iPad 2 Review

The iPad 2 came out in Belgium last Friday, and since I was in Brussels I figured I’d try my luck at the Fnac store. When the first iPad came out I decided to wait for version two because I was unsure whether I would use it enough to justify the cost.

About a hundred people queued up. After an hour of waiting it was my turn. I asked for the 32 Gb 3G model: there were 3 left in stock. All covers were sold out except for an orange one, which looked kind of ugly. I ended up buying a polyurethane light grayish one the next day (€39).

The iPad itself was €699 which is probably a bit too expensive for a gadget. Since one of the things I do as a freelance designer is building iOS interfaces it was of course easy to rationalize this cost as a business investment: I have to be able to test my iPad app designs on a real device.

I immediately wanted to try the iPad on the train back home but unfortunately I was greeted by the “connect to iTunes” screen. It would be great if you could use the iPad without ever plugging it into a computer. I guess an “empty” iPad (no music, no photos) is not as exciting as a full iPad for the first time experience, and Apple wants all iPads to run the latest OS version. Still, I think this should be handled on the device itself.

iTunes and synchronization

The USB cable is kind of hard to plug in. My iPad didn’t get recognized by both my laptop and desktop computer. Weird. Then I figured I had to update iTunes to the latest version. The first sync and software updates can take up to an hour and a half so there you are with your beautiful new toy, waiting to be able to play with it.

I like how you can configure iTunes to populate your iPad’s memory with music and photos from your computer intelligently. If you sync often you’ll always have your latest music, most listened to music, and latest photos with you. Well, photos… I don’t really use iPhoto and most photos on my hard disk are unedited RAW photos straight from my camera. One plan is to use the iPad to show my portfolio to prospective clients. It looks fancy, you can pass it to the other person (try that with a laptop). I’ll probably have to create an iPhoto album for that.

It feels weird that a music application is the hub to syncing content from your computer to your iPad. I realize this has obvious historical reasons (iPod, iTunes store) but still, it’s weird. If Apple were to rethink the system from the ground up it would the “Apple Store” would probably be a separate application.

Hardware

Weight and feel

The iPad is amazingly light. I love that. The first iPad felt kind heavy. This feels much better. It’s really thin. Thinner than an iPhone 4. The metal back has a nice smooth feel to it.

Screen brightness

The screen is super bright which is great. The colors are vivid and look perfect. There’s a software slider to adjust the brightness if necessary (e.g. when reading long content).

Performance

This thing is fast! Some heavier apps take a while to load (e.g. Real Racing) but other than that I haven’t seen any notable performance issues. Everything feels snappy. The gaming performance is great (see the video later in this post).

With the iPhone I’ve noticed things tend to get slower after a while: I hope this isn’t the case with the iPad but I suspect it will be. A reboot tends to help. It’s still a computer.

Speaker(s)

The iPad speakers (or should I say speaker?) sound no good at all, probably due to them being located on the back side. The iPhone has its speakers on the front side, why can’t the iPad? Maybe it has something to do with the size of the glass on the front. If you want to listen to music for a prolonged time using the iPad you should probably invest in a good set of headphones. The speaker is OK for watching a quick YouTube video with friends, although it probably isn’t loud enough to properly hear it in a noisy room (e.g. at a party). As a reference point: MacBook Pro speakers sound better and can go much louder.

For testing purposes I attached the iPad to my TV with a standard audio cable; I instantly heard the iPad’s audio through the TV speakers. Sweet. I haven’t been able to test connecting the display since I don’t have the necessary connector (which costs €40 I hear, dang, cables probably account for at least a nice percentage of Apple’s profits).

Smart Cover

One problem with the old iPad was that it looked very ugly when turned off: the screen would be full of greasy fingerprints after using it. When actually using the iPad you don’t see that (unless you’re in direct sunlight) since the screen is so bright. With the Smart Cover Apple kind of solved that problem since either the screen is covered or you are using the iPad. When you remove the Smart Cover the iPad turns on. So you are far less likely to ever see the “smudgy” iPad.

The Smart Cover doubles as a stand and that works surprisingly well. Using it as a stand for typing is so much more comfortable than trying to type when the iPad is flat on the table. Putting it in the other position (upright) is great for watching video but typing doesn’t really work well since its not as stable. You wouldn’t use it in this position to type anyway. One thing I noticed was that using the Smart Cover as a stand for the upright position only really works on a 100% flat surface: when I placed it on my couch it wasn’t really stable and prone to fall over.

I laughed at the Smart Cover name at first but when you actually use it it’s apparent a lot of thinking went in designing this. The product designers at Apple must have thought that too, hence the name of the cover. I love it. I bought a cover for my Macbook and I never use it since it’s such a hassle to put the Macbook in the cover and take it out again. I’m pretty sure I’ll use the Smart Cover all the time.

Screen resolution

My first impression of the screen was that it feels really low res coming from an iPhone 4. I do most of my work on an iMac 27” where I can’t see the pixels; on an iPhone 4 I can’t see them either; but I can see them on an iPad. It feels a bit like looking at a Photoshop document at 125% zoom. This device’s PPI is too low.

After using the device for a longer time the low resolution is not as annoying as I initially thought. I’d rather have a speedy device than a pretty slow device. I guess we’ll have to wait for the iPad 3 to for enough power to have both the speed and the retina display.

Camera and FaceTime

The iPad’s camera isn’t really good: you won’t be able to snap the same beautiful shots as with an iPhone 4. The quality reminds me of €15 Logitech webcams from the ’90s. However, it’s meant for FaceTime, and it’s probably adequate for that purpose. I can’t imagine anyone using an iPad for photography, that would be a stupid idea.

