So is the iPad obsolete, or what?
I'm pretty much Steve Jobs' bitch now. In my defence, while I do now own almost a complete set of iProducts – a 2GB iPod Shuffle (4th-gen), 16GB iPod Nano (4th-gen), 16GB iPod Touch (2nd-gen), 64GB iPod Touch (3rd gen), 32GB iPhone 4 and now a 32GB iPad – I didn't give Apple the £1800 they nominally cost. In fact, I only actually bought one of them for money.
(The Shuffle cost £2 as a prize out of a crane machine on Weston pier, and everything else except for the iPhone was booty from the WoS Subscribers Awesome Reward Scheme, and cost me less than £20 for the whole lot.)
Back in August when I got the iPhone 4, I wondered aloud about whether it effectively rendered the iPad redundant. So now that I've got one of my own, what's the answer?
Before we talk about that, though, a few random observations.
1. The iPad's battery life is pretty impressive, certainly in the area of the promised 10 hours. After 40 minutes of web browsing, for example, the indicator still showed 100%. But incredibly weirdly, you can't charge the battery through a computer – at least, not a PC.
Plug the sync cable into a Windows machine and the iPad displays "Not charging" – indeed, the user guide warns that when connected to a PC you'll probably continue to LOSE charge. (It says that if you're using a Mac you MIGHT get a very small trickle charge.)
This is fairly astonishing – a device that continues to consume power even with its screen switched off and when connected, albeit indirectly, to the mains? What? (It also contradicts the tech specs displayed on Apple's website, which say "Charging via power adapter or USB to computer system".)
Fortunately the iPad comes supplied with a mains adapter plug much like the iPhone's, but it's baffling and annoying that you can't just top it up through any USB socket, and will have to carry a bulky plug around if you're going to be using it for more than one charge's worth of power at a time.
2. The screen, thankfully, is more akin to the nicely slidey one of the iPod Touch than the horrible rubbery non-slip one on the iPhone 4. That does mean it's a smudge magnet, but personally I'd much rather my touch-screen devices were bloody usable rather than remaining pretty but being a squeaky, juddery chore to actually move my finger across. (Whoever invented the iPhone 4's "oleophobic" screen really does need a smack in the mouth.)
3. For internet browsing, the iPad is nothing short of a revelation. Whether in portrait or landscape mode websites are crisp and clear and zip around beautifully. The old iPod Touch is a perfectly serviceable way of accessing the internet, and the iPhone 4 (and 4th-gen Touches) a pretty good one, but the iPad turns the experience into an absolute joy. Going back to a netbook or laptop feels like being a grunting caveman with bad co-ordination and a muscle-wasting disease by comparison.
4. Running iPod/iPhone games on the iPad is a bit of a lottery. Even some things with Retina graphics look fairly terrible on the big screen (eg GT Racing Motor Academy), whereas other games with normal-resolution graphics scale up very nicely. (Stuff with blocky retro-style graphics, like Squareball or Bubble Pets, fares especially well.) Upscaled games don't quite fill the screen, but since the surround is black anyway you don't notice.
(Games/versions made specifically for the iPad mostly look glorious. The HD version of Rage, for example, is just stunning.)
5. You're probably going to find yourself using the iPad upside-down quite a lot. (It, not you.) At around 0.7kg it's just slightly too heavy to comfortably hold with one hand for more than a minute or two, which means you'll generally want to be resting it in your lap. (Putting it on a hard surface, as pictured below, is a non-starter because of the stupid curved back that makes it wobble every time you touch it.)
The problem with that is that holding it in portrait orientation the "right" way up results in the speakers being muffled (because they're at the bottom) and the Home button awkwardly obscured (because the iPad sinks slightly into your clothes and/or big fat belly).
It's a problem that's normally easy to solve by turning the machine upside down, but irritatingly some apps still idiotically fail to support screen-flipping. I'm looking at you, Space Invaders Infinity Gene.
6. The onscreen keyboard, excoriated by your reporter in the iPhone 4 feature, hasn't gotten any less infuriating with time. Despite there being vastly more screen real estate available than on the pocket-sized iThings, you have to put up with the same truncated keyboard, with no number keys and almost no punctuation.
