The iPad size is excellent. It’s just right for toting around the house. The dock is a great feature, I’d buy one for the kitchen counter and another for my nightstand. I would not buy the keyboard dock. I’d buy the bluetooth keyboard instead, since it can be used with a Mac and the iPad.
There are some great games that are very playable on the iPhone 3GS. They would be even more fun on the iPad. Hands down, this is a far better gaming/education device than the iPhone or iPod Touch. There’s no doubt it’s better for reading books, browsing web pages, and managing email.
But is it really ‘better’ at music than an iPhone or a Mac? It can’t hold my entire music library, making it less ‘good’ than a Mac. It’s worth putting up with the iPhone storage limits because it fits in my pocket. The iPad has neither ‘best feature.’
It appears the iPad is better at displaying photos, but it can’t take any. Where’s the camera? This device should be able to take pictures and support video conferencing in the same way as iChat on a Mac. The lack of this feature is a compelling reason to wait for iPad 2.0.
The iPhone and iTouch are personal devices. Laptops are shared devices with user profiles. I would leave the iPad laying around the house as other family members would surely enjoy using it. The iPhone OS is designed around use by one person. The restrictions offered are all or nothing, making them far less useful for multiple users. The iPad needs profiles so we can all use it and have exclusive access to our personal data (email, calendars, saved passwords in Safari, etc).
I’ve used my iPhone as an in-car video player. I play the audio through my car stereo via bluetooth and hang it between the seats so the kids can watch a movie. The iPad could be far better, with the larger IPS display and longer battery life.
Perhaps, instead of leaving it sitting around the house, I need to customize my dash to fit an iPad. The next version of Motion-X GPS Drive for the iPad will take mobile navigation to the next level. That idea has some serious potential.
Nice review. Hadn’t thought of multiple profiles before, that’s a great idea. Any idea why Apple is still not offering multitasking? At a minimum, two running apps would satisfy most complaints… ie Pandora or iheartradio + another app to play music concurrently. Just don’t understand all the iPad bashing out there… this is the first device to combine a browser, ebook reader & media player into one! And one step ahead of the competition as usual. Seems to me that this will sell very, very well.
I pretty much agree with that review. I was surprised, with their focus on it being a “digital photo frame while docking” that it doesn’t have a camera. I am also disappointed that you can’t play flash on it, but have heard that that may be in the works still. I like that you can pay for unlimited data from AT&T for $30/mo without a contract – that part seems very useful for my summers back in MI or where ever I may be.
I’m pretty sure, Jordan, that like the iPod, you can still run the Music app in the background and another app.
The inability to multitask is a conscious design choice, and a reasonable one for an iPhone. It provides longer battery life and better performance. Reviewers that handled the iPads rave about how fast they are. That’s due in part to faster processors, but also because the iPhone OS maximizes individual app performance. More importantly, it makes iPhone OS devices more reliable and simpler to use.
If Apple allowed multitasking, they’d need to provide a task manager. Third party task managers are already available for Android powered phones. When an Android device slows down, its owner must open a task manager and manually kill off background tasks. That wouldn’t bother me (much) on my phone, but I already provide tech support for 5 iPhone OS devices.
I’m glad iPhone OS does not have multitasking by default. A great compromise would be blessing a single, user-selectable application that it was allowed to run in the background. Pandora, Skype, NPR, and other media streaming apps would be very popular choices for that coveted spot. It’s a feature I’d love to see, but I’m not holding my breath.