Look at the iPad 16GB WiFi Edition – Written on an iPad

Less than a month ago Steve Jobs officially introduced us to the iPad. He had claimed that it was ‘magical and revolutionary’ but the question that everyone would really like to know is; is it worth the money? If you remember Jobs said that Apple did not know how to build a computer for $500 that was not a piece of junk. At the time he was talking about the netbooks that were on the market. He said that Apple would not make a netbook and, well they did not but at the launch of the iPad Jobs made some bold claims. He said that netbooks fail because they are underpowered and run on PC software. So what of the new iPad?

As we mentioned Apple has said that they could not build a computer for $500 that was not a piece of junk, so what of the entry level iPad? It is $500, does that mean it is a piece of junk? Or does it mean that it is not a computer? At the launch Jobs said the iPad was a work system, a gaming device, an e-book reader and a personal media player. Well we wanted to know what the real deal was so we ponied up the cash and bought an iPad on launch day. So let’s take a look and see if Jobs really is a visionary and a profit of things to come, or if the iPad is actually worth the $500 for the entry level version or not.

The Package
The box that the iPad came in was a bit larger that it really needed to be. There was not much inside the box after all. The front, like all Apple products had a nice picture of the product, in this case an iPad, on the front. The box was also white. I personally think that black would have been a better choice but, that color is probably reserved for the 3G models that will come out sometime later this month or early May.

As we mentioned inside the box there was not much more than the iPad. Apple gives you a USB to 30-pin cable, a 10 Watt power adapter a manual and of course a couple of stickers. Despite this being marketed as a personal entertainment product you do not even get a set of Apple earbuds. As I looked at my meager loot, I began to feel more than a little ripped off.

The back of the box is unremarkable. It has some basic information about the model you bought including a serial number but not much more.

The iPad
The iPad itself is a boring looking device. I all it really seems to be is a much larger iPod touch or iPhone. I wish I could say more than that but I simply can’t. In fact when I showed it off to a few people I know they said exactly the same thing. Still all that changed when the screen lit up. After that, the comments changed pretty quickly [but we will cover that later].

Still working our way around the iPad we found that the similarity did not end with the front. There is a volume rocker and a switch on the left side right under the sleep/power button. The switch turned out not to be a mute switch, but a screen rotation lock. The left top has a headphones jack [just like the iPhone/iPod touch].

The bottom has the now typical 30-pin connector for Apple devices on the right of that is a speaker opening for a very ‘tinny’ speaker. Talking about the 30-pin connector though; this “feature” really bugs me. If you think about it, the work mode of the iPad is in the landscape mode. Why would Apple have put this connector on the bottom of the device? It would make a lot more sense to have put it on the side. This would have made almost everything work better [in my opinion] even the keyboard dock and camera connection kit. It makes me think that the design was rushed and not well thought out. Perhaps a lot of the iPad was just reused parts from the iPhone 3G S with a bigger battery and larger screen.

The back of the iPad is actually more boring than the back of your typical iPhone. At least on the iPhone you have a camera to break up the surface. With the iPad you have another issue that became apparent pretty quickly. Due to the weight [including the way it is distributed], the slick surfaces [front and back] and the slope of the back the iPad can become difficult to hold onto with one hand. This is even more true when you are watching a movie or something else that requires it to be in landscape mode. After only a few minutes you can feel it slipping and you unconsciously start to grip it harder. This means that in pretty short order you can start to get a cramp in what ever hand you are holding it in. It is also larger enough that one handed typing like you would on an iPhone is pretty much out of the question.

The OS
So now that you have a good look at the exterior of the iPad let’s take a nice little tour of the actual OS installed. The iPad comes with a version of the iPhone OS [OS 3.2]; and I have to say that it has a nice feel to it.

With the iPhone one of the things that has always bothered me is at you have to drill down to get to anything. You very often have to tap several times to get back and forth even in apps. This is something that has been greatly improved with the iPad. As much as it pains me to say it, I like the new layout and interface. Even the mail app is much better. It is still not as good as Outlook [2007 or 2010] in my opinion, but it is still much better.

Another improvement over the iPhone and the iPod touch [at least the un-jailbroken ones] is the ability to put more than four items on the dock. The iPad allows you to put a grand total of six icons on your dock. This means that once a jailbreak is ready we can expect to be able to pack 3-4 more on to this area of prime screen real estate.

