Ripplinghurst
iPF Noob
Last Tuesday, got an email saying my 3G iPad was available for pickup, when I get there I pretend I was just a regular customer, asked for what I wanted they said I would have to wait for up to two weeks...huh.
I was kind of busy lately I couldn't play much with it, but today. I recorded and watched the F1 Monaco qualy and launched my F1 timing app. Whoa, what was impressive on the iPhone turned out to be amazing on the iPad. Really the graphics are to die for. I could pause the tv and sync the app with the recorded timings and it was amazing. I had to use my tablet to post on the F1 forums though, because the app would pause (and so get out of sync) if I simply switch to the browser and post/read something. No multitasking there.
I'll spare you of the compliments, pretty much everything good said about it it's true. And THAT is great and it completely justifies my investment.
It's a great chick magnet too, so if you're single that's great.
Couple of disappointments though:
1. It badly needs USB 3.0. Sync can take hours. Literally. And I have a quad core running at 3.2GHz+, I am transcoding music to 128Kpbs and it takes a long time. Very long. I was using genius playlists, so if I change the applications display order, or deselect a podcast, the whole freaking thing was apparently re-updating my whole library...again. And I had listenend to nothing yet, I thought iTunes kept track of that? I haven't been using an ipod for a long time, and didn't remember how slow syncing can be I guess. I bet USB 3.0 would work wonders to quickly manage content on the iPad.
2. Surprisingly, the screen is actually readable under direct sunlight, despite it's glossy, mirror-like finish. The capacitive layer must have been optically bonded, and for sure they have used AG coating somewhere on the LCD panel, but they left the outer layer completely glossy. Apparently just to make it pretty. It's not perfect, but it works, kind of. First thing I'm going to buy is a matte screen protector for it, which will completely eliminate the fingerprint issue (like it did with my LE1700).
3. The iBook app, like the Kindle app, is a disappointment. They have absolutely no respect for books. That makes them unusable for students and professors, since you can't refer to a page number - they're meaningless. I'm not saying they should have used the scholarly standards throughout, like Bekker number for Aristotle's work (although that would be awesome), but they should have used whatever hard copy they based their version on, at least. Just a note where there's a page break with a page number on the sides. That would help things. What you're going to say now, p. 37 on the iPad and page 65 on the iPhone?
What I think they did is to get, say, a Gutenberg project plain text file and then just cut and paste into their zip like format. I wonder how a concrete poem will look like with all that care
. Would it hurt to use a scanned .pdf, what format do they use at Apple? I thought Page Maker was big This should be simple as of now, for instance Google is doing it, Amazon store can display some of the books actual pages with the intended published format, why can't the ipad/kindle use this, instead of plain text? Mind you, this happens even with paid books, not only with the free classics.
To give you a real example. Wife bought a vampire book (New Moon, S. Meyer), page 8 on the iPad was actually page 3 on the actual book...funny thing is, when you turn it sideways into widescreen format, page 8 turns into page 10...WTF?! ROFLOL
I don't know why I don't see this criticism more often...Very angry at that. It's not big deal, they only saved file size, since the technology is easy (just scan the whole thing).
4. The iPhone apps actually look pretty tiny on the iPad screen. There's a "2x" to blow it up and fill the screen, but it does not look pretty at all. The font text gets huge, and you clearly see there's a lot of unneeded navigation involved. Same thing with games.
So this 200K iPhone apps on the iPad is kind of lame.
5. I trully miss some kind of palm rejection software. I got used quickly to touch the screen everywhere on my LE1700 and I think this is pretty cool. On the iPad you feel you have to "respect" the screen more, look for where and how you touch it, etc.
6. So far my impression is that if you want to be "productive" it's hard to beat the stylus. Writing, drawing, producing or editing a new document, whatever it is. Now web browsing and using software where you access data, then I think the iPad is better. Plus, it has a lot of apps available, like the Formula 1 real time GPS based timing software above (which must be seen to be appreciated, it's absolutely fantastic - you feel like an F1 manager). Mind you, this is my first impression I have yet to test (and find!) more productive software. Is there any .pdf annotator out there?
