First the good news.
This device in my opinion will fill a niche for those who travel and want to read, watch a movie and things and if you already own a iphone or ipod touch, you like the larger screen for reading email and web surfing. I like how you can manage pictures with it. That shit is cool how you can blast them out across the screen with multi-touch. Kinda fly actually. Even more fly than that, you can press a button and your ipad flips into this picture frame to pan through your images. The effects are nothing short of stunning.
That's the good news.
After holding it for about 15 minutes I gotta say this bitch gets heavy. And if feels weighty. The rounded back helps to pick it up from a flat surface but I thought it was unnecessary. It's square enough on the edges to lift even when placed face down. IMHO, they have to take some of the weight off this thing. It's too heavy. Also, the edges are a little too sharp and feels unfinished.
Much was made about the upscale feature during jobs presentation for existing apps in it's app store. Cool. Press the 2x button and boom, full screen enjoyment right?
Wrong!
This upscale from iphone app to ipad is mad garbage. Graphics and text is extremely blocky and the text is far from the sharpness you come to expect from Apple. Colors were washed out to the point they looked 16 bit and anti-aliasing is pretty much non-existent. How could that be? That's not new technology and upscaling should not have been this lazy. But it was.
This on-screen keyboard is a fail. For a touch typist for which I am, it is a literal pain in the ass to use. "Hunt and Peck" typists shouldn't have too much trouble but it was especially difficult for me. I'm used to being able to finger the home row looking for that little notch on the "F" and "J" keys but with this device, that ain't happening. So tactile orientation is out of the question. Moreover, any accidental touch on the screen presses a letter, usually a letter you did not want. I found was spending more time correcting text than getting your thoughts down. And after trying for 40 minutes, I could not make the adjustments.
The solution for me is a separate keyboard.
Now it's really smooth and responsive. I like that about the ipad. Felt just like I thought it would. A big ass ipod touch. While using it I thought that this is a little TOO much like the ipod touch. I kept expecting the menus would move differently or have a behavior to make the experience unique but that's just me talking. Having used the ipod touch, it supposed to mimic what we already know. I got that but, ok.
One thing you gotta get used to is the enormous number of fingerprints on a bigger screen . That was more of a distraction than on the ipod touch. It is to me anyway. Maybe there is a screen protector you could buy that hides them better but won't limit the user experience.
Finally, I was a little disappointed with video on the ipad. Now the video was smooth and all that but it didn't fill the screen as I expected. The best I could get was wide screen letterbox. Not that I couldn't watch the movie, but it did not fully utilize the screen. That was a bit of a disappointment.
That's it. Out of 10 stars, 6 is what I'll give it for it's first run.
-VG
This device in my opinion will fill a niche for those who travel and want to read, watch a movie and things and if you already own a iphone or ipod touch, you like the larger screen for reading email and web surfing. I like how you can manage pictures with it. That shit is cool how you can blast them out across the screen with multi-touch. Kinda fly actually. Even more fly than that, you can press a button and your ipad flips into this picture frame to pan through your images. The effects are nothing short of stunning.
That's the good news.
After holding it for about 15 minutes I gotta say this bitch gets heavy. And if feels weighty. The rounded back helps to pick it up from a flat surface but I thought it was unnecessary. It's square enough on the edges to lift even when placed face down. IMHO, they have to take some of the weight off this thing. It's too heavy. Also, the edges are a little too sharp and feels unfinished.
Much was made about the upscale feature during jobs presentation for existing apps in it's app store. Cool. Press the 2x button and boom, full screen enjoyment right?
Wrong!
This upscale from iphone app to ipad is mad garbage. Graphics and text is extremely blocky and the text is far from the sharpness you come to expect from Apple. Colors were washed out to the point they looked 16 bit and anti-aliasing is pretty much non-existent. How could that be? That's not new technology and upscaling should not have been this lazy. But it was.
This on-screen keyboard is a fail. For a touch typist for which I am, it is a literal pain in the ass to use. "Hunt and Peck" typists shouldn't have too much trouble but it was especially difficult for me. I'm used to being able to finger the home row looking for that little notch on the "F" and "J" keys but with this device, that ain't happening. So tactile orientation is out of the question. Moreover, any accidental touch on the screen presses a letter, usually a letter you did not want. I found was spending more time correcting text than getting your thoughts down. And after trying for 40 minutes, I could not make the adjustments.
The solution for me is a separate keyboard.
Now it's really smooth and responsive. I like that about the ipad. Felt just like I thought it would. A big ass ipod touch. While using it I thought that this is a little TOO much like the ipod touch. I kept expecting the menus would move differently or have a behavior to make the experience unique but that's just me talking. Having used the ipod touch, it supposed to mimic what we already know. I got that but, ok.
One thing you gotta get used to is the enormous number of fingerprints on a bigger screen . That was more of a distraction than on the ipod touch. It is to me anyway. Maybe there is a screen protector you could buy that hides them better but won't limit the user experience.
Finally, I was a little disappointed with video on the ipad. Now the video was smooth and all that but it didn't fill the screen as I expected. The best I could get was wide screen letterbox. Not that I couldn't watch the movie, but it did not fully utilize the screen. That was a bit of a disappointment.
That's it. Out of 10 stars, 6 is what I'll give it for it's first run.
-VG
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