However, with the good from this version of the iPhone OS also comes the bad. You have no access to the file system and there is no chance of multi-tasking on the iPad [at least not yet]. This is quite a shame as the iPad is a device that could certainly have used it. As I was writing this review on the iPad I kept wishing I could have just minimized pages and quickly looked at something else [even pictures I had captured]. Sadly, I kept having to close and relaunch each application. The Apple approved version of OS 3.2 also seems to have a few performance issues. We took a look at some of the app launch times and were surprised to find they were slower than on our 3G S, this is something that should not be happening with what is supposed to be newer and faster hardware. We also are working on a comparison of the iPad to other ARM Cortex-A8 processors and hope to have something out to you very soon.

The Apps in Detail [well a little more detail anyway]

Videos
As with the iPhone and iPod touch you get most of the same applications pre-loaded. There are the very familiar icons like, iTunes, the App Store, Settings, IPod, Maps, contacts, you know them all. The iPad also takes a feature from the iPod touch. Instead of finding your movies in the iPod app you have a new icon labeled Videos. You have to head there if you want to watch any movies or TV shows you have synced from iTunes. Still the new interface is not bad looking at all. Apple has put a little effort into the way at you access these movies. We bought the movie ‘3000 Miles to Graceland’ and as you can see you get a ton of information about the movies you buy. There are even some that have extra features that are offered through iTunes. These show up as iTunes+ features and include everything from different endings, deleted scenes, many of the same items you would get if you bought a DVD in the store. Also just like a DVD you can click through the chapters or scenes in a movie.

For those of you that like to… *cough* put your own movies onto your personal media players you can still do this. You just have to make sure that you have at least one purchased movie in iTunes 9.1 before applications like Videora will work. Also, for the best quality you will want to use the Apple TV setting [720p].

In our testing we found this worked perfectly even for SD DVD movies. In fact we put our copy [legally purchased] of the movie ‘Lord of War’ on the iPad and it looked pretty damn good to be honest with you. You will have to be careful though. Movies at this resolution and quality are going to very quickly burn up your storage space and on our tiny 16GB model and after four movies we had less than 3GB left.

For the most part the apps themselves are the same ones you are familiar with on the iPhone or iPod touch. Yes, they all have gotten a face lift to make better use of the iPad’s screen, as we have shown you with the Mail and Settings App. Of course this extends into most of the other ‘stock’ apps as well. Rather than go into detail on these we will offer you a few screen shots to show how they work.

Safari
Now you knew we would get to this one. Apple has maintained that Safari on the iPhone and iPod touch is the ‘best way to experience the web’; well they are partially right. Safari on the iPhone is a great browser. It has a nice render engine and it is quick. But, it still leaves a lot to be desired. I mean, there is still no support for Flash or Silverlight. HTML5 is not there yet [despite many claims] and with Flash still being the standard for web animation it really is surprising that Apple has not put this on the iPhone/iPod touch or the iPad yet.

Apple has made a few odd claims that Flash is insecure, that it wastes battery and CPU time, but most of these are just not cutting it with consumers anymore. We all know that Jobs wants to push HTML5 and QuickTime as the new standard. We also know at there has been no love lost between Apple and Adobe. So despite being a standard, we cannot expect an Apple sanctioned version of Flash for the ‘i’ line up anytime in the future. That is not to say that the jailbreak community won’t have one, but we are still at least a couple of weeks away from an end user jailbreak so the point is moot at this time.

But the lack of Flash is not the only thing that is a problem here. As per their usual controlling nature Apple has deemed that you do not need local access to the file system. This is very short sighted on the part of Apple, and the access does not need to be the whole system. It can be exactly like the file access in a normal install of BSD or Linux; give the user access to only their files, not the root OS. In fact Apple does not need to give that much access, all they need to do is give access to the folder that contains images and any ‘shared’ documents. At that point the iPad is would be an exceptional device. I can think of more than a few people [myself included] that would want a product like, it really opens up the potential for use on the go. This type of functionality would also make the 3G model even more attractive.

Sadly, I do not think that Apple will ever allow these things to happen. It would take too much control away from them. Still, we can dream and always ask the jail breakers like Geohot, Musclenerd and the rest if they can work this out for us.

***while we are wishing how about some extra CODEC support… DiVX and XViD would be nice for a start.***

One thing that people seem to forget is that Apple owes a great deal of their success to Adobe. There was a time when Apple + Adobe was the only way to go for professional printing, photography and in general the publishing industry. Adobe is one of the reasons that Apple is so embedded in with the press as it is. But here we see them pushing them out. In fact we have recently learned that Apple has now banned all third party compilers and tools. If it has not been written with their tools, you can’t put it in the app store.

