10 responses to iPad complaints
1. It’s not widescreen.
True, but the reason any other tablet/netbook out there (including the Dell Mini 10) is widescreen is by offering 1024x600 resolution, as opposed to the iPad’s 1024x768 resolution. In other words, those offerings are widescreen simply by giving you less display than the iPad. If you want to view videos in widescreen you lose nothing by choosing the iPad, and you have the “extra” pixels there for apps or games.
2. It can’t show true 720p HD.
It’s a 9.7 inch screen. Even the best 10.1 inch screen I could find shipping in product (available as a $75 upgrade for the Dell Mini 10) is just shy of 720p resolution. In the end, cropping 720p video to view it full screen on the iPad only results in the loss of 17% of the viewable area (along the vertical edges of the movie), which isn’t going to significantly impact many movies.
3. No 720p output.
I’m disappointed and a little confused by this too. The technology is available (some might say widespread) to do this, but I suspect it would have driven up the cost by a small but noticeable amount.
4. No flash.
Duh, really? It’s NEVER going to happen. Apple hates flash. Get over it already. It’s worth noting that Adobe now has a compiler to let developers convert flash apps to iPhone apps. They’re slow as hell, apparently, but it shows whose will is going to bend on this one.
5. No forward facing camera.
I was disappointed with this at first. But I think aiming a forward facing camera on a tablet would probably be difficult in practice. Every time you moved or bumped anything you’d no longer be in the frame, so this would most likely just ended up frustrating people. Apple would rather frustrate you up front by not offering the feature than anger you after you bought it by not giving you a beautifully functioning feature.
6. No Verizon.
Although AT&T may does frequently suck as a provider, I don’t think Apple could’ve gotten the same sweet no-contract wireless deal on Verizon as they did with AT&T. Remember that the same pundits who were saying the iPad would come to Verizon were saying the iPad would be priced at $600 with a two year contract.
7. No USB.
No surprise as far as I’m concerned, Apple’s not trying to sell this as a full fledged computer. What do you need to do with USB anyway? The iPad supports keyboards via Bluetooth or Apple’s own custom docking keyboard. Photos can be imported by plugging your camera’s USB cable into Apple’s adapter or sticking the memory card into a different Apple adapter (they both come together for $30). Printing can be done wirelessly with apps already available on the app store from HP, Epson, Canon, etc. Apple doesn’t like wires in general, they’re ugly.
8. No GPS without the 3G model.
Apple probably figures if you’re not on the road (i.e. you’re on WiFi) then you already know where you are. Given that the GPS functionality in the 3G model almost certainly resides on the same chip as the 3G radio, Apple would have had to drive up the cost on the WiFi model by sourcing a GPS only chip. I’ll take the cost savings, thank you very much.
9. No multitasking.
This is by far the most disappointing aspect of the iPad to me. It seems that with all of Apple’s bragging on their custom CPU, there should be plenty of horsepower to run at least a couple of apps simultaneously. This would drag down the battery life a little, but if the current 10 hour estimate is accurate, there would seem to be room for this trade off. I wouldn’t be surprised to see an option to do multitasking in the future, probably displayed similar to the way Safari shows multiple web pages.
10. No revolutionary magazine reader.
Probably my second biggest disappointment. Remember that Time demo video? I want that, and don’t see any technological reason why it’s not there. I suspect Apple has the technology ready to go but couldn’t get the publishing companies on board for licensing/pricing reasons. Once the iPad sells a couple of million they’ll probably be a lot more interested.
As a bonus, here’s my own complaint: I obviously haven’t used it, but the iPad’s builtin iPod app (say that ten times fast) looks ugly to me, especially the friggin volume control. Seriously, who needs that garish sound icon on the knob itself? I haven’t seen anywhere that it has CoverFlow, and excluding that would be a lame decision. It also looks like there’s no browser view as in iTunes, which I would have loved. I guess I’ll be using search to find all of my music.
I’d also like to be able to stream music from my iTunes library when I’m on the same network, exactly like the current iTunes sharing feature. Apple probably chose not to include this force people to buy a bigger model. (You might reply that streaming eats up battery life, but if done with any engineering talent it would, I think, have very little impact.)
Lastly, at this point the music app bears much greater resemblance to iTunes than anything else, so I think it should get a name change. Apple’s probably just afraid people expectations would be too high if the used the iTunes name, but at this point calling the clearly iTunes inspired app ‘iPod’ is kind of dumb. After all, no one was confused when the iPod app on the iPhone looked and worked nothing like an iPod.
