I've been a tablet computer skeptic since the iPad was just a rumor
during the fall and early winter of 2009-10. Even after Steve Jobs
rolled out the first iPad to enthusiastic
reviews, I still expected it to be an ephemeral fad that would soon
fade after the initial novelty wore off.
As we've now seen, that was not one of my most astute
prognostications.
However, I am a consummate aficionado of the classic, clamshell
laptop, and I just couldn't fathom all the blather about how the tablet
was going to displace the laptop for all but specialized power-user
needs. Nevertheless, that's pretty much what's been happening -
especially to PC laptop and netbook vendors, although not so much
Apple, whose MacBook lines continue to hit sales and market share
records. This is partly, I suppose, due to the halo effect from the
iPad - and the iPhone before it - as well as their essential
goodness.
iOS/OS X Convergence
But continued strong MacBook sales performance notwithstanding, a
push is on at Apple, with Steve Jobs presumably the primary pusher, to
converge the Mac OS X experience with the smartphone/tablet iOS
way of doing things, so going forward, it's a given that in the future
even MacBooks are going to feel more like tablets.
With that in mind, and in order to be able to give the iOS and the
iPad a fair evaluation, I decided earlier this year that I needed to
get an iPad 2, which I also hoped
would be able to take on some of the utility duties that have been
performed for the past several years by my two 11-year-old Pismo PowerBooks.
Ironically, once I made the mental leap to iPad ownership
aspiration, I couldn't get my hands on one. The online Apple Store
first cited a three to four week wait, then one to two weeks before
shipping, which was a bit too vague for my tastes. I finally contacted
my nearest Apple reseller, Student
Computers of Antigonish, Nova Scotia, in early May and was told
that there would be no iPad 2 stock until the end of that month at
the earliest, and that even by then was optimistic. So it turned out to
be, and I finally got my iPad 2, a white 16 gig WiFi model, on
Tuesday, June 14.
Early Impressions
Here are some early impressions after nearly a week of
experimentation.
First, I'm still at a loss as to what all the fuss is about. The
iPad 2 is an interesting, clever little machine, but a potential
replacement for a real laptop computer? Not even close in my
estimation. Not even in the same ballpark.
Here are some specifics:
First, the virtual keyboard is every bit as lame as I had expected.
Possibly even worse than I'd expected. I'm picky about keyboards at the
best of times, but this thing isn't even in the game as far as I'm
concerned. I do have a very nice
Logitech diNovo Edge Bluetooth keyboard, which I reviewed in late 2008, that
pairs up nicely, and it will be almost certainly what I use for any
long form text entry.
Secondly, the touchscreen experience isn't growing on me at all.
I've never liked touchscreens, and aesthetically the finger smears
drive me nuts, but functionally, it's just a lousy input medium
compared to a mouse. The combination of the abominable keyboard and the
touchscreen's obtuseness for things like making text selections makes
me feel like I'm trying to thread sewing needles wearing mittens. It's
been suggested to me that a touchscreen pen (or stylus) would probably
help, and I want to try that.
...there's no way to display multiple windows
simultaneously, which I find frustrating.
Then there's multitasking - or rather its absence, at least in any
substantive context (and yes, I know about the Home button double-tap
thing*). Because all iOS applications run fullscreen (a mode I steer
clear of on the Mac even when it's supported), there's no way to
display multiple windows simultaneously, which I find frustrating.
No Replacement for OS X
I'm addicted to multitasking. The move to preemptive multitasking is
probably the thing that most appealed to me in switching from the
classic Mac OS to OS X. My usual work MO is to have about 18 to 2
dozen applications open, scattered about in nine Desktop Spaces, switching back and
forth among them instantly with mouse clicks and keyboard shortcuts.
Speed and efficiency are further streamlined and turbo-boosted when I'm
at my office desktop workstation by having a RollerMouse Pro 2
rollerbar and a foot mouse in the mix along with a hand mouse.