Notes
We feel that we have to talk about this one, we really like what Apple has done here. They give you a nice UI to type out notes quickie and easily. We also like the way they list individual notes on a ‘card stuck in a side pocket. It is not needed but we do like the styling of it. The yellow legal lad look also brings back memories or taking hand written notes in class. So the overall effect is great. We even used this for a web presentation so that we could quickly jot things down that we were seeing on the PC.

The Virtual Keyboard
Let’s take a few minutes and talk about the virtual keyboard on the iPad. This keyboard  is very similar in layout and design to the one on the iPhone, just bigger. With this new size there are good things and bad things. The first of the good things is that people with big fat fingers [like me] have more room to hit the keys they intended and less typos. Apple has also given us a Caps Lock option. However, there is a problem; as the entire screen is touch sensitive it is very easy to accidentally tap the screen and disrupt your typing flow. This is almost identical to accidentally hitting a track pad on a laptop. You look up and suddenly you notice that you are typing in the wrong place. There needs to be a way to avoid that maybe another button on the screen, but to be honest I am not sure if the hardware is sophisticated enough to do this or if it is just too complex to program this into the software. Either way it is important to understand and note this limitation on the iPad especially as it is being marketed as a productivity device. I also had a personal issue with the iPad and the keyboard, I simply do not like to use it in portrait mode. It completely changes the feel of the iPad. After years of getting used to working on 4:3 and then 16:9/16:10 landscape work areas the idea of working on something that is in portrait mode is foreign to me.

But as we have told you before Apple has made their Pages app work properly [with the full tool bar] only in portrait mode. Why they did this is anyone’s guess as both Keynote and Numbers work in both modes properly. It is only the word processing app that loses functionality in landscape mode despite Apple’s own recommendation that people use this mode for long documents. Still, I suppose for some this will not be a problem at all.

Overall, Apple seems to have given you the stock apps with only a few visual adjustments. There is really not much that is new over the iPhone/iPod touch with the exception of the items we have noted above.

Battery Life
A word on battery life here. The iPad has a very good standby life, if you were not doing anything on it the battery can cast a long time. If you are working on it, reading an iBook, watching a movie, or playing a game the battery can drain fairly quickly. We found that our average battery life was between 6-8 hours. 8 hours was the max that we saw, while 6 was the more common at one point we saw a battery life of only 4 hours but that was watching two movies back to back on Netflix.

Odds and Ends
When I was writing this I thought about a number of items that bothered or impressed me about the iPad. However, none of them fit into any particular category. So I thought I would include them in their own section.

Heat and Cold
This is an odd issue and will not always apply but I have noticed that the iPad has issues with temperatures. I am not talking about extremes but even what you would think of as normal ranges. I noted this one day while working on this review early in the morning. The outside temperature was around 50 degrees [f] and my fingers were getting cold. This caused the touch screen to become very unresponsive. I found that it would simply not respond to my touch. I had to warm up my hands and the iPad to get some work done. I also saw a similar issue with heat. As the day warmed up and I was outside the iPad began to slow down. It never shut off on me but i did see a performance decrease. At this time we think that the reason we never saw it full overheat was due ti the smaller storage size on our iPad. From what we are hearing the overheating issues are with the larger capacity iPads much like they were with the iPhones.

Pixel Double
This ‘Feature’ is one that is very disappointing. We used it on multiple applications that were originally developed for the iPhone and found that when you run in the Pixel Double mode the app truly look terrible. It looks like you are viewing is on an 800×600 monitor with no AA. One of the worst was Flickr as you can see from the images below. This ‘feature’ was also one of the biggest ones that caused some members of our team to have bad first impressions of the device.

Screen Glare
On the same day that I saw the issues with temperature I noted [not surprisingly] that the screen is highly reflective and is hard to use in bright sunlight. I had a great view of my own face  or the trees in my yard but at times the actual display was not visible. You can also forget about wearing any kind of sunglasses as this only makes the problem worse. Thankfully, there are more that a few aftermarket screen protectors that offer an anti-glare surface to help counter this issue.

