http://www.suntimes.com/technology/ihnatko...-040210.article
When I say that “Apple has done it again,” I’m not leading off my iPad review with a vague and tired old cliche. I’m noting that Apple has a reliable habit of taking a concept or technology that we’ve already seen, and then tweaking the industry’s nose by demonstrating how it should have been done from the very beginning. They articulate the basic idea in a way that blows past “cool” and arrives at “cool, compelling, and relevant.” A device that at long, long last makes utter and perfect sense, and kicks off a new wave of innovation, a new round of imitation, and sometimes even a new era in computing.
The Mac wasn’t the first computer with a GUI and a mouse. The iPod wasn’t the first portable digital music player. The iPhone wasn’t the first powerful smartphone with an applications library.
Add to the list the iPad. It isn’t the first tablet computer. But it’s the first one to make the convincing argument that a tablet can be a perfect computer for real people with things to do, as opposed to a niche alternative for gadget freaks.
And that’s just the conclusion I drew after a week with its built-in apps, and Apple’s iWork suite of Office-style software. Remember that in the week before the iPad’s official launch date, the App Store only contained about a dozen third-party iPad apps ... just enough so that reviewers like me could test the mechanism for software downloads.
That’s also the impression I got after a week of using the iPad under a super double-top-secret press embargo. I wasn’t allowed to use my iPad in public.
But today, the first real class of iPad-specific apps started to appear in the App Store. And I’ve had my first full day in which I was able to use the iPad out and about in the real world.
After a week of locked-door testing, I didn’t think I could become more impressed with the iPad. After a day of real-world use with real-world iPad apps, I’ve come to think of the iPad as more than a nifty mobile computer. It’s starting to look -- just starting, mind you -- like the first radical shift in computing to hit the world since the introduction of the Mac more than a quarter-century ago.
I have sought solace in the steadying influences of skeptical thought, a broad understanding of other tablets due to ship in 2010, and the realization that this life is a vale of tears and there is no dose of early optimism and excitement that cannot be crushed into a gray powder by the day to day grind of daily life. And I’m still left thinking that my entire attitude about computing has begun to shift.
A Day In The Life
Apple promises that the iPad will run for ten hours on a single charge. And well, I’ll be damned: I was able to get in a full day’s use out of the thing with room to spare. Even with the most aggressive, “Why, no, Mr. Duracell ... I don’t expect you to talk. I expect you to die!” hardware settings (screen brightness and speaker volume set to maximum) I got seven hours of usage. With things set to anything reasonable, I got ten to twelve hours, easy.
The point is that you can unplug the iPad from the dock connector in the morning, return it when you go to bed in the evening, and not be stingy about how you use your iPad in between. I know that this 10-hour life is merely the happy residue of many technical factors. But I can’t help but wonder if “use this all day long without interruption” wasn’t part of the plan, and part of the philosophy of the iPad. It’s designed to just be with you, delivering digital services wherever you go. It’s not meant to sit in a desktop dock and only taken out for occasional walks.
A roadmap of a typical day with the iPad illustrates the profound flexibility of the iPad, and how it can easily become a ubiquitous presence. It’s also the least-tedious way to walk through some of the iPad’s best features.
I wake up at the crack of nine. I pluck the iPad from its stand and haul it into bed, launching Mail to see what happened to my world while I was asleep. As usual, I turn the iPad on its side to landscape mode. Instantly, the Mail app reconfigures itself and switches from a view in which each message takes up the whole screen to one in which a scrolling list of my Inbox contents stripes the left side of the screen.
I’ve come to think of this arrangement as an iPad app’s “steering wheel” mode. It tends to pop up in many Apple and third-party apps. I sit in bed and hold the iPad like a wheel, flicking the Inbox list with my left thumb, tapping on anything that looks like it needs my immediate attention, and then scrolling through the message itself with my right thumb.
