I do not know what you have done your Wednesday, but I have tested the iPad. True enough, a bit faster, just enough time to run some applications load a web page, besides that of TF1News [memo: good news, the site is compatible iPad], and found that the experience is as fast as fluid as the demonstrations of Steve Jobs on stage.
No need to also spend hours: As Jobs pointed out, for anyone of the 75 million owners of iPod Touch or iPhone, take control of the iPad is an immediate natural and confusing. The screen is beautiful, everything is very readable, a perfect example of the integration of material well, and a slick software, in a pleasing design. No surprise, it is Apple.
However, once the euphoria of the keynote followed live, evidence is emerging: the iPad is not blameless … First, strong consensus on Twitter (new global consciousness of the world of technology) which is the student who has forgotten the integrated camera? Too bad, promise – finally – be able to make video-conference between iPad and iPhones would act as demo kills. It would also avoid the ridiculous to Stéphane Richard, the next boss of Orange, who definitely looks like a boy a bit too verbose (when he releases the song on the release of the iPad two weeks ago at Micro Europe 1) but not necessarily very well informed, when he promises that its customers will make video calls with the tablet … so has no camera. But let …
Another disappointment: the lack of connections. Only plug the iPad: its 30-pin socket, standard music players and smartphones from Apple. Problem: if the iPad is not a big iPods, so it’s a computer, which can happen with a USB port, or an SD card reader. There will be many solutions, like adapters to copy photos on a iPad without necessarily passing through a computer, but you could expect better, or more. Question to both opening of the machine, and a design that could be taken too distorted.
No video output either? Too bad, especially for a machine to find its place on a coffee table, watching TV. Especially as this connection there could be done without compromising the design of the tablet, the wireless video technologies now exist which allow one second to share the content posted by iPad, on the flat screen of the show.
No multitasking. Defensible on a player, more annoying on a phone, and instead shifted to a machine that is essentially a computer touchscreen. With gigahertz under the hood, it may however run some software in parallel, no?
There is also the virtual keyboard displayed by the touch screen. Bigger, more practical, less prone to typos than the iPhone, but not a panacea. First, anathema, it will watch your fingers to type. It will especially not rest your wrists on the machine, not to disturb the touch screen. Try typing for five minutes, keeping the wrist in the air, and you will understand the limits of the exercise. In the words of Steve Jobs, if you type on your Crime and Punishment iPad, you buy the keyboard though physical suggested as an option. Sign that the Touch is, to type, a stopgap.
But in fact, the iPad is really the ideal machine to read Crime and Punishment? Things to see and use even if the LCD and its backlight is not an ideal contrast, clarity or autonomy in the face of tablets e-Ink technology from Sony, Amazon, or Bookeen. But what makes iPad more, and better than the lights eBook creates a gap which makes comparison difficult.
And just so that I plunged since the conference in the depths of confusion, it seems that the iPad miss uses made for him on the measures. The electronic book is wonderful, but this is not where the machine is more to his advantage that traditional e-books can not do is display magazines, comics, manga, short, graphical content, and color. I guess by the interface … Above all, economically, to invent the digital kiosk is for Apple a massive source of income and regular, and a boon to publishers who suddenly find ways to adapt the sales number (and why not subscribe) to the digital consumer. I can not imagine Apple not think there is or there is already working. If the kiosk is missing, so there are reasons. I know them both.
However, there are plenty of things to celebrate in the iPad. Some surprising features for an Apple machine, like the temptation of opening that are advertised using ePub format for eBooks. ePub, a format from the free software, far more open than the standard used by the competitor Amazon.
Another surprise: The end of exclusives with mobile operators. The iPad 3G (an option at $ 130 U.S.) will not simlock, not stuck on a single operator, regardless of the country where they are sold.
Review: A beautiful machine, small disappointments, a few shortcomings, but nothing definitive. Maybe we did the nose too close to the glass (touch, obviously), to understand the impact of the iPad, which beyond the geeks and fanboys of the church Apple, which would buy a cinder block at 500 euros it was struck by the apple logo, will convince the “real people”, the less picky, but more likely to understand the immediate benefits of the machine. The iPad might well be the ideal machine for those “late-adopters, a simple way for them to access information without having to pass the daunting barrier of the computer, even if it is a Mac. A computer for those who do not like computers …
But there is still the impression that he lacked the dull keynote by Steve Jobs when a real “wow”, a killer application as they say, something never seen elsewhere, that makes tomorrow is forever different is tod ‘hui. A wow who would have to wait a little: let us not forget that Apple has often used the first version of its consumer devices such as test-size: Remember the first iPhone was released without App Store, only to find that example.
And perhaps in the end, precisely, the period of two months between now announcing the iPad its arrival in store will fill some of these shortcomings, especially later uses, today’s announcement is thought to bring the fire under the feet of developers and publishers. I content myself until my iPad Mini … Finally, I mean, my iPod Touch.
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