WiFi Vs. 3G
This is an interesting topic as the 3G version of the iPad is not out yet. But I wanted to include a few words about this as I am playing with the WiFi version and thinking of the 3G one, as I am writing this paragraph I am out of WiFi range. This has made me wish more than once that I had 3G on this iPad. I would like to be able to quickly check my mail, and also use a few web needy apps that I have the iPad. I do have a PC laptop with me but it is a pain to have to move back and forth between the two. Still having said that, I am not sure if an extra $130 is worth it for the 3G especially if you want to have 32 or 64GB of storage space as each bump up adds another $100 to the cost. On another note, we have not noted any of the WiFi issues that have been reported on the web. But after a little looking into thing we  have noticed that the majority of reports are with the 32 and 64GB versions.

Multitasking
This is a glaring issue on the iPad and despite the announcement that Apple is going to add a semblance of this feature in iPhone OS 4.0 it is not the same. What I and many others want is a windowed or tabbed mode of working. I would like to have more than one app visible on the screen so that I can reference between different forms of information. For example; when I am writing a review I often have either my spreadsheet with test results or photographs/screen shots open to be able to write about them directly. On the iPad I simply cannot do this. In my opinion it limits the viability of the iPad as a productivity device for me.

Portability
The iPad is a great size, I wish the screen was a full 16:10 as it would give more ‘desktop’ room but it is still a great size and weight for carrying around with you. I can grab this and toss it in the console of my truck without a 2nd thought where I have to pack up more than a few things to bring my laptop around. True, my netbook is easier than my laptop but, I did find the iPad easier to Carry around with me. This was even with the one hand use issues we ran into. Once I dropped the extra $40 for a case from the Apple store it was less of a problem as the case had a nice texture that allowed for a better grip.

Charging
This was one that had both good and bad points. On the one hand the iPad seemed to charge rather quickly, but by the same token [as I mentioned above] you cannot charge it from a USB port. This includes any 5watt power source. Meaning that the Powermat is out, as is the Hypermac 222 external battery. What makes this a pain in the butt is that I cannot even use the USB car charger I have to recharge my iPad. I have to wait until Apple or a third party vendor releases a car kit for the iPad to have this handy feature. It also means that I cannot charge my iPad and sync with iTunes at the same time. Over all this issues is a tad annoying to put it mildly.

Fingerprints
This is a given but the sheer amount of finger prints on the touch screen during the wiring of this review actually made it hard to see the keys on the virtual keyboard. If you are typing for any length of time, I would recommend cleaning the iPad screen off before you try to watch a movie or video.

The built-in speaker
Ah the love/hate feelings for this part of the iPad are crazy. On the one hand the volume level is great. You can actually hear this better than the speakers on my laptop in many cases. However, it is mono with a poor attempt at spatial stereo and has a high ‘tinny’ sound. Apple chose not to give you a set of earbuds so I will not cover this aspect during this review.

GPS
Apple advertises that the iPad has GPS. However, they do clarify that it is WiFi [or 3G] assisted. What this means is that while there is a magnetometer and a form of GPS in the iPad you are not getting traditional GPS. It is very limited and quite flaky if you are not in range of any WiFi spots. When we took this out to a campsite we could not get it to find us at all. By the same token when we were in the city it found us quite well. The next problem with the WiFi version and its GPS [GPS + A] is that many apps for the 3G S need a data connection to get their maps to you. They do not store all of the maps locally [ to save space] as such they are useless on the iPad. One app that he have seen this on it MotionX GPS. This app works great on our 3G S iPhone but does not work at all on the iPad unless we have a WiFi connection. So if you are looking for GPS functionality we would have to recommend you wait for the 3G version and shell out the extra $130. Of course with $130 you can get a good GPS these days, or just buy TomTom or Navigon for your iPhone

iBooks
This is probably the best application on the iPad. It is not pre-installed though, which is very odd and fits in with a theory we have on the iPad and why Apple released it in the state it is in.

Once you install iBooks you will notice that you have been given a free book. This is the Book Winne-The-Pooh, for me it brought back memories of being read this as a child. I am sure for many it will bring the same memories so it was a great move on the part of Apple to include this one.  But you are not limited to this book; you can head over to the iBook store and buy many more. They have different lists and options for viewing. You can even quickly sort through the New York Times Best Seller list.

Once you buy your book and are busy reading you will also notice that you can search for words, setup book marks, and even find the definition to words while in the book. It is a great looking UI and will certainly give more than one e-book reader a run for its money.

Performance
Measuring the performance of the iPad was not easy. I wanted to test much moor but the closed nature of the OS prevents this at the time of this writing. However, we did take the time to look at how the iPad compares to a jail broken iPhone 3G S at application launch times and also JavaScript performance. The results were interesting to say the least.

Browser Performance
Ok, page load times on both the iPhone and the iPad were within two seconds of each other over several tries. Even over 3G the times were right around the same.