Then I launch the Safari browser and tap a link that loads up my morning funnies. The iPad’s WiFi connection fills the screen with comic strips. On a notebook, I have to use a command key to magnify sections of the window to read the strips. On the iPad, a series of careless and intuitive swipes, pinches, and stretches moves me from strip to strip and panel to panel.
The iPad’s speed and responsiveness is an utter marvel. No matter how fitfully I swipe or how much I try to anger the iPad’s custom Apple processor with abusive zooms, it keeps up with me, millisecond after millisecond. When I snap-zoom in, the effect is less like a computer interpreting a user command and redrawing the screen as best it can and more like a video camera being thrust in someone’s face.
I do some more reading in bed, checking in on various news sites. Browsing the web with Safari is a far more intimate experience than it is on a laptop. You’re physically interacting with the web and its links instead of operating things via remote control. It’s a subtle distinction but an instantly compelling one.
At some point, I must regretfully acknowledge that sitting in bed until noon is probably bad for both my self-esteem and my office productivity. I tuck the iPad under my arm and head to the kitchen to fix and eat breakfast, still reading the news, with the iPad held in my left hand like the daily paper that I no longer subscribe to.
But then it’s time to open the office and work for a living. So I’m now planted in front of a real desktop computer. Does the iPad get switched off? Nope. It goes on a stand, where I use it all afternoon as a sort of a “sidecar” computer.
I started using the iPad that way simply because I was preparing this review and needed to refer to the screen as I did research and took notes. But the iPad seeped into my working rhythm — serving as a sort of digital side mirror. As with the side mirror on a car, it’s something that I take occasional glances at because it offers an alternative view to my desktop screen. Its contents change over the course of the day. It’ll be a view of my Inbox as I sit down to work. When I’ve started to pick up steam, it’s dedicated to researching things online. When I’ve begun to lose my ambition, it shows me a Twitter timeline, or the console of the iPod player, or a movie.
When I take breaks, I take them with the iPad. I’ll read a book via the iBooks app (reviewed more fully in another piece right here). The most important takeaway from that piece: it’s as good a reader as the Kindle and the fact that individual reader apps will give you access to all of the iBookstore’s content as well as the entire Kindle Store and any other digital bookstore makes the iPad into the single best ebook reader available, at least from the “size of the library” point of view.
Or I’ll launch a game. The iPad is an exciting and exhausting gaming platform; the combination of the huge color screen, touch interface, tilt sensors and accelerometers turn into something akin to a mobile Wii. Here, the “steering wheel” interface becomes a more literal thing, as I play a driving game in which I twist and turn the iPad to follow the contours of the track.
Apple gave me this iPad with a 10-day embargo tether before its official April 3 release, so I couldn’t take it to The Bagel Place With The Wifi. That’s my usual refuge when I need to keep working, but I also need a change of scenery.
Now that I’m free to use it in public, I can simply email myself a copy of the Word document I’m working on with my desktop, grab the iPad and my jacket, and get going.
There are a bunch of ways to move your desktop files onto your iPad. The conventional conduit is iTunes. iTunes manages and syncs data between your desktop PC or Mac and the iPad in the same way it manages an iPhone or iPod. The iPad lacks the open file system of most computers, but via iTunes, you can copy files into the storage areas of individual apps and retrieve files that those apps have created.
Even without iTunes, the iPad OS has a simple mechanism for sharing documents between apps. Each app can register its supported document types with the OS. Each app can also hand off files to other apps, by asking the OS for a list of installed software capable of opening a Word or Photoshop or Comic Book Archive file, say, and then allowing the user to launch the app of their choice. It’s not quite “double-click to launch the app and open the file” but it’s close enough.
