iPad Review, 1 Week In

Here I sit on my couch, watching the Mets game and tapping away on my 1 week old iPad. That’s right. I’m typing this iPad review on my iPad using the WordPress app.

There have been a ton of blog posts about it already so I’m going to keep this brief and touch on just a few notable observations. Let’s get right to it.

Performance

I’m quite pleased with the overall speed of the iPad. Apps launch almost instantly. Multitasking hasn’t arrived yet, but closing and launching apps happens so fast that it almost achieves the same effect. Plus, most apps remember the screen you were looking at when you last closed.

Browsing the web could be the single best aspect of the iPad. It’s a truly beautiful web experience. Zooming in with a small pinch of the screen happens so fast with virtually no delay in rendering (as you frequently see on the iPhone). this helps when you want to quickly tap a very small link. Pages load extremely fast (which could be partly attributed to my fast wifi connection).

The first game I purchased is Need For Speed, which is a car racing game from EA Sports. I’m not a big gaming guy, but I always enjoyed racing games and wanted to see what a real graphics intensive IPad game was like. As expected, it’s awesome. Tons of fun and looks amazing. Tilting to steer the car is perfectly tuned along with flawless fast-paced motion graphics. Plus there is some vibration effects which add depth to the experience. Very impressed.

Typing

Up to this point in this blog post, I’ve already tapped the backspace key about 40 times. Clearly I’m still getting used to typing on the touchpad, despite the fact that I’ve been a pretty fast typer on my iPhone for almost two years.

Typing on iPhone works great because it’s all about using your thumbs. The iPhone touch screen lends itself well to fast thumb tapping. Unfortunately, this doesn’t translate well to the larger format. It leaves you with an awkward choice between two typing styles:

Tap letters with your index fingers as if you never learned to properly use a keyboard. This is the most accurate method, but obviously slows you down if you’re used to typing 60-80 words per minute on a real keyboard.

Your second option is to attempt a proper typing stance, using all ten fingers.  I tend to go this route, though I’m highly prone to errors this way. I can type very fast for about 6-10 words before mistyping, which stops me dead in my tracks. The auto spell check helps smooth this out to a certain extent, but it doesn’t catch everything and sometimes inserts a word that is completely unintended.

Bugs

Overall, the entire system feels very polished, tested and error free, with one glaring exception: the Wi-Fi bug.

Basically what happens is, on day 1, I connected to my apartment’s wi-fi network (Verizon Fios) by entering my network password.  Usually, this should be the first and last time you need to enter your password to connect.  Sadly, this is not the case.  Roughly 5 times per day, the iPad loses the Wi-Fi connection.  The worst part is that in order to re-connect, it requires me to re-enter my network password.  Needless to say, this is an extremely annoying bug since the essence of the iPad is to be online.

After doing some Googling, I found that I’m not the only one experiencing this.  Apple has officially acknowledged the bug, saying they plan to release a software update, which hopefully will fix the issue.  They also recommend checking/updating the router firmware, which admittedly I haven’t had time to look into yet.

Apps

Here are a few of the first apps I downloaded, with some thoughts on each:

• WordPress – Very solid app.  Nice interface.  Really like having the option to save a local draft or save the draft to the web (or publish of course).  No visual editor, but you can enter HTML code.  Now, if only I could type on this thing!
• NYTimes – One of my favorite apps on the iPhone, so I figured I’d grab it for iPad.  It’s nice, does the job.  However, with the iPad’s amazing web browsing experience, I’d rather read nytimes.com in Safari than through the app.
• Netflix – Love it.  I didn’t even know before downloading that “Watch Now” is included in the iPad app!  Looks great too.  Haven’t tested watching an entire movie yet, but I hear the battery life is reliable.
• Twitterrific – Looks great, does the job.  I’m waiting for the official Twitter app for iPad (formerly Tweetie), which I expect will be the best, since Tweetie for iPhone has been awesome.
• Office² HD – This is a disappointment.  I bought this app for $8 because it claims to reliably connect to Google Documents, allowing you to edit and save back to the cloud.  Reliable? Hardly.  Yes it connects, you can open docs, and you write and make changes.  Ready to save? App crashes.  All edits lost.  I want my money back.
• Zillow – We’re currently shopping for a condo (moving later this year) and this app is pretty good for browsing real estate listings.  Nice mapping features, full screen photos, etc.
• Kindle – I’m sticking with my Kindle for eBooks, and the Kindle app is great for syncing.  Though I haven’t had time to read for a long period of time on the iPad yet, every aspect of the app looks/feels great.

Oh, I said I’d keep this brief?  Yeah… that didn’t happen.