Prologue
It is right that this is composed on my iPad and also that I am doing this in the departure lounge at Bangkok airport after two months of user testing in Australia, England and Denmark.
I would say that my testing has been pretty thorough as I have used the device mostly for work, my two sons have used it for leisure and my wife has transformed her life with it.
I guess the executive summary is that I had been fairly skeptical about the value of a tablet-like form factor, but I and we have been bowled over by it's usefulness. It is a revelation.
For more detail read on...
I bought the top of the range WiFi/3G iPad from the Apple Store in Sydney at the end of May 2010. Experience taught me I'd need lots of memory and I also expected the device to become a useful travel companion so 3G was essential. I only used the device for a day or two in Australia, so saved the 3G experience for the UK where I was to be based for most of June and July 2010.
Connecting Up
In the UK I knew that Three has the best tariff and also great bandwidth. In fact the bandwidth was so good that I used 3G in preference to WiFi in most places other than my office. The process of getting a 3G micro-SIM in the Three store in Sheffield UK was not very easy and make harder by my being their first customer for such a product. Nonetheless we all persevered and got the job done in around 45 minutes. I chose the 10Gb plan and struggled to even use half of that each month.
First Impressions
My first impression was that the iPad was a super-sized iPhone. This meant that I knew where to find things, but it also puzzled me that there was no support for SMS or voice. I guess this gives Apple some clear blue water of separation from the iPhone. To some extent I can see the justification for this, but I can also see that this will be an easier device for fat-fingered texters like myself.
When we started Dialogue back in 1994 one of our premises for developing PageMail: an SMS application for the PC, was that it was easier to type a message than key one into a mobile phone. I still think that this is the case for many people and that is why we've continued the PageMail spirit with envelos: a web based application for the desk.
Anyway after configuring email and a setting my iTunes account into the device I had a play.
Everything seemed good and the email app is fantastic. However in order to hear my music and view my photos I had to plug into a computer and sync via iTunes. It took about 3 hours and out of everything I have done with my iPad this is the most ridiculous.
The iPad is a computer in itself so it is really daft connecting it to another one to synchronise data. I expect Apple have a plan to host everyones iTunes content in "the cloud" and then we can all connect wirelessly, but until then we will have to put up with something which looks suspiciously like a ruse to increase sales of other Apple products.
Now I've got that rant off my chest I can continue with what will be a fairly glowing tribute.
Applications
Once you realise that the soft keypad is all you need you start to want to create documents rather than just read them. The iPhone in contrast was ok for quick emails and diary entries, but you wouldn't want to write a report on one.
Creating documents really requires you to have some apps for the job. The best ones for this on the iPad are in my view those from Apple: Pages for word processing, Numbers for spreadsheets and Keynote for presentations. These for me do all I require and I could review my company's board reports and write my own using the apps. I could even use a nifty VGA connector to do my strategy presentation directly from the iPad. I found the only downside of these apps was there compatibility with the market leading desktop Office applications from Microsoft. Keynote would not convert to Powerpoint though it could open and convert Powerpoint files. This was a big drawback for me as I would then have to share presentations as PDF documents. Also Pages was not great at exporting to MS-Word format. Things like footers, fonts and tables were lost or altered. This really meant that the only person you would share the document with would be yourself, and you could then use Word to reformat the document so you could send it to your colleagues. Again, this isn't a show-stopper but it reduces the utility of the iPad from my perspective.