Emailing a document to yourself is just the simplest way of moving an individual file into an iPad app without going through a formal iTunes sync. The basic “Open with” feature will have many different uses. For example, the iPad makes the perfect case for cloud storage, in which a directory of your most important files lives on a remote server that you mounts on the desktops of all of your computers like a local folder. I can work on my desktop PC or Mac all morning, opening and saving files as usual to my cloud storage. Then when it’s time to head for The Bagel Place With The Wifi, I don’t even need to bother “packing up” any files. When I get there, I just open my iPad’s Box.net or Dropbox app (both are in the works), tap on the Word file I was noodling with in the office, and use “Open With ...” to move it into my word processor.
But back to my day. After I’m seated at a table behind a whole-wheat bagel and a big cranberry juice, I’ll download my mail. The app will see the attachment and allow me to open it in any onboard iPad app that supports Word files. In a second, the app can import the manuscript I’ve been working on all day, and spend the next couple of hours reading, sipping, and editing.
And writing, too. Apple did a fantastic job with the iPad’s virtual keyboard. It rolls into view when needed. My expectations were set pretty low; I anticipated that it’d be handy for typing in URLs at minimum and short emails at best. But gorblimey: I can actually touch-type at a respectable clip on it. The keyboard is larger than most physical netbook keyboards and auto-correct will fix most of the clumsiness that comes from not being able to feel what you’re typing.
It’s a big deal to know that you can really write and work with this thing even when you only intended to just enjoy your coffee and read. I can, and have, written thousand-word articles with the virtual keyboard.
But if you’re setting out to do some real typing, you’re clearly going to want to bring a real keyboard. Apple offers an accessory which combines a tabletop dock and a mechanical keyboard that’s virtually identical to what they ship with every iMac. It’s fine. Trouble is, its bulky and awkward; it doesn’t travel well.
Fortunately, the iPad also supports most Bluetooth keyboards ... including Apple’s own, which is trim and light and easy to travel with.
One complaint: I wish these mechanical keyboard supported a full library of key shortcuts. Cut, Copy and Paste are the familiar command-X, command-C, and command-V. But I was surprised that I couldn’t boldface a word in the Pages app by just tapping command-B. It appears to be a limitation of the app. Apple tells me that the OS supports command keys and it’s up to an app’s developers to wire them up.
The Bagel Place With The WiFi near my house closes at 5, so in the late afternoon I’m turned out into the street like a Dickens character.
The iPad isn’t limited to WiFi access to the Internet. At the end of the month, the iPad 3G will start shipping. This model has an integrated 3G chipset and can access the ‘net wherever you go, via the AT&T mobile network.
The good news is that its speed said to be comparable to what you’d get with an iPhone. The bad news is that the same will probably be true of the network’s reliability. Where I live (southern New England) AT&T is rock-steady reliable but in many other parts of the country, including many major cities like New York, accessing the Web at maximum speed involves some small bit of clean living and good fortune.
The terrific feature of the iPad’s 3G service is its pricing: $29 a month for unlimited usage, with absolutely no contracts or commitments required. If you want broadband, just visit the Network Settings pane. Right alongside the settings for your WiFi is a button you can press to buy 3G service. The clock on your month of service begins immediately. The charge will automatically recur (“for the user’s convenience,” no doubt) but you can cancel at any time.
There are no additional charges for starting the service or terminating it. This leads me to believe that just like the T-1000 android at the end of “Terminator 2,” the soulless killing machine at the head of a mobile communications company has finally learned human emotions.
The 3G models (which are $129 more than WiFi-only models with the same storage capacity) also contain a complete GPS chipset. The company that makes my favorite car navigator (Motion-X Drive) has already announced that they’re producing an iPad version; I expect that it will be quite sickeningly cool to have an iPad mounted in my dash.
The real win of GPS on the iPad will be the simple power of location-aware services. That said, maps on the iPad’s huge screen operate at a whole new cognitive level, even the edition of Google Maps on the WiFi-only iPad. On a phone, Google Maps is like looking at satellite imagery through binoculars. When the map fills your field of vision, you suddenly realize that if you deploy your armored divisions here, here, and here, you can entrap Rommel in a devastating pincers maneuver and shorten the War by at least three months.
