6 Weeks With The Apple iPad
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2011-01-29
It has been approximately 6 weeks since I acquired my new Apple iPad. During this week I have developed a love-hate relationship with my new 16GB WiFi-only iPad. I love my iPad for its simplicity and easiness of use. I can access my emails, I can write emails from any of my 4 email accounts and am able to access the World Wide Web anywhere where I have WiFi access. I found a great free App that lets me track my hours and expenses easily while on the road or in the air visiting clients. It is easy to carry around and does not weigh much. The battery lasts forever (around 10 hours)
BUT and as you can see this is a BIG B U T …
… it does not replace my PC laptop and probably will not in the near future.
When I purchased the iPad I was aware that it does not display any flash enabled websites or play any flash videos. I thought I could live with it, but I learned very soon that there are too many sites out there that are flash based. The Apple browser Safari has too many short comings and I eventually downloaded Skyfire, which by the way per claim of its website, can show/play flash sites by converting it to HTML5. Based on my experience that is flat out a lie.
Since I am using Social Media site like Twitter and Facebook a lot I decided to download respective apps in order not to have launching a browser and navigate to the site. Unfortunately did I learn very fast that these apps (of which some are native iPhone or iPod apps) have many short comings and only support a fraction of the features one may find on the respective web site. Some of these apps even have a tendency to crash frequently, especially when following a weblink within the app. TweetDeck (a Twitter app) is very notorious for this. Especially if the iPad has been in use for a while between reboots/resets. I also found out that some HTML5 called through a link in TweetDeck will never launch but crash TweetDeck.
Over the past 6 weeks I think I have been rebooting my iPad and/or restarting apps more than I have to do on my Dell Latitude D630 and D820.
Also the WiFi antenna within the iPad has a very poor performance. I ran a comparison between my laptop PCs and the iPad WiFi connectivity and I learned that the WiFi on my PC laptops is much better. Not only is my laptop able to find more WiFi connections, but it also maintains the connection a lot better than my iPad. It happens quite frequently that Safari or Skyfire pop up with the message that the Domain cannot be found while I am simultaneously accessing the same website/domain on my PC laptop. The weirdest or strangest of all is that while not being able to connect to a website/domain the WiFi signal indicator displays maximum signal strength while my laptops may display less signal strength but are still connected or able to browse a site.
Another issue I have is that I am not able to keep multiple Windows open at the same time but have to close one Window or App before opening another one. Not having a USB port or a camera does not help it either.
At the moment I am not sure what to do. Live with all the short comings, sell my iPad and switch to another tablet either Android or Blackberry based. Maybe I should even switch to a WINDOWS 7 based tablet, but then again why put all your eggs in one nest.
I think there have been more times I wanted to take the iPad and throw it out the Window than I ever had with anyWINDOWS based computer (not even back when Windows 95 or 98 was around).
One thing I can say: Spending almost $500 on this iPad was a waste of money! … or …. maybe it was not ?
As I said I love it and I hate it at the same time!
And before I forget it completely, the iPad has another very annoying problem. At times it becomes very sluggish. This can happen while within an App or while typing. At times I am already 3 or 4 words ahead before my screen catches up with what I am typing. Sometimes navigating within an App slows down to a standstill and there have been times I needed to restart the iPad because an App become unresponsive.
Please share your iPad experience with me in the comment section of this post. I’d love to learn what other people have to say about the iPad or there for any tablet device. No matter whether Apple, Android, RIM or WINDOWS based. Please let me know how you feel about it.
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As an update. Further research confirmed that iPad suffers from “Memory Leaks”.
This means every time you are opening and closing an application it does not release all of the memory and eventually will run low or completely out of memory. This used to be a big issue with Windows versions up to Windows 98 and Windows NT. But with XP and Windows 7 memory leaks have mostly (not yet completely – there for an occasional BSD) gone away. People that do not switch back and forth a lot between apps may not have as many problems as the ones with lots of apps and plenty of switching forth between apps. Since the iPad does not have the ability to keep multiple apps or screens open at the same time it means closing and opening these apps, which leads to these crashes and hangups due to the memory leaks.
Oliver,
Nice article. I have a 3G iPad and have had it for 8 months. I use it in conjunction with my Blacberry and PC. It is great for the in between times such as waiting for someone at a restaurant or waiting at the gate to board a plane. Mostly use it for email viewing, Twitter responses and quick Internet lookups. Agree does not replace a PC. I take both on trips. I still use PC for anything that requires a lot of typing.. Accessing flash sites would be nice but I just email myself to check them out at home on the PC. Have safe travels and look forward to talking to you at the next networking event.
That’s a really useful article. It’s not a PC and can’t replace one but I think the message is that what it does it does quite well and is useful as an additional gadget because it is so easy. I have actually found the iPad2 I have been using is very quick to pick up and connect with wifi. Saves waiting for boot ups. For me it’s the easy access and easy use that are its strengths. Computers, however, create more depth and complexity for when you need it.