Thinking about this we ran the Futuremark benchmark called Peacemaker on both the iPad and the iPhone. To see what we would get we ran both over the 802.11n wireless router we have from TRENDNet. Additionally, we ran peacemaker on the iPhone over a 3G connection. The iPad was able to score about 40 points higher than the iPhone 3G S oddly enough the scores on the iPhone did not vary from WiFi to 3G. This is not a major improvement in score but it is large enough to say that the iPad executes some web functions better than the iPhone.

Application launch times were also almost identical to page load times. I was flat out shocked. Except for the JavaScript performance over Safari there is almost no performance difference between the iPad and the iPhone 3G S. This means that with the iPad WiFi flavor, you are really only getting a larger iPhone 3G S without the ability to make phone calls or to connect to the Internet over 3G; and perhaps a little bit faster browser.

Gaming
Gaming performance was again not any better or worse on the iPad. But there weed some issues. One of the biggest was using the Pixel Double feature with a few of the games we have. This feature is supposed to push out your applications and game to full screen. However we noted that with a couple of games [including Zombieville and others] the controls were very flaky. At one point I was not able to move in Zombieville to get into a house and had my brain eaten by zombies. A similar thing happened when I was playing Audi A4; in normal mode I was fine while driving, however once I out it in pixel double mode I started to have some issues with steering and car. It was at this point that my wife saw me and began to laugh. Her comment was that I looked like the biggest dork ever tilting the iPad to steer. Of course it no better or worse than using a Wii so overall I am not too concerned about that image.

An add-on at the last minute was a completely JavaScript based bench called V8 Benchmark Suite Version 5. This suite is entirely written in Java script and has seven benchmarks to test different functions of the device. The tests are as follows;

Richards
OS kernel simulation benchmark, originally written in BCPL by Martin Richards (539 lines).

DeltaBlue
One-way constraint solver, originally written in Smalltalk by John Maloney and Mario Wolczko (880 lines).

Crypto
Encryption and decryption benchmark based on code by Tom Wu (1698 lines).

RayTrace
Ray tracer benchmark based on code by Adam Burmister (935 lines).

EarleyBoyer
Classic Scheme benchmarks, translated to JavaScript by Florian Loitsch’s Scheme2Js compiler (4685 lines).

RegExp
Regular expression benchmark generated by extracting regular expression operations from 50 of the most popular web pages (1614 lines).

Splay
Data manipulation benchmark that deals with splay trees and exercises the automatic memory management subsystem (378 lines).

Unfortunately, we could never get the iPhone 3G S to complete the V8 Bench. It would hang on running the Aplay test. Even with out this we finally see a performance difference that is a something to talk about. But here is the thing; these numbers still show that the iPad is slower than other Cortex A-8 based systems when running JavaScript. Just take a look at our comparison by Van Smith and you will see what we mean.

Don’t take our word for it

As we did with the Zune HD we did not want to give you just our opinion of the iPad. I actually took this around and let a few people that I know of [even a few that really wanted one] take a look at it and play with it. I think you will be surprised at the results we got.

Give us a word,

I asked a total of 10 people to try out the iPad and let me know what they thought. We asked them to rate the iPad from 1-5 in the following categories;

How cool do you think the iPad is?

Do you like the iPad?

After using the iPad how likely are you to buy one?

The following were yes or no questions;

Do you think the iPad is a work tool?

Do you think the iPad is worth the cost?

Finally we asked them to give one word to describe the iPad. Despite this single word request we more often received three to four.

Some of the responses were;

‘big iPhone’

‘very cool’ [I got this one four times]

‘neat’

‘heavier than I thought’

‘wow, that is cool’

‘not what I thought it would be’

‘dead sexy’ [no, I am not joking about that one]

What we found interesting was that of the people we asked if they were likely to buy one the ones that did not already own an iPhone were the ones that were more likely to get one. In fact, one person made the comment that since they already had an iPhone they would rather either get the iBooks app on the iPhone or just get a Nook. An interesting side note is, of the 6 people that said they were more likely [they responded with a 3 or above] to get an iPad 5 were waiting for the 3G version and were more interested in a 32 or 64GB version. The ones that were not likely said they felt the cost was too much to get the size they would want [meaning 32 or 64GB].

Many of the people we talked to were also concerned about the cost of getting everything they would need to use the iPad. Most already had a laptop [or netbook] so they did not see a real need this was even from the people that were more likely to buy one.