Soothing sounds
Back home, I’m in the kitchen fixing dinner. I’ve got some music playing on the iPad while I prove yet again that I’ve no sensitivity for the proper cooking time of bay scallops.
I had low expectations of the iPad’s virtual keyboard and my expectations of the iPad’s built-in speaker were even lower. In fact, I’d planned on hooking it up to either a sub-sat tabletop speaker system via its headphone jack or a set of stereo Bluetooth speakers, which connect to the iPad wirelessly via A2DP.
I never bothered. The sound is remarkable for a device this thin. It’s hardly epic and room-filling, but it’s completely in line with what you’d get from a laptop -- albeit in mono. The iPad has actual bass. I think the device uses the airspace between the case and electronics to sonic advantage; I can feel the vibrations of the low-end through my fingertips. I had to play the same music on the iPad and my MacBook side-by-side to really prove that the latter sounded better.
In a personal listening situation, particularly — lying on the sofa and watching a movie, for example -- the sound is just fine: loud and crisp. Headphones or a tabletop speaker set are clearly the optimal way to go, but it’s good to know that you can still enjoy the media features of the iPad even if you failed to plan ahead and pocket the right accessories.
Get the picture
The iPad ships with an iPod app, of course. It does a perfectly adequate job, affording ready access to all of the albums and playlists on your iPad.
I’ve no real usage complaints; it’s a perfectly clean and functional app. All the same, I was surprised that the app is so basic. The app appears to be unaware that the iPad is a full-featured computer with a big screen. You can create new playlists, but that’s really about it for advanced features.
It simply makes no sense to me that the iPod app can’t automatically update all of your subscribed podcasts, for example. You can tap on an individual podcast and tap a button that will allow you to look for new episodes in the iTunes Store, but for basic “I’m about to check out of my hotel and want to make sure new episodes of all of my favorites are there” functionality you’ll need to dock the iPad and do it via the desktop iTunes app.
Video star
The iPad’s video player has a little more razzle-dazzle. It’s even better than iTunes; it delivers an experience comparable to browsing through your shelf of DVDs. It’s easy to skim through what you have, read descriptions, and then settle down and start viewing.
And it’s without question the best mobile viewer of HD content. On my first day with the iPad, none of the iPad’s online Stores were up and running but Apple had pre-loaded a few titles to play with. Lying on the sofa, I idly tapped on Pixar’s “Up” just to get an early read on the video quality.
I’d never seen the flick before. The success of the iPad’s presentation is proved by the fact that after the first minute or two, I was no longer testing an app. I was simply watching a movie. I reclined there with my head propped up on the sofa’s armrest and the iPad propped on my belly, and immediately was immersed in the movie.
You’ve probably seen “Up” and already know its story. Well, folks, I cried twice. Look, I’m not a stone, all right?
That’s how good the presentation was. The hardware completely withdrew itself from the actual movie. The iPad didn’t deliver a compromised mobile edition. Nor was it a laptop which interposes a keyboard and other hardware, and adds a screeching system fan to the soundtrack. In every sense of the word I was holding a real movie in my hands, floating free from all technology.
Despite the wealth of desktop and downloaded content available for the iPad, there’s a reason why I have a big HDTV in my living room. The iPad is still at my elbow. There are nights when I’m working while I’m watching TV or a movie. At those times a notebook is still the right call. When the prefix is “I just want to grab a computer for a moment and ...” the iPad is usually the right answer, whether the suffix is “... check my email,” “... Tweet something,” or “... find out if this guy playing Remo Gaji in ‘Casino’ was also Lips Manless in ‘**** Tracy’; it’s starting to bug me, now.”
Time for bed. Which means it’s time to spend another hour or two reading books and visiting blogs. If I’m lucky, I’ll remember to put the iPad back in its nightstand dock and turn off the lights before I drop off.