(The absence of an apostrophe is the most tiresome – see how long you can go without needing one of those in any given period of typing.)
Throw in the fact that some fairly commonly-used keys (eg underscore) don't even appear on the secondary keyboard – and thereby require four keypresses, plus a confusing navigation through three separate keyboards – and that some retard developers insist on using the wrong keyboard at the wrong time (eg bringing up the normal one, instead of the handy web-focused version with main-screen @, _ and – symbols, when they're asking you to enter an email address, the hapless fucking cretins), and you're left with something that's a constant source of exasperation.
It's a shame, as the response from the virtual keys is surprisingly good, and the auto-correction functions well thought-out and helpful. I can actually type almost as fast and accurately on the iPad as on a real keyboard, as long as I don't use any numbers or hyphens or quote marks or etc. But there's just no excuse for not at least having a fuller keyboard as an option, particularly in portrait mode.
Anyway, that's about it for random observations. The unanswered question is whether the iPad is good value for money when compared to an iPhone 4, so let's put them head-to-head.
I got the wifi-only version of the 32GB iPad (RRP £499), but for the sake of comparison we'll mostly be referring to the wifi+3G one which comes in at £599, exactly the same price as a no-contract iPhone 4. And the thing that's most immediately obvious (in either case) is the major features that taking the iPad option doesn't get you, namely the phone and camera functions.
Now, you probably wouldn't want to be using something the size of an iPad as a phone or camera with any sort of frequency anyway, but it'd be pretty neat to be able to use it for FaceTime calls or as a webcam, so it's unfortunate that Apple have cheaped out there when even recent versions of the iPod Touch and iPod Nano have come equipped with basic video cameras.
A less obvious point of inferiority is that the audio volume is disappointingly weedy – it's on a par with the Touch rather than the much louder iPhone. Which is a pity, as navigating your music library is much nicer on the iPad, with the greater screen area being a real boon for some apps (though surprisingly not the email application, which I found clumsy and unintuitive compared to the simpler iPhone implementation, or the App Store, which was the same but with added sluggishness and bewilderment).
Most notably the Settings screen is a lot less confusing to use when you've got several "windows" open at once to reduce the depth of menus you have to wade through, but some apps and websites that have been specially optimised for the larger display are superb examples of interface design. (I really liked the Daily Telegraph's app, except for the fact that it was full of the Daily Telegraph. Ditto, in both senses, MCV.)
More disappointingly, Apple haven't taken advantage of all the extra space when it comes to the Home screen. You get just 20 icons to a page (four more than the iPod/iPhone), with great yawning chasms of emptiness all around them and the same squished-up names. Either give us more icons or make them bigger, because it looks pretty crappy this way.
You're also still limited to a pathetic 11 screens, although on a more positive note the iPad does save some space by finally dumping all those hated, non-deletable built-in apps like Stocks and Weather that still clutter the iPhone and the Touch. (Sadly along with the rather useful Calculator app.)
At the time of writing the iPad is still on iOS3.2, which means you don't even get folders – or multitasking or Game Centre – which feels incredibly primitive if you're used to iOS4 features from other devices. But the iPad-supporting iOS4.2 is due any day now.
And that's more or less all I've found in the way of noticeable or meaningful differences – the iPod, iPhone and iPad are, after all, basically the same thing with a few tweaks. And in cold black and white, the points don't tally up too well for the iPad against the same-priced iPhone 4.
PROS
- Bigger screen is lovely for net browsing and some apps.
- Longer battery life.
- More finger-friendly screen.
- Easier to type on.
CONS
- No phone, so you'll still have to carry a phone around.
- No camera, so you'll still have to carry a camera around.
- If the battery does run out, you can't charge it from a USB port.
- Doesn't fit in your pocket. (On the upside, at least that means you'll have a bag with you to put the phone and camera and plug adapter in.)
- Some games look terrible, and iPad-specific versions are anywhere from two to six times the price of the same game on iPhone.
- Wobbly curved back means you need to lay out more cash on a stand if you want to use it on a flat surface.
