again.

And my husband uses his iPad at work for meeting notes.

Comments like yours prove my point about the industry analyst reviews: You are passing judgment on something you admit you have no direct knowledge of. While some people may not adapt well to this keyboard, some of us have adapted better than we ever would have dreamed. Perhaps if you actually sat down with one for more than five minutes in the Apple store, you might find the same for yourself.

(post touch typed from the virtual keyboard...lookee here, muscle memory is an amazing thing!)

[EowynCarter]

Originally Posted by Bremen Cole

Maybe you should try an iPad before not believing someone who actually owns and uses one. There is a learning curve with the keyboard, as with anything new, but it is very usable. Some people adapt quicker and more completely than others.... No need to diminish other peoples experiences, simply because you don't think you could do what they do....

When I held iPad, typing on it is one of the thing that surprised me. In a bad way...
I though it would be easy to do, with a larger, good quality screen. But I had the spellcheking changing what I wrote. I couldn't easily fix it, as i was unable to figure out how to move the cursor in the middle of a word I guess there is a way, but...

[scottjl]

sadly, there is absolutely no way you can judge typing on an ipad in a few minutes.. or even a hour.. especially not in a store setting. you have to take it home. get comfortable with it. try it out for days.. weeks. it's learning a whole new keyboard, a new layout, a new arrangement, and obviously a new surface.

anyone who says "i tried it for 5 minutes and i [loved|hated] it!" is just full of crap. i'm not saying you'll reverse your opinion in a week. but it's just not the kind of thing you can judge that quickly. you will learn muscle memory. you will learn shortcuts. you will learn to trust the auto-correction, and the auto-correction will learn your vocabulary. none of that can be accomplished in a few minutes.

there are quite a few tricks iOS has that i wish got ported over to the desktop. double space for a period. hitting a meta key and remapping a smaller sized keyboard from alpha to a numeric and symbol layout. yes. i could get some software and remap all this myself but it would be nice if it were built in. that small apple BT keyboard would be amazing if it had that kind of functionality built in with my iMac. when i'm sitting at a desktop and a keyboard i find myself thinking things like meta-J is a dollar sign. might have to invest some time looking into it.