The Hardware
There’s an important point to be made from this (perfectly accurate) rundown of my days with the iPad. First, that the iPad has no 3D holographic displays and if I lay it flat on the floor, it won’t autonomously vacuum the carpets. None of its fundamental functions are unique to the iPad; you can use a laptop to do any of these things.
The difference is in the way that the iPad delivers these functions. Even when I’d read blogs in bed with my notebook, I was working with a notebook. The whole philosophy of the iPad is that once you’ve tapped the screen to launch an app, open a webpage, or open a book for reading, the hardware itself should completely disappear from the experience. I’m not “reading a comic book on my computer”; I’m simply reading a comic book.
The physical design of the iPad bears that out.
At 7.5”x9.5” and just a half an inch thick, it’s probably exactly the right size and shape for a machine of this kind. It fills your hands nicely. Its rounded, thin edges are easy to manage. It has a little weight to it — 1.5 pounds — but so does a physical book. It’s more of a reassuring presence than a heavy burden.
And the screen is big enough to make the whole enterprise worthwhile. Without a big screen with real presence, what’s the point? You’re willing to overlook the fact that this thing will never, ever fit in any of your pockets.
(No, it doesn’t even fit in the back pockets of my 5.11 Tactical Pants, which are large enough to carry many netbooks.)
The iPad is marvelously free of mechanical clutter. Just a familiar iPhone-style “Home” button to wake the computer and take you to the application launcher, and a few unobtrusive buttons and switches hidden in the edges. Apple emphatically states through this design that it’s the software (and by “apps” I really mean “content”) that’s the star of the show.
But let’s look at the hardware itself. Apple didn’t scrimp on the build; it’s solid aluminum and glass and looks like the design inspiration was the screen of the MacBook Pro. This is no chintzy netbook; this is top-drawer design and construction.
Like an iPhone, it’s sealed up tight. The battery isn’t user-replaceable. Well, honestly, who cares. It delivers ten hours of real-world use. When the battery gets low, plug it into the wall and go to bed already. The included ten-watt adapter charges it from 0 to 100% in a little less than four hours. It can charge from your computer’s USB port in about double that time. If the battery ever needs replacing, Apple will swap it out for you for $99.
There’s no camera. This will displease those who were hoping to use the iPad as the world’s biggest and clumsiest snapshotter. It’s too bad that the iPad can’t be used for video conferencing, but looking at the device I’m not sure how they could have integrated it in such a way that wouldn’t make it awkward to hold the iPad and keep yourself in frame.
There are also no card slots or USB ports: just a standard iPhone-style dock connector. This would be a serious drawback on a Windows machine but in a slate with the iPad’s goals, slots and ports seem irrelevant. The dock connector makes a variety of relevant accessories possible (like Apple’s VGA adapter for connecting the iPad to conference room projectors, and a camera connection kit that lets you slurp pictures and videos in from your camera). If you’re complaining “But I can’t plug in my DVD burner!” then you’re probably looking for an entirely different kind of computer.
But I need to talk about the CPU. This is an ungodly fast device. You’re probably already familiar with the idea of using the touch interface to zoom in on webpages and scroll around by dragging. When you perform these actions on a webpage in the iPad’s browser, it doesn’t look like a CPU that’s struggling to keep up with the user’s commands. The scaling and movement are so fluid and natural, and keep up with your fingers so precisely, that it truly looks and feels as though you have a video camera in your hand and you’re just swooshing it in and out and through the webpage.
Even when I went stupid-crazy with jerky, twitchy finger movements, the iPad kept up beat for beat, animating every frame in between.
Touchy, Feely
Which brings us to the touch interface in general.
It’ll definitely be familiar to any iPhone user. But any claims that “it’s just a big iPhone” end shortly after your fingertips skate across its live surface. The big screen allows Apple’s classic touch-based interface to open up and strut. Taps and nervous flicks and careful two-fingered gestures on the iPhone’s tiny screen become sweeps and strokes and multifingered taps and tickles on the iPad’s Nebraska-sized real estate.