- Keyboard design is absolutely awful. (True of the iPhone too, of course, but more irritating when it's not a necessity due to limited space.)
- The display is 4:3, so movies are noticeably more letterboxed than on iPhone. I knew there was something I forgot to mention.
In conclusion, then, I'm sticking with my original view. Namely, that unless you have extremely specific reasons to want an iPad – heavy use of an app that really takes advantage of the extra screen area, or amazingly terrible eyesight – an iPhone 4 is a much better purchase.
The iPad is an absolutely fantastic internet browser, but if that's going to be your main use then you'll almost certainly be better off with the 10-inch, 16:9, capacitive-screened, Flash-supporting Advent Vega Android tablet, which is much less restrictively locked-down than any Apple machine and is half the price of an iPad. (If you can find anywhere with any stock left, that is.)
Don't get me wrong – I love my iPad. I'm not sure it'll ever leave the house unless someone steals it, but it's lovely to use and I really can't overstate how pleasant it makes web browsing. Its dedicated apps are also smashing. For the £8 it cost me it's the bargain of the century. But at £500, not so much.
Because the iPad’s problem is that it isn’t best at anything. For portability and all-round functionality the iPhone 4 kicks its face off. For book-reading, the Kindle is better and a fifth of the price. For book-reading and web-browsing and video, the Vega is better and half the price. With the exception of running specific apps (of which there will doubtless be, or already are, good Android counterparts), there’s nothing the iPad does that something else doesn’t do a lot better for a lot less money. And as such, unless you're getting it for £8 I can't see a single good reason anybody would buy one.
On charging, the iPad power adapter isn't the same as the iPhone one, although it looks like it—check the rating. It needs a lot more juice. This is why it can't be charged at speed by most PCs. (Despite what Apple says, iPads do charge when plugged into most PCs, but they do so astonishingly slowly; by comparison, charging through the mains is pretty speedy.)
On the keyboard, you can drag from the comma to get an apostrophe. Yes, a standalone key would be better, but it's quick when you get used to it. I think there's room for improvement in which keys are shown, but I wouldn't like to see too many changes. It'd just become a maxi-iPhone, with single-finger stabbing. As it stands, the portrait keyboard's just about good enough for proper typing.
Calculator app: get yourself PCalc Lite. It's better than Apple's calculator anyway, and it's free.
It'll be interesting to see what your viewpoint is on the iPad after a few weeks. That's about how long it took to 'click' with me, when I suddenly realised I was using it for pretty much all reading/web access, more games, and some video (mostly via Air Video). I agree that it'll "never leave the house" (apart, perhaps, from during holidays), but now my iPad's around, the laptop never leaves to the office. For me, that's the device it replaces, rather than the iPhone.
re: your first two cons: The iPad isn't seen as a replacement for a smartphone so I don't quite see your point. It's like criticising the iPhone for not having a VGA output – it isn't designed to have one.
As Craig points out, it does charge from a PC when the screen is off. Not fast but it does do the job.
I find the keyboard about a hundred times better than the iPhone's due to the larger screen estate. it makes typing so much quicker in my experience.
You didn't really make much mention of how much better full screen optimised games really are. Compare Angry Birds for example, on the iPhone you see very little of the play area when compared to the iPad.
However it does need to be said that the iPad is my only iOS device. I'm not a fan of the iPhone so don't have the redundancy that an iPhone and iPad owner would experience.
"re: your first two cons: The iPad isn't seen as a replacement for a smartphone so I don't quite see your point."
The point is, "If you have neither and you're thinking about buying an iPad, would you in fact be better off getting an iPhone 4 for the same price?" Obviously the answer will differ for each individual, but the piece takes a broad comparison.
"Calculator app: get yourself PCalc Lite. It's better than Apple's calculator anyway, and it's free."
In fact the ad-less Calculator HD is currently going for nowt.
On the apostrophe front – apps can now write custom keyboard layouts – the IAWriter app includes a top-level line to the keyboard that makes extended writing much more pleasant!
Your cons really only hold any weight if the person reading was in the market for an iPhone and suddenly lost their mind and bought an iPad instead. These are completely different devices aimed at two completely different usage scenarios and whilst they share the same OS and cost a similar price, they are as different as different could be.
