iPad Review

I always thought that I had a phobia to Apple products due to their incompatibility to most enterprise and professional programs on the market. I have especially criticized the iPad for being just a large iPod with no added functionality. But recently, I was looking for a portable system to take with me between my house and college. Someone suggested the iPad, and I laughed at the notion. However, I looked into it and decided I would go ahead and take the plunge. In no time, I had the iPad ordered.

I decided to order the product directly from Apple, as it was $100 cheaper than on Newegg. I ordered three different things: the device itself, a keyboard dock, and a case. When I looked at the shipping details for each of the products, two were shipping from China and the other was coming from the US. I would have thought that Apple would have parts in a warehouse in the US, but apparently they come fresh off the assembly lines in Foxconn. The keyboard dock (which came from the US) came in about 3 days and was the first part to arrive, so it sat for a week being a really interesting looking paperweight. The case came about 5 days in, so all I was waiting for was the device itself (kind of ironic it came last). The device got stuck in customs in Anchorage, so it didn’t come until 8 days after I ordered it.

Upon receiving the device, I proceeded to tear open the package like a child at Christmas and unveil my shiny new iPad. I plugged it in and hit the power button. Instead of being greeted by fireworks and happy music, the screen showed a USB cable pointing to a music note. That meant I needed to hook up the iPad to another computer to sync it to iTunes. After downloading iTunes on my home computer and creating an iTunes account, it began the registration process. After the initial information gathering process, it asked if i wanted to sync my documents, photos, videos, and recorded tv shows to the iPad. iTunes was showing that the device only had 20 GB left, but it wanted me to sync my 130 GB worth of recorded tv shows to it. I don't think it's such a good idea to allow recording of tv shows directly to the iPad, unless you have only one or two recordings. After the sync, the setup process was complete and the iPad started to the home screen.

I could go on and give you each painstaking detail of my dive into the iPad, but instead, I will just touch on some of the features I like and dislike. First of all, ill start with the dislikes. First and foremost, there is very limited support for a java compiler (a program that allows someone to write and run java programs). As a computer science major, I do a LOT of code-writing. I need a good IDE (programming interface) to allow me to efficiently program. The IDEs offered by Apple are extremely rudimentary and cannot support complex code. Apple needs to get over their little feud with Oracle and let them make an IDE for Apple machines. Second, Apple’s website does not tell the whole truth. Before I ordered the device, I wanted to make sure the iPad had some sort of word processor. The website advertised that the iPad used Pages (a complex word processor). When I received the iPad, Pages was no where to be found. I figured that the application was in the app store and just needed to be downloaded, so I went to the app store and found the application, for $10 extra! Needless to say, I was not happy about that. Finally, the power cord that comes with the device is a joke. It's like 3 feet long and pretty much does not reach any power outlet unless you are sitting directly beside or above one.

One great aspect of the iPad is the plethora of apps available in the App Store. They have applications for Netflix, ESPN, Weather Channel, News channels (CNN, FOX, etc), calendars/organizers, Newegg, file sharing, and a multitude of other applications. I also like the multi-gesture interface. You can tap on the screen once to select something, long tap (tap and hold) to move things around, "pinch" (meaning use the thumb and fingers and pinch them together) to zoom out and the opposite motion to zoom in. The device has pretty good battery life and charges fairly quickly. I have not had many issues with applications crashing and the overall operating system seems very stable.

One of the biggest controversial issues with the iPad and mobile Apple products is the lack of Flash support. Apple CEO Steve Jobs banned Flash on Apple devices because it allows code to be run on the Apple devices without going through built-in software protection systems. In older devices, there is no possibility to get any flash-compatible applications, however, in the new iOS5 revision (newest mobile OS for apple), there is an application called Skyfire, which converts flash objects to HTML5 so the device can display them. However, this only works for flash VIDEOS; flash games will still not display. I, however, did not really find a lot of issues with this as Apple has apps for Youtube and Netflix, so I do not really need flash for either of those.

Overall, I am happy with the iPad. It's portability and battery life are great, and it's stable and pretty easy to use. I am still upset about the lack of flash and a good Java IDE, but I can use Teamviewer to remote into another computer for anything I can't do on the iPad. The iPad also has great screen quality and streams video from Netflix very well.I recommend this device for anyone who just wants an extremely portable device for general use. I do NOT recommend this for power users or programmers unless you have another system that you will use for the bulk of your programming. On a scale of 1-10, I would give this device a 7. All in all, the iPad is a good up and coming device, but I believe they need to do some refining if they are going to keep up with the new Android tablets.