1. It’s not widescreen.
True, but the reason any other tablet/netbook out there (including the Dell Mini 10) is widescreen is by offering 1024x600 resolution, as opposed to the iPad’s 1024x768 resolution. In other words, those offerings are widescreen simply by giving you less display than the iPad. If you want to view videos in widescreen you lose nothing by choosing the iPad, and you have the “extra” pixels there for apps or games.
2. It can’t show true 720p HD.
It’s a 9.7 inch screen. Even the best 10.1 inch screen I could find shipping in product (available as a $75 upgrade for the Dell Mini 10) is just shy of 720p resolution. In the end, cropping 720p video to view it full screen on the iPad only results in the loss of 17% of the viewable area (along the vertical edges of the movie), which isn’t going to significantly impact many movies.
3. No 720p output.
I’m disappointed and a little confused by this too. The technology is available (some might say widespread) to do this, but I suspect it would have driven up the cost by a small but noticeable amount.
4. No flash.
Duh, really? It’s NEVER going to happen. Apple hates flash. Get over it already. It’s worth noting that Adobe now has a compiler to let developers convert flash apps to iPhone apps. They’re slow as hell, apparently, but it shows whose will is going to bend on this one.
5. No forward facing camera.
I was disappointed with this at first. But I think aiming a forward facing camera on a tablet would probably be difficult in practice. Every time you moved or bumped anything you’d no longer be in the frame, so this would most likely just ended up frustrating people. Apple would rather frustrate you up front by not offering the feature than anger you after you bought it by not giving you a beautifully functioning feature.
6. No Verizon.
Although AT&T may does frequently suck as a provider, I don’t think Apple could’ve gotten the same sweet no-contract wireless deal on Verizon as they did with AT&T. Remember that the same pundits who were saying the iPad would come to Verizon were saying the iPad would be priced at $600 with a two year contract.
7. No USB.
No surprise as far as I’m concerned, Apple’s not trying to sell this as a full fledged computer. What do you need to do with USB anyway? The iPad supports keyboards via Bluetooth or Apple’s own custom docking keyboard. Photos can be imported by plugging your camera’s USB cable into Apple’s adapter or sticking the memory card into a different Apple adapter (they both come together for $30). Printing can be done wirelessly with apps already available on the app store from HP, Epson, Canon, etc. Apple doesn’t like wires in general, they’re ugly.
8. No GPS without the 3G model.
Apple probably figures if you’re not on the road (i.e. you’re on WiFi) then you already know where you are. Given that the GPS functionality in the 3G model almost certainly resides on the same chip as the 3G radio, Apple would have had to drive up the cost on the WiFi model by sourcing a GPS only chip. I’ll take the cost savings, thank you very much.
9. No multitasking.
This is by far the most disappointing aspect of the iPad to me. It seems that with all of Apple’s bragging on their custom CPU, there should be plenty of horsepower to run at least a couple of apps simultaneously. This would drag down the battery life a little, but if the current 10 hour estimate is accurate, there would seem to be room for this trade off. I wouldn’t be surprised to see an option to do multitasking in the future, probably displayed similar to the way Safari shows multiple web pages.
10. No revolutionary magazine reader.
Probably my second biggest disappointment. Remember that Time demo video? I want that, and don’t see any technological reason why it’s not there. I suspect Apple has the technology ready to go but couldn’t get the publishing companies on board for licensing/pricing reasons. Once the iPad sells a couple of million they’ll probably be a lot more interested.
As a bonus, here’s my own complaint: I obviously haven’t used it, but the iPad’s builtin iPod app (say that ten times fast) looks ugly to me, especially the friggin volume control. Seriously, who needs that garish sound icon on the knob itself? I haven’t seen anywhere that it has CoverFlow, and excluding that would be a lame decision. It also looks like there’s no browser view as in iTunes, which I would have loved. I guess I’ll be using search to find all of my music.
I’d also like to be able to stream music from my iTunes library when I’m on the same network, exactly like the current iTunes sharing feature. Apple probably chose not to include this force people to buy a bigger model. (You might reply that streaming eats up battery life, but if done with any engineering talent it would, I think, have very little impact.)
Lastly, at this point the music app bears much greater resemblance to iTunes than anything else, so I think it should get a name change. Apple’s probably just afraid people expectations would be too high if the used the iTunes name, but at this point calling the clearly iTunes inspired app ‘iPod’ is kind of dumb. After all, no one was confused when the iPod app on the iPhone looked and worked nothing like an iPod.