As well as the standard office apps I also downloaded some more. These were Omnigraffle a kind of Visio replacement which is fantastic as an iPad app, Sketchbook Pro from Autodesk and iBooks. Omnigraffle allowed me to create flow charts and other diagrams which I could then embed within other documents using Keynote and Pages. Sketchbook was more of a leisure app for my son who has a talent as an artist. I knew that the revered British artist David Hockney amongst others had become a real advocate of the iPad as a painting canvas, due in no small part to this app, so I wanted to get my son to give it a try. Here is an example of one of his early efforts:
iBooks was a possible Kindle killer and I wanted to see if it really worked for me as a replacement for a book. One great side benefit of iBooks is that it will also act as a bookshelf for PDF documents that you might download. This made it a good place to look for many online reports I find myself wanting to read. The book I bought to accompany 'Winnie the Pooh' which comes with the iBooks app, was 'Crush It!' by Gary Vaynerchuk. I heard him being interviewed by Jason Calacanis in the 'This Week in Startups' podcast, and wondered if he could be as passionate in writing. He can!
My view about iBooks is that is it brilliant if you want to have several books but probably won't win you over if you just want one book for your holiday read.
I also tried some iPhone apps which worked on the iPad but by and large were not much good at showing off the ipads great user interface.
For me, using the device for work, the experience was great. You get that 'instant start' feeling when you switch it on. There appear to be no moving parts and so the speed of operation is so much faster than listening to a laptop booting up and thrashing around trying to load everything into memory. The email app, the safari browser and the office apps all work pretty seamlessly together to give me all I need with just the exception of the file format compatibility mentioned above.
I'd say my Top 5 likes are:
- Instant access. When you want to use it - it's there.
- VGA output. Allows me to present to my colleagues without needing a laptop.
- iPad specific apps. They aren't as cheap as iPhone apps but they give me so much more value.
- Portability. It will be my companion whenever I go anywhere on business.
- 3G - for a lot of us our stuff is in 'the cloud' so you need to be connected whenever possible.
My Top 3 dislikes (because I couldn't think of 5) are:
- Syncing via another computer. I won't go over this again though.
- File format conversion difficulties. Must be fixed for business users.
- Lack of support for SMS. A pet love of mine and my business.
My Top requests for the next version are:
- Fix above issues.
- Camera in the front for video conferencing.
- HDMI output.
- Multi-tasking.
- Do something about touch. If the soft keyboard gave some kind of haptic response then perhaps I could touch-type.
Views of others
My children (10 and 13 years old) seemed to be able to use the device immediately, and they were fighting over it within a day. For them it is the best thing in our house and 'Angry Birds' is their favourite waste of time. I have a small wager with myself (and anyone else who wants to join in), that the place where the iPad will truly succeed is in schools and in education in general. My wife is the toughest user to please; a lifelong Luddite she takes to any new technology reluctantly; like a duck to "l'Orange"! However apart from a minor falling out over my use of the Maps app for Sat-Nav, she welcomed the iPad into her world with open arms and was very often first to check her email each morning. This was the biggest surprise to me and I'm guessing that I need to buy everyone one of these if I am to be able to take mine to work.
All in all the iPad gets a big thumbs up from me, but I do hope that some others soon give Apple some competition in this product category.
Great review Hugh - having had my own iPad to play with for a few weeks now I'd say I agree with pretty well all the points you make.
I think the main frustration for me is perhaps a cultural one - the fact that apple make such a fantastic product and then purposefully cripple it in a number of minor ways that, although not show stoppers, just make life frustrating. Your comments about file format compatability are a case in point - plenty of (even freeware) software can handle MS office properly so I'm sure the mighty apple could have done so if they wished.
Other examples are limitations for accessories - by default the VGA adapter can't display websites and I can't pair my WiFi model with my iPhone for Internet access, yet half an hour on the Internet, a jailbreak and $8 later I can happily do both. With strong competition coming from RIM, Google and Microsoft Apple need to be careful of disenchanting their users with these sorts of restrictions if they hope to maintain their first to market advantage.
The main positive for me though has been the reduction of paper in my life. My desk is no longer surrounded by a pile of carefully stacked dead trees! And never again will I struggle to read a broadsheet copy of the Australian on the bus.
Could we finally be on the road to the mythical paperless office?
Posted by: Pete | October 14, 2010 at 06:29 PM