It is also interesting to note that of the people that I asked that owned iPhones all of them asked me if I knew when there would be a jailbreak for the iPad. This prompted me to ask if they would consider one if a jailbreak was already out. Most still felt that the iPad was too expensive for the 32 and 64GB models considering that they already had an iPhone. Most were also not happy that they would have to lay an extra $130 to get 3G capability on an iPad.

Hidden Costs

As we mentioned with the Zune HD there are always hidden costs of ownership with devices like this. When we first came up with the idea to go ahead and buy one of these for review we decided that we would go low budget and get the 16GB model. We further decided not to go all out and get a ton of accessories or apps. In the end to get the basics so we could test the iPad properly and as a productivity device we had to pending just over $60. After that we discovered that we needed [really needed] a cover to keep our $500 investment from getting scratched. This was another $40 out of our pocket. In only 8 days we racked up $100 in extras and that was without going crazy on all the books we really would like to get. In the end the iPad is going to be costly to keep up with. It is not hard to envision dumping several hundred dollars into getting and maintaining the things you want for the iPad and we have are not even talking about accessories yet!

Conclusion
The iPad may be a huge mistake on the part of Steve Jobs and Apple. I think that what we see here is that the iPad was launched early to get a jump on companies like Notion Ink, HP, ICD and even Lenovo. You may ask why would Apple do this, or you might just think I am full of sh*t. If so here is my reasoning; when you think of personal media players, or mead based phones you think of Apple. Most people in the United States call all PMPs [Personal Media Players] iPods. Even if you are using a Kpex from Kingston it is an iPod. Same thing with the iPhone but to a lesser extent. So Apple wants that kind of market recognition; after all the concept of the slate computer is a great one. Having only the screen to carry around with you yet having the same capabilities as a full computer is a very attractive idea. By getting the iPad out first they are now the first to market [current market] with a slate computer. But the iPad is not ready yet that is clear from the announcements about the iPhone OS 4.0. After all the thought of the iPad with no multitasking and gaming that is only about as good as the iPhone is out of place. Yet, in iPhone OS 4.0 we will get those things, just not until June. Now there is no way that Apple would have waited until June to get the iPad out. Even the idea of waiting until the 3G version was ready was not something that Apple would have considered.

So what we end up with is a great idea hindered by an extremely controlling OS [and company] that is not quite ready yet. I see great potential in the iPad, but that potential is locked away. Maybe when the jailbreak hits some of that potential will be set free, but a jailbreak is a couple of weeks away at best. Apple also needs to come down on the cost of these things. At $500 for a 16GB WiFi only model they are a tad over priced. I think that this should be more in the neighborhood of $300-$350; after all they are going to make their money back on apps, books, movies, and music. There is no need to jack the price up. I know that much of the price is to maintain the illusion that you are paying for quality, but come on. We all know by now what is in these things and where the parts come from and even where they are put together. The cat is out of the bag, bring the prices down to a reasonable level and maybe you can compete with the next gen 1080p slates that are coming out around June. If not, well companies like ICD, Notion Ink, HP, Acer, Asus, and Lenovo are ready to step in and cut the legs out from what really could be a game chaining device.

To wrap up another long review, the iPad is a great idea hobbled by Apple’ need to control everything. It has far too many limitations and quirks to make it a decent productivity machine. It is not powerful enough to warrant it’s purchase if you have an iPhone or an iPod Touch and the continuing costs will eat you up a little at a time even after purchase.

So we have a first here, we really want to award the Apple iPad an innovation award. After all, there are some great ideas and the concept it well done. However, the execution is not that good and it ends up being just a much bigger iPod Touch with a few novel features. As Zaphod Beeblebrox once said, ok so ten out of ten for style but minus several million for good thinking. I will probably continue to use the iPad as a media device, to read the occasional e-mail, possibly write one or two very short articles [that I will then gave to e-mail to myself to publish], but I doubt I will even do much of this until there is a jailbreak for it. Until then it just does not feel like a finished or well polished product.

*** Author’s note. This entire article was written in Pages on the test iPad 16GB model. This was done to get a feel for exactly how the iPad would function as a work device. Once it was finished text I had to e-mail it to myself and finalize it on my PC laptop. There was no other way to complete it and then get all the images uploaded to the site for you to read. We are considering testing the 3G iPad when it is available but considering the price we may end up passing on this. We will return to the iPad when a jailbreak for it arrives to let you know if some of the problems we found can be fixed by independent developers.***

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Original Author: Sean Kalinich

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