Far from feeling like a big phone, after my first day with the iPad the iPhone started to feel like merely the mobile edition of the iPad OS. It makes the the 2007 release of the iPhone seem retroactively more impressive: it’s obvious that with this very first device their intention wasn’t to just make a cool phone but to invent the first real multitouch user interface and OS. It scales flawlessly.
I mentioned the “steering wheel” interface of many apps, when the iPad is held in landscape mode. The term is my own invention, but the “house style” defined by the iPad’s built-in apps does appear to be that the iPad should act as a sheet of paper in portrait mode and then provide a slightly more information-rich experience in landscape mode.
But every developer and every app is expected to make the sanest choices for each individual situation. Developers can define their own gestures. Apple’s Keynote app, for example, adds a simple gesture for selecting and moving a collection of slides in the presentation: pull a slide out of the timeline with your index finger, and then use your thumb to pull others into the “pile” you’re building. When you’ve made your choices, slide your index finger into the slides’ destination.
My most common complaint about previous tablet incarnations — and every other tablet due to be released in 2010 that I’ve seen — is that they’re not designed as touch interfaces from the ground up. I’m morbidly skeptical about the viability of the Windows 7 tablet that Microsoft showed off at CES this winter.
As for the Android tablets ... well, in general, Android’s user interface looks like the screen you’d tap through to operate some sort of industrial computer-controlled milling machine. If they can create a tablet UI that’s anywhere close to the level of the iPad, it’ll be a breakthrough moment for the Android OS.
Which is not to say that they can’t do it; just that it’ll be a proud bullet on Google’s timeline of achievements. As always, the proof is in the product.
iTunes and Stores
The iPad has the same sort of relationship with your desktop PC or Mac as an iPhone or iPod does. It isn’t a full peer; it’s a device that “belongs” to this one computer and is exclusively synced with it for photos, music, and video. If you dock it to a different machine, that computer’s iTunes will curtly ask if you want to erase the device and populate it with this other library’s contents.
It’s also the primary method you use to move your documents onto and off of the iPad (though it isn’t the only method possible). You manage apps and change settings just as you would with an iPhone.
Do you need iTunes? Do you need to own another computer to make the iPad work?
Nnnnnot necessarily. You can purchase software, music, movies, and books through the iPad’s various Store apps, and move documents into and off of the device without docking it to the desktop iTunes.
But iTunes delivers two unique functions: it’s the only way to backup the device and the only way to install OS updates. The former is a big deal, particularly with a device that’s so small and light that you’ll be carrying everywhere. “Data loss” won’t be associated with a hardware or software failure — if the iPad is anything like the iPhone, it will be hands-down the most stable and reliable computer you own — it’ll be associated with leaving the thing on a bus somewhere.
(Oh, and good news there: the iPad includes the iPhone’s screen-locking and self-destruct features. You can set it so that the iPad won’t wake up without a four-digit PIN of your choosing. If someone guesses wrong ten times then the iPad destroys all of its data to prevent it from falling into the wrong hands.)
The stores are perfectly functional. I’m still a bit perplexed by the layout, which copies the desktop iTunes Store experience. It’s easy to find what you’re specifically searching for but browsing with only a vague notion of what you want is tougher. I often get the sense that I’m only seeing apps and media that are being “promoted,” either via being billboarded by Apple or appearing in a “top sellers” chart.
Complaints
There’s room for improvement.
My first full day out-and-about with the iPad underscored a problem with the display: the glossy screen can create a lot of glare. Indoors, it’s not generally a problem. There are only a few angles in any situation in which the screen becomes unreadable. But during my train ride to New York, I realized that my only two options were to either move from my window seat or wait until the train steered about twenty degrees away from the sun. Not a serious problem, but still, I think the first million dollars made from iPad accessories will be a stick-on anti-glare film.