I can appreciate and even agree with Apple's decision to go with a
virtual keyboard in its iOS machines rather than kludging things up
with a slide-out keyboard or some such that would still be inadequate
for serious text entry. Mousing would also be impractical for the
iPad's primary portability emphasis. However, a small trackpad could
have conceivably been doable, and mouse driver support for Bluetooth
mice would make a world of difference for me in turning the iPad into a
practical work tool.
Unhappily, I've seen no mention of mouse support in reports about
the forthcoming iOS 5. There is a mouse driver hack workaround called
BTStack
Mouse available on the Cydia repository, but installing it requires
jailbreaking the iPad and disabling Apple's iOS Bluetooth support
software and replacing it with the $5 BTStack Keyboard driver. Not my
cup of tea, but if you're interested you can learn more from Pearl's Paradise.
The iPad - with no Finder, its underachiever keyboard, and lack of
mouse support - makes doing serious text composition or editing on the
iPad perversely difficult and vastly slower. I keep thinking: "This
would be so much slicker and quicker on a real computer." As Tom's
Hardware's Andrew Ku observed
in a comprehensive, detailed review and critique of the iPad 2 last
week, "Whatever I gained in portability, I lost in productivity. The
iPad is a solid content consumption device; it's not nearly as suited
to creation. If you want to be productive, you still need a
computer."
Indeed, even my 11-year-old Pismo PowerBooks are much more powerful,
versatile, and satisfactory content creation devices than the iPad
is.
Underwhelming on the Internet
Even the Internet, supposedly the iPad's special forté, is
IMHO a frustration on the tablet compared with OS X, with which I
usually have four browsers running, and maybe cumulatively 20 or 30
tabs open in several windows. With the iPad, I'm stuck with the
tabs-less iOS version of Safari, which seems to work reasonably well
within its limitations, and Opera Mini, which so far I'm finding a
disappointment, considering that Opera is probably my consistently
favorite OS X browser. Not the iPad Web experience I'd been hoping
for. (Publisher's note: iOS is a learning experience - I've just
started using an iPhone. Safari will gain tabs when iOS 5 ships
this Fall, and the Mercury Web Browser provides it now in a free Lite version limited to two tabs and a
99¢ Pro version without that
limitation. dk)
Adding insult to injury, the iPad is proving much less tenacious in
picking up and holding the WiFi signal from my router than my MacBook, my wife's G4 PowerBook, and the two
old Pismos, all of which have no problem connecting to WiFi from
anywhere in the main house. Given all the hype about what a wonderful
wireless machine the iPad is, this was definitely a surprise.
I also profoundly miss the Finder/Desktop metaphor, being able to
drag files and folders around and organize them easily. Not to mention
the iPad's poverty of I/O connectivity. Dropbox
is looming a lot larger in
importance.
Cut and paste, which I use intensively in my workflow, seriously
sucks in iOS, to the extent that it is supported, in large part because
of the absence of mouse precision in selecting and nonsupport of
keyboard shortcuts. As Mac OS X Hints' crarko comments,
despite a variety of gesture options for selecting text,
"I still find text editing in iOS to be something of a
black art. It's the main reason I have not attempted to edit this site
using my iPad. It's still just too inefficient compared to doing it on
the Mac, even if that means bringing the Mac along when I travel. I'm
glad to hear it's not just me."
Apprehensive, but Sticking with the iPad
All this makes me even more apprehensive, with it appearing that
Apple is determined to work toward convergence of iOS and OS X,
which would be okay and even logical so long as they don't mess with OS
X's traditional functionality, which for me absolutely includes a
Finder and Desktop as nonnegotiable necessities.
I feel badly that I've been so negative in this first iPad report.
It isn't what I would have preferred. But so far at least, I'm
seriously underwhelmed. Early days, though, and perhaps I'll warm to
the iPad as I get more accustomed to using it, as my iPhone aficionado
daughter suggests.
I'm committed to persevering and giving it a fair trial over some
time. However, the overall problem as I see it is that with the
OS X user experience so excellent these days, it's hard to imagine
how the iPad and iOS could ever measure up. We'll see.
For now, I'm glad I bought the cheapest model.
