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| That's no Apple! |
The Rebel Alliance has acquired a Death Star.
Zounds!
Listen, I am no Apple fan when it comes to their software or policies, let alone attitude. I have always admired their hardware though... and you have to give them credit for upending conventional wisdom time and again, whether with the iPod, or iPhone, or iPad. So when the chance came to give an iPad a real world whirl, I took it.
My dad got a (then New, now old as of yesterday) 3rd generation 32 GB iPad, with WiFi and 3G (which I won't be using). He had trouble getting it to work for him, and gave it up in the end as too much of an effort to unlearn Android (he loves his Note). My mom meanwhile couldn't be bothered with unlearning Windows and so never quite took to it. Result?
Here I am, with iPad in hand. Free. Apple. Hardware. Narf!
I've now spent 4 days playing around with it... I'm sure I will eventually get to a point where I'll jailbreak it, and beg the wizards over at XDA to come up with an Android Key Lime Pie ROM I can put on it - but first, I thought I'd validate how much of my own Android love/ Apple 'hate' are justified.
Like that TV show where some racist people were made to live - for, what... 40 days? - with the very people they hated to see if racism survives reality, I'm willing to be a guinea pig and write about my iPad using experience without prejudice. Maybe over 40 days, maybe less, maybe more.
So, enough prelude... Hail of bullets follows, sorted into categories I made up on the fly...
Setup
- Sorry, it just doesn't "just work"! I spent a couple of hours at least removing dad's account(s) and signing in with my own. Now off and on the dang thing shows me app updates in the store, but I can't download them without signing in with dad's account because he installed them first and I forgot to remove them. The alternative is to uninstall and reinstall the app within my own profile. Gah!
- Yes - I could've first factory reset the thing. I should've - but didn't think of it, and now I have too much stuff downloaded/ customized to do that.
- I keep getting prompted to switch to the US store rather than the India store, without there being any way to do it that I can find :) Still, good to at least be able to look through the catalog of movies/ music/ books/ etc. just because I was once located in the US and bought some music for my iPod...
- I plan to add an Indian credit card to the account soon just to see what it does to my US-bought wares when I do that. Its thinkymeatz might 'splode. Oh joy!
- I updated to iOS 6 within the first few hours of use, and as OTAs go, it was seamless/ painless. Buh-bye Google Maps!
- This will sound really petty, but I get tired easily of the damn rows of icons on the "desktop" that I can't get away from. I miss widgets, I miss clean desktops. Even on my Windows 7 machines at home and work I get fussy if I have more than one column of icons, so... yeah...
- I locked orientation to portrait within first hour of use. This was surprising to me because it seems to be the most natural way to hold a tablet, contrary to my expectations.
- For the record, horrible, horrible design cue in that toggle button on the side of the device. I can either use it for locking orientation OR to mute volume. Erm... huh?
- It's a bit heavy to hold - or I need wrist exercises. The hand tires within a few minutes/ pages of reading a Kindle ebook. It wont be very useful for reading in bed
- My dated Kindle (non-touch) wins in this department! I also miss the little button on the side of my Kindle that lets me go to the next page
- I do love the Retina display, but didn't strike me as an exceptionally superior experience as compared to (say) my Sony Vaio laptop. I saw a particularly dark video on it - an iTunes exclusive 3 minute clip from The Watchmen that I'd downloaded years ago - and I can confidently say this isn't the best device to view Tim Burton and Zack Snyder movies on while at home :) Stick to your HDTV...
- This is probably just coming from being an Android user for so long, but the notification system, although ripped from Android to an extent, sucks donkey balls!
- I keep finding myself performing classic Android actions (long-press on desktop to change wallpaper/ swipe horizontally to dismiss notifications, etc.)
- Well whaddaya know? iTunes and the Music and Video apps are absolutely bitchy and unintuitive. To their credit, my music collection from a few years ago downloaded without much complaint, and without connecting to a PC via a cable. To their discredit, I find the multitude of tabs both at the top and bottom of the screen confusing.
- Tell me again, iTunes, how I have to click on TV Shows and then Purchased if I want to download my Lost Season 7 purchase from a few years ago... as opposed to if I want to download my Bob Dylan collection, when I have to click on Music and then Purchased. When "Purchased" is a menu item at the same hierarchy level as "Music" and "TV Shows". X(
- I downloaded the staples: Facebook and Twitter are just like the desktop experience, which is good. Google+ is amazingly rich (but wont let me +1 comments).
- Flipboard is amazing, and the wife is quite taken with Pulse as well. Google Currents also rocks, and I have yet to try the Google Reader app. These magazine style apps make such good use of real estate I may never prefer to use them on a phone again!
- I haven't really tried Newsstand yet because I need to refresh my credit card details at some point (Apple have an expired US card against my name)
- The Kindle app for iPad is amazingly consistent, in that it has everything the Android app or the Cloud Reader offers. Easily the app I've spent the most time using in the last four days...
- Instagram sucks because there is no iPad app and using the iPhone app with the wasted real estate is a real shame. Photo Booth is fun (used it on a Mac before, about the same), and the built-in Camera and Photos apps are serviceable. I haven't tried iCloud as yet so can't compare with the Google Instant Upload experience I love for now.
- Google Maps over the browser are fine. Google Chrome rocks. Don't like Safari. I did run into a few sites that needed Flash, but could care less about that.
This first post really is just to belt out some initial impressions I had from using the iPad over four days. Obviously, there's a lot more to explore for me, and more points of admiration and pain will out in time to come. iTunes U looked intriguing to me, and I do want to try a few HD games if I can on the iPad. I haven't tried Facetime yet, nor joined a Hangout from the G+ app... the list goes on.
Here's the rub though: I cannot for the life of me think of one thing I've done on the iPad that I wouldn't like to do anywhere else. That isn't a comment on the iPad itself, but a comment on tablets in general. I maintain my contention that there is no killer app, no USP, no exclusive use that would make me shell out money on a tablet when I already have access to smartphones, laptops, and a Kindle. I could, of course, be wrong.
So, one of the major reasons I wrote this post is to invite commentary and elicit suggestions...
- If you're an Apple fan, what am I missing? What do you do with an iPad that made you go "wow" and that I should try?
- If you're a fan of some other platform that has (or hasn't) used an iPad before, what would you want me to try on it?
For all my admitted Android bias is worth though, this experiment with using the iPad may turn out to be one instance where I find my lack of faith... reassuring.
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