Glare aside, the screen does work fine in bright sunlight if you’ve got the screen brightness set to 100%. If you’re wearing sunglasses with polarized lenses, you’ll need to use the iPad in landscape mode. Held upright, the screen’s own polarizer makes everything go completely black.
Oh, and after you’ve been rubbing your fingers all over the screen all day, the iPad looks like somebody’s just given birth to it.
Okay, it’s not that bad. But you’re going to want to wipe down the screen every few hours.
I also wish there were a more natural way to use the iPad simply as a reader for my own documents. I wish there was simply a folder I could drag files into, and then read using nothing more than the iPad OS’ built-in QuickLook feature (which is compatible with all popular file formats). The iPad has a great destiny as the repository of every piece of work and reference material I encounter. It’s too bad that this function will probably have to be implemented by a third-party app.
The only other two serious complaints about the iPad are ones that have been debated ever since the device was first announced in January: the absence of multitasking and support for Flash content.
The first problem should be put in air quotes. The iPad certainly does support multitasking. The iPod app plays music in the background of anything else you’re doing and if you download a movie from the iTunes Store, you can navigate away from that app and do something else during the time it’ll take to grab that 1 gigabyte file.
It’s just third party apps that can’t run in the background. Which presents a few annoyances, such as when I’d like to listen to music from a streaming media app while I work elsewhere.
Apple has removed background operation of third-party apps for sensible reasons: they say it makes any mobile platform less stable and kills the battery. I happen to believe that later this year, Apple will release an update to the iPhone OS that will introduce some form of third-party multitasking that avoids these problems. So I’m confident that in time, at least, this limitation will be lifted.
More of a problem: the iPad is, by its nature, a “one window” interface. You can’t open a movie and have it playing in a corner of the screen while you write. If you want to instant message people, it won’t be a little sidebar that you keep an eye on; it’ll be the whole screen. This is another defining difference between the iPad and a notebook. It’s the same amount of power, but applied with different intentions.
Onward to Flash.
Yes, it’s true: the browser doesn’t support Flash content. “But this means I won’t be able to use streaming video!” is the bark and cry.
Why no Flash? Because it’s a dumb technology that causes computers to slowly die of theatrical Jane Austen-style diseases. I installed a plugin for my desktop browser that prevents all webpages from loading in Flash content and that’s the day when my computer became as fast and reliable as I wanted it to be.
And it’s hogwash that the iPad won’t have access to websites that use streaming video and other Flash-type content. The web industry is moving to open standards like HTML5 that can deliver the same content without the need for plugins. Moreover, every major provider has either already added support for the iPad, iPhone, and other flash-free browsers or else they’re planning to do so soon.
Case in point: the official website of Major League Baseball. If you load the page on a web browser with a flash blocker installed, you see gaping holes where the content is supposed to appear.
If you load the page on an iPad, you see ... the page exactly as it was intended to be displayed. The streaming video, the live scores, everything. That’s how important it is to support Apple devices. YouTube made the transition as soon as the first iPhone was released. Others are following suit. It’s still the day before the iPad’s launch and Netflix has already released an app for streaming tens of thousands of movies an TV shows to the service’s subscribers. The ABC television network already has an iPad app that lets you watch all of the shows and previews that are available on their main site. CBS promises me that their own website will be iPad-studly on launch day.
I’m sure that sites like Hulu.com won’t be far behind. It would be reaching too far to claim that the lack of Flash is a total nonissue. But I don’t see it as any factor in anybody’s buying decision. There are sensible reasons not to buy an iPad — best covered in my companion piece comparing the iPad to netbooks and notebooks — but lack of Flash isn’t one of them.
The Day After: Happiness Doubled
The day after my embargo lifted and I was free to use the iPad openly was also the first day that these kinds of mainstream third-party apps started to trickle into the App Store. It practically redoubled my excitement about the iPad.