You seem to be after a device which does everything at the same time with absolutely no compromise. A phone with a ten inch screen that weighs the same as an iPod touch and fits into your pocket with a high capacity battery that lasts forever but can be quickly charged from the paltry 5 volts you get from USB. You really can't have it both ways, as nice as that would be.
You're quite right that the iPhone is a far more versatile device as it can be used the same in and outside of the home, but you really do unfairly dismiss the iPad in a few areas.
The key to the iPad is the screen and what the additional size gives you. You covered browsing the web, but reading anything is nicer on the iPad's screen, which then leads to the other great uses of the iPad;
You've got a massive library of free and paid-for books courtesy of iBooks and Amazon's Kindle app, all in an easy-to-read large size. Then there are the various magazine apps, notably Wired which combines the professionalism and layout of a print magazine with web tech such as animation, video, sound and hyperlinks to the wider web for less than the price of the paper version.
You've also got the much acclaimed comic book reading apps such as Comiczeal and the official apps from DC, Marvel and Viz (the manga people, not the Fat Slags people). I read through the entirety of Scott Pilgrim from the comfort of my sofa on the iPad. I can't imagine doing the same thing on my iPod touch (even though Comiczeal also exists for that too).
Beyond reading we have games. I defy anyone to buy Flight Control HD and declare it a rip off, or say that it could have been done on an iPhone. The HD levels are only physically possible on a screen like the iPad's. Another great example is Multipong where up to four people can interact with the screen at the same time. Also try Orbital HD, which takes an iPhone formula and makes good use of the additional screen real estate. Existing iPhone games do look ropy, but then why wouldn't they? Try playing Game Boy or GBA games emulated at full screen on a 42" telly and you'll find the same thing.
Sure, there are rip-off quick cash-ins, but you could say the same for any gaming platform. There are also a plethora of apps which are universal, giving you a spiffy HD upgrade for free, even long after you bought the original (Space Invaders Infinity Gene is a great example of this as is Edge which went Universal last week).
And then we start on the possibilities opened up by the plethora of music production apps, office productivity apps, art apps, virtual desktop clients, using your iPad as a secondary display for your PC, using the iPad as a photoframe, using it as a 10" portable television…
I think you'll start to get the iPad and where it will fit into your life over time when you've used it more and the blurred lines between it and the smaller iDevices will start to become more clearly defined. It'll never replace your iPhone but it was never really designed to.
"Also try Orbital HD, which takes an iPhone formula and makes good use of the additional screen real estate."
It does? Buggered if I can see where. I seem to have been just gouged twice for the same game.
And again – nobody's saying it's meant to REPLACE the iPhone. It obviously isn't, not least because it isn't a phone. And calling them "completely different devices" is silly. One is a bigger version of the other with more battery life and a couple of major features removed.
That it's better for reading generally is, I think, very obviously implied by the observation of how good it is for browsing. But for reading books you'd probably be better off with a Kindle. The iPad, as noted by many people before me, doesn’t cope terribly well with strong light.
And if you want a full-colour, all-singing and all-dancing reading device with pictures and video and everything, the Advent Vega (as noted in the feature) is going to be a far superior choice – it’s half the price and it supports Flash video and it’s a lot easier to get files on and off.
"thereby require four keypresses.." Sounds like the ghost of the Spectrum keywords has returned.
You will get uber kudos from me if you bring your iPad this evening and set it up on Drago's table.
For a virtual keyboard, it's actually pretty good. The important thing is that the keys are large enough for you to type at a decent speed, which they are in landscape (unlike on all competing tablets). The iOS auto-complete is also generally of a high quality, and so you can be 'lazy' and just have it insert apostrophes, or you can drag from the comma.
As for 'hidden' characters, they are slower to access than on a PC keyboard, but then that beats every one of them being shown at once and the keys all being tiny. I guess it's whether you can get used to the system. (For me, _ is no problem—hit symbol > #+= > _.) And then you get writing apps adding to the keyboard, for anyone who does proper writing work on the device. (Bluetooth keyboards also work fine with the iPad.)