So, the Apple iPad has finally been launched worldwide and well, I still am not sure what to make of it…
While there are many articles about the iPad, floating about the ether that is the Internet, I thought I had better give a review of sorts about it. I will, however, try to take a slightly different view.
At first look, the iPad is much like an iPod Touch, but bigger. Weight wise, it feels like a medium to heavy magazine and is slightly smaller than an A4 sheet of paper although, much, much thicker ^_^.
Operationally, it is much like an iPhone or an iPod touch.
Physically, there is an on/off switch at the top, a menu button, a headphone jack, an aspect lock switch and a volume rocker.
So… nothing really new… until you start to play with it.
Under the hood, Apple have devised a set of chips for their portable devices. Apple’s A4 chipset is specifically geared towards graphical manipulation. What does that mean? It is really fast on the screen and is really… what is the word? Responsive.
The first test I did was to go check out the photo section. I went into an album (or what Apple call an ‘event’) and viewed a photo. All of you who know how iphones and ipod Touches (or is it Touch’s?) work will know that you flick your finger from right to left on the screen and you will have ‘flicked’ to the next photo. Well, I got my running man fingers out and flicked as fast as I could. Impressive! No slowdown. There is one thing we humans like and that is instantaneous response. If I flick the page of a book, I am at the next page. It is instantaneous. Same with the iPad.
One aspect that you will find is that in comparison, the Internet cannot keep up!
What does that mean? Well I went into the maps application and went to street view. What I found was that I was navigating around, and clicking the arrows to move down the street (and if you don’t know what I am talking about, go to maps.google.com, choose an address, zoom in and choose street view. Navigate around.).
The Internet connection (which was an Australian telco which we won’t name) could not keep up. But the A4 chipset kept us moving around and panning. Even though the street had not loaded!
So, the iPad is fast! What else?
Well… um…
Apple have launched a bookshop specifically for the iPad so you can download books and read them on the iPad. Is it an e-reader? Not really. E-readers are not backlit and use e-ink technology. This means that when you view a page on an e-reader, it behaves like a page would. It reflects light like a paper page would. It does not refresh itself (thereby conserving power) and is not backlit like a computer monitor.
Can you read books on an iPad? YES! While the iPad is not technically an e-reader, you can read books on the iPad. Just keep in mind that your eyes will get tired like you were using a computer.
The beauty of the iPad is that it is more like a media centre. You can watch movies, view photos and listen to music. On top of that, you can do some light application work (iPad comes with Apple’s word processor and spreadsheet applications) and read books.
So that’s it!
Go check one out at your local David Jones, Myer or JB-Hi-Fi. If you happen to live near an Apple store, check it out there.