Here’s the New York Times’ iPad app, which delivers the days’ news in a far more interactive and engaging way than any website. Here’s the Netflix app, which gives me access to tens of thousands of movies and TV shows without paying rental fees above my normal Netflix subscription. It streams just fine via my Verizon MiFi mobile hotspot, so I know it’ll work great on the iPad 3G’s mobile broadband connection.
Here’s Pandora streaming radio. Here’s a chat client. Here’s an app for buying and reading Marvel comic books. Autodesk has released a version of their sketchpad app that takes full advantage of the huge iPad screen. MLB has an app for watching live games; ESPN has another for keeping a wary eye on every sports score in every event going on, everywhere; they seem to be terrific companions to watching games on TV or even live.
Tap, tap, tap ... more and more icons appear in the iPad’s launcher and with each download the device gets more features and more power. And underscores the rightness of this approach. An RSS newsreader which (in effect) turns the entirety of the Web into one giant eBook; tap an “update” button and the freshest content from my favorite sites is safely on the iPad’s storage.
Not all of these apps are winners. Already I see an Entertainment app named “69 Sex Positions.”
But the best of these apps strengthen my impression of the iPad as something brand-new. Not a computer, though it has the power and the features of one; not a book reader and media player, though it does those things exceptionally well.
Nope. The iPad is a reality-enhancer. Even when I’m using the most conveniently-sized netbook, my main reality is “I’m using a computer right now.”
The iPad — and I’m sorry to have forced you to read six thousand words to make it to such a lame metaphor -- is digital seasoning to your routine life. It adds to your experience without overwhelming it. You will never say “I’m at the coffeeshop taking a break…and I brought my computer, so I can watch a movie on Netflix.”
Nope. You’re just at the coffeeshop and watching a movie.
You’re not even “watching the Opening Day of the baseball season while keeping tabs on other team coverage.” You’re simply watching a baseball game; the iPad is simply enhancing and extending your perception of the game.
The iPad isn’t a pair of night-vision glasses. It’s a set of contact lenses. It isn’t a pair of stylish stilettos with three-inch heels. It’s a pair of boots that keep your feet warm and dry and let you walk for ten hours without really feeling it. If it were a vehicle, it wouldn’t be a high-performance supercar that makes you think “I’m about to be killed. I am most definitely about to be killed.” It’s a sporty convertible that makes you think “Wow, the trees are leafing early this year.”
Two things inevitably happen soon after Apple releases a new product. Some company gets a hold of one and then produces a video in which they tear it apart and document all of its components. They do this for pageviews and clicks.
But the same thing happens at tech companies all over the world. They tear it apart to look at the components and figure out how such a thing could be made more cheaply and shabbily and not work quite so well.
The revolution, and the copying job has begun. I’m already impressed as hell with the iPad. I think it won’t really shine through as the utterly refreshing new articulation of personal computing that it is until late this year, when these knockoffs enter the market and we can fully appreciate how hard it is to do this sort of thing right.
The iPad is new, and revolutionary. And after a week of using it in my office, a day of using it freely in the real world, and after sampling the first releases of third party software, I know for sure that it’s been done right.
Interesting. For all of the posting you've done in here, I'd expect you to know one of the most basic things about the iPod/iPhone/iPad. Unless of course you don't really know anything about the iPad but just start kicking and screaming when people enjoy it. Lots of you guys are out there and apparently lots of you guys are in this thread.
Nice. I still have my mogul. Never considered just mounting it in the glove box as permanent wi-fi access point. Used it that way all the time but once I upgraded and had the same feature on my new phone just used that.
I've only charged this thing 2 or 3 times since I bought it the first day. Ma-gi-cal.
Interesting. For all of the posting you've done in here, I'd expect you to know one of the most basic things about the iPod/iPhone/iPad. Unless of course you don't really know anything about the iPad but just start kicking and screaming when people enjoy it. Lots of you guys are out there and apparently lots of you guys are in this thread.
Well, not quiet as "Wow", but cool none-the-less. I hate that feeling when you forgot to record something. 