Also, the Fennec Firefox browser for touchscreen might be good enough to provide a similar browsing experience, and I hope that's the kind of feel we're going to see in the future Tablet, not only for browsing, but other apps as well.
Now I'm going to see if I can sync music with Media Monkey, maybe this way is faster? Will see about that.
Cheers,
RH.
I was kind of busy lately I couldn't play much with it, but today. I recorded and watched the F1 Monaco qualy and launched my F1 timing app. Whoa, what was impressive on the iPhone turned out to be amazing on the iPad. Really the graphics are to die for. I could pause the tv and sync the app with the recorded timings and it was amazing. I had to use my tablet to post on the F1 forums though, because the app would pause (and so get out of sync) if I simply switch to the browser and post/read something. No multitasking there.
I'll spare you of the compliments, pretty much everything good said about it it's true. And THAT is great and it completely justifies my investment.
It's a great chick magnet too, so if you're single that's great.
Couple of disappointments though:
1. It badly needs USB 3.0. Sync can take hours. Literally. And I have a quad core running at 3.2GHz+, I am transcoding music to 128Kpbs and it takes a long time. Very long. I was using genius playlists, so if I change the applications display order, or deselect a podcast, the whole freaking thing was apparently re-updating my whole library...again. And I had listenend to nothing yet, I thought iTunes kept track of that? I haven't been using an ipod for a long time, and didn't remember how slow syncing can be I guess. I bet USB 3.0 would work wonders to quickly manage content on the iPad.
2. Surprisingly, the screen is actually readable under direct sunlight, despite it's glossy, mirror-like finish. The capacitive layer must have been optically bonded, and for sure they have used AG coating somewhere on the LCD panel, but they left the outer layer completely glossy. Apparently just to make it pretty. It's not perfect, but it works, kind of. First thing I'm going to buy is a matte screen protector for it, which will completely eliminate the fingerprint issue (like it did with my LE1700).
3. The iBook app, like the Kindle app, is a disappointment. They have absolutely no respect for books. That makes them unusable for students and professors, since you can't refer to a page number - they're meaningless. I'm not saying they should have used the scholarly standards throughout, like Bekker number for Aristotle's work (although that would be awesome), but they should have used whatever hard copy they based their version on, at least. Just a note where there's a page break with a page number on the sides. That would help things. What you're going to say now, p. 37 on the iPad and page 65 on the iPhone?
What I think they did is to get, say, a Gutenberg project plain text file and then just cut and paste into their zip like format. I wonder how a concrete poem will look like with all that care
To give you a real example. Wife bought a vampire book (New Moon, S. Meyer), page 8 on the iPad was actually page 3 on the actual book...funny thing is, when you turn it sideways into widescreen format, page 8 turns into page 10...WTF?! ROFLOL
I don't know why I don't see this criticism more often...Very angry at that. It's not big deal, they only saved file size, since the technology is easy (just scan the whole thing).
4. The iPhone apps actually look pretty tiny on the iPad screen. There's a "2x" to blow it up and fill the screen, but it does not look pretty at all. The font text gets huge, and you clearly see there's a lot of unneeded navigation involved. Same thing with games.
So this 200K iPhone apps on the iPad is kind of lame.
5. I trully miss some kind of palm rejection software. I got used quickly to touch the screen everywhere on my LE1700 and I think this is pretty cool. On the iPad you feel you have to "respect" the screen more, look for where and how you touch it, etc.
6. So far my impression is that if you want to be "productive" it's hard to beat the stylus. Writing, drawing, producing or editing a new document, whatever it is. Now web browsing and using software where you access data, then I think the iPad is better. Plus, it has a lot of apps available, like the Formula 1 real time GPS based timing software above (which must be seen to be appreciated, it's absolutely fantastic - you feel like an F1 manager). Mind you, this is my first impression I have yet to test (and find!) more productive software. Is there any .pdf annotator out there?
Also, the Fennec Firefox browser for touchscreen might be good enough to provide a similar browsing experience, and I hope that's the kind of feel we're going to see in the future Tablet, not only for browsing, but other apps as well.
Now I'm going to see if I can sync music with Media Monkey, maybe this way is faster? Will see about that.
Cheers,
RH.
