I didn't pre order so I'm winging it tommorow.
Test drove an iPad today at King of Prussia Mall Apple Store.
Very interesting product. I'm waiting for the 3G model. First impressions...
Even though I've seen plenty of photos and videos, and know the dimensions, the iPad is smaller than I imagined. For those of you with 15" laptops, imagine half of the screen - that's about the size of it.
It's very, very fast. Windows, controls, images just pop! Scrolling, panning and zooming photos happen in real time - seem faster than any laptop computer I've used. Fun.
Has a substantial feel to it. Feels nice in the hand.
Onscreen keyboard was fine. Serious users will want the wireless keyboard. I wasn't crazy about the keyboard dock because you have to move your hand up to the screen to interact with the device and it's portrait orientation only. Makes more sense to use the wireless keyboard and be able to do landscape or portrait and prop up the iPad a bit for easy hand interaction.
Display is gorgeous. Colors and display angle fantastic.
Was very impressed with the Keynote, Numbers and Pages apps. If you're a speaker or lecturer, this is the way to go.
This will be a killer tool for the serious photographer, particularly professional photographers. Apple should work on a iPad version of Aperture ASAP.
Well most netbooks are not running particularly robust CPU's either (largely Atom based). The advantage that the iPad would have is that it's got a much more powerful 3D engine than most netbooks, and an application like Aperture benefits in a large way by offloading the image processing to the 3D engine's shader complex rather than trying to plow through it with the CPU. On image processing tasks, I would expect the iPad to be substantially faster than the average netbook.
Looks like the iPad jailbreak is in the works or ready to be released soon!!
On a related note, those with jailbroken iPhones using MyWi to create a wifi hotspot are working great with the iPad tethered to it.
If the iPad is so great as it is, why do you ever need to jailbreak it?
If they hack it to run flash, I will get one.
Heh, after a full day plus, I have hardly put mine down. This thing is going to 90% replace my laptop. I've also read a couple hundred pages of an ebook on it. So far I'd say it is exceeding my expectations.
I thought it would be bigger too. It is pretty small, but it is a nice size.
I am not sure why it would be a killer tool for a photographer. With only 1 GHz processor, it is a very slow computer. It runs the iPhone OS well because it is nearly 2x as fast as an iPhone, but for real computer applications, it would be worse than a netbook. For what it does though, it sure was snappy. It was impressive how fast the pinch zoom worked.
From a use case perspective, I just can't see how the iPad is superior to my Netbook that cost half as much, and can run pretty much any software on it.
-no multi-tasking (insane!!!)
-no web-cam / crappy camera
-no media card slot so I can pop in my SD card from my camera and save pictures to the iPad without using another device
-extremely limited storage (16gb is barely adequate for most netbooks - those that run Linux)
-lack of industry standard USB / mini-USB / micro-USB ports (my android phone has a micro-USB port, come on Steve!!!)
-no flash (although I hate flash, lots of site require it)
Lest you call me an Apple hater, I have iPhone & iPod Touch. I just don't see how this thing is worth $500 for a small 16gb model that seems so crippled...
The iPad, while it looks gorgeous, is exactly that! When I'm browsing the web at home, I open additional links / tabs, while still browsing the tab I'm on. With the iPad, it can't do that. It can only open a single page at a time, for you to view.
iPhone OS 3.1.3 currently does not do multi-task. Playing with the iPad it was evident it is no different and does not multi-task either.NSXMas,
1. The iPad is a multitasking device. Multitasking is currently being limited to enhance battery life. iPhone OS 4.0 is coming soon and by all accounts Apple will then unveil full multitasking for all developers.
http://www.tuaw.com/2010/04/01/rumor-apples-iphone-4-0-to-support-multitasking-expose-like-i/
interesting, only costs $29, why not just build it into the device? The tear-down shows plenty of space for that.2. True, there's no web cam. Not a big deal breaker for me as I've never really used my web cam on my MacBook Pro.
3. You're wrong. There is a simple little adapter where you can plug your SD card into the iPad. You don't need to use another device. There's also one that has a USB connector too.
http://store.apple.com/us/product/MC531ZM/A
Yes, because USB is not standardized enough...The iPad uses the same 30 pin "standard" that is used by all iPod/iPhone devices. There are tons of devices and accessories here. Apple is trying to keep the i/o connections standard across the family of products and that makes sense. That way developers can be sure of a standard.
I have a 32GB iPod Touch, and it only has 8 GB free with only some of my library of music / videos on it. 64GB is definitely not enough, not if it's going to be more than a toy.4. Extremely limited storage? 16GB is the baseline model. You can get 32 or 64GB if you wish. 64GB is a lot of a storage for a small device. And if you're comparing against Netbooks be sure to include 16, 32 or 64GB SSDrives into the comparison. Need more storage? I plan to use Dropbox and iDisk to give me pretty much unlimited storage. There's also the very cool Airstash...
http://www.airstash.com/
Yes you can open multiple pages on the iPod Touch / iPhone. But they will not load until you are actually displaying that page. A lot of good that does. Kind of like the multi-tasking - you can multi-task all you want, when you switch over to that specific app......although I'm waiting for the price of the Airstash to come down a bit. I'd say under $75 would be great.
5. Flash. Well, already many sites are rapidly revising their content to move away from Flash. This is just not going to be a big deal. The success of the iPhone and now the iPod is just accelerating the shift away from Flash to HTML5 and H264 for video. In a way, I wish Apple would just implement Flash but allow a software preference setting for those of us who block Flash because it's buggy and a huge battery drain.
Well, sure you can only look at one page/tab at a time because of the screen size. But you can indeed open additional pages on the iPhone and iPad while still browsing on the page/tab you're currently on. I do this all the time with my iPhone and I tried it on the iPad and it works well. Yes, Safari on the iPhone/iPad doesn't have a tabbed interface but there's thumbnails for each of the pages that you've elected to open in the background.
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iPhone OS 3.1.3 currently does not do multi-task. Playing with the iPad it was evident it is no different and does not multi-task either.
interesting, only costs $29, why not just build it into the device? The tear-down shows plenty of space for that.
Yes, because USB is not standardized enough...
I have a 32GB iPod Touch, and it only has 8 GB free with only some of my library of music / videos on it. 64GB is definitely not enough, not if it's going to be more than a toy.
Yes you can open multiple pages on the iPod Touch / iPhone. But they will not load until you are actually displaying that page. A lot of good that does. Kind of like the multi-tasking - you can multi-task all you want, when you switch over to that specific app...
I do think the iPod would be a great tool for a serious photographer.
I shoot in RAW and had no trouble syncing several iPhoto albums to the iPad.Does it have the ability to view RAW images?
Even if it ran flash, I seriously doubt you'll use it for more than an over-priced toy.
Think about how you use your computer today. Can you imagine if it could only run a single task at a time? You'd throw it away!!
I can see the usefulness of this.
For someone who doesn't have their laptop on 24x7 right beside them like I do, just keep their pad in standby mode by their sofa. Want to google something it takes 2 seconds to do it.
What's going to be interesting in when everyone else releases this year.