This is one of those features I’ll probably never use since Skype is the go-to tool for internet calling and video chatting (there is no official Skype iPad app though). When I call someone on Skype I rarely put on my webcam.

I tested FaceTime with my girlfriend over our WiFi network (iPhone 4 to iPad 2) and technically it worked fine: video and audio transmitted smoothly. Picture quality, as mentioned before: a bit of a miss.

I didn’t expect the FaceTime experience to be as good as in Apple’s promo videos but they seem to go to great lengths to show off an experience that isn’t true. The promo video talks about a rear-facing HD video camera. That HD part might be true in absolute terms (pixels) but the quality is nowhere as good as other portable HD cameras (think iPhone 4, Flip).

The camera is probably useful for scanning QR codes though. If that ever takes off. Ahem.

iPad or Kindle?

I mainly bought the iPad for reading cosily on the couch using Reeder and Kindle app. I couldn’t decide whether to get an iPad or Kindle. When you want to order a 3G Kindle 3 from Belgium, it comes down to about €270 if you get the 3G version with the leather cover. For about €100 more you can get an iPad 1 (sans cover). Unless all you do is read books, the iPad is a clear winner for me. I know it’s a different class of device. But since I also like to read comics and long content on the web (feeds, Ask MetaFilter) the iPad was a logical choice. I’m curious how it will hold up when using it for long form reading.

User interface

The iPad continues the fantastic UI tradition from iOS: this is a topic big enough to warrant it’s own blog post. While the overall UI is great, the home screen design still feels weird. This is not really an iPad 2 problem, more of an iPad problem. There is a ton of room to show me what the weather is like today, to show me notifications, to show my todos. All you see is 20 icons to quickly launch apps. I’m intrigued to see where Honeycomb is going with this. Android’s UI notification system has always been better than the Javascript alert(); style popups on iOS.

It’s also not clear from the home screen which apps are iPhone apps and which ones are iPad apps.

Applications

So, apps. That’s what it’s all about. This is the part where Apple is way ahead of the competition: there’s a very healthy apps scene with huge new releases every week.

After a quick run through the Apple Store I bought Angry Birds Rio HD (€2,39), Garageband (€3,99), SuperBrothers: Sword & Sorcery EP (€3,99), Pages (€7,99), Numbers (€7,99), Real Racing 2 HD (€7,99), iMovie (€3,99) and OmniFocus for iPad (€31,99). I didn’t have to repurchase Instapaper, Canabalt and a few other iPhone apps since they’re universal apps: a pleasant surprise.

Purchasing apps is so easy it’s also easy to forget you’re spending actual money. Then again I just bought 3 games, a word processor, spreadsheet app and video editing app for less than what a single Xbox game costs.

The only app with a significant cost was OmniFocus. As a computer nerd, I applaud the OmniGroup for taking a stand against these ridiculous software prices. As a consumer it hope it’s worth it. I plan on putting the iPad on my desk with OmniFocus open when working so I can just check off tasks when they’re done. Kind of like a permanent interactive todo list.

There is no way to demo an app, unless the developers release a free version with less features. After toying around with an app for 10 minutes I’ll probably know if I want it or not: maybe time restricted demos would be an idea. The “no demo”-problem also exists in the Mac App store, where it gets worse: most professional software is in the €100-€400 euro range: I want to be able to try the software first then!

This is probably one of the reasons Adobe software is not available on the Mac App store. Or it might just be because Adobe is pissed off at Apple for all the Flash dissing. Who knows.

Free apps then: I downloaded iBooks, De Morgen HD (Belgian newspaper), Le Soir (Belgian newspaper, again), Shazam for iPad, Dropbox, Flipboard, Twitter, Google Earth, Labyrinth 2 HD lite, Evernote, IMDB, BBC News, Epicurious (recipes), NYTimes for iPad, Trends HD (Belgian magazine), Marvel Comics.

I couldn’t find an official Facebook app (and no Skype app, as mentioned in the part about FaceTime). I guess the Facebook team feels the website is good enough as the Facebook app? I can’t imagine that they don’t have the resources to make an iPad app. I ended up using Flipboard for checking Facebook.

I’m curious how Pages and Numbers will hold up for doing actual work (I make my estimates and invoices in Pages & Numbers, and my financial projections is a Numbers file). I gave them a brief try but I have to dig in more to form my conclusions. One thing I already noticed is that I can’t use my company fonts, which is kind of a deal breaker.

Apps (included)

Notes

Part of this review was typed in the notes app on the iPad. The English corrections when making typos are excellent. Speeds up my typing. The notes app has a new font called Noteworthy. I like it: it’s like a better Marker Felt. In the iPad settings you can choose to use Helvetica, Marker Felt or Noteworthy.

GarageBand

GarageBand: this is THE showoff app. It’s kinda crazy. The UI is crazy. It has a ton of options: I swear you can choose more than 20 keyboards to play, and then the app also have synth pads, guitars (bass, acoustic, electric), and drum kits. And then you can record your own samples too. And then you can play those samples on a keyboard and twist and tweak them until they sound nothing like the original. For me, this was exciting to play with.

Either this is a tremendous gift for musicians, or will they just laugh with everything the app tries to do for you? You can configure the piano in a way that you can’t even play wrong notes, and the guitar part even has an option that kind of plays guitar for you, where you just tap a chord every few seconds.

This is one of those apps that has a lot of power and thinking behind it but still has to appeal to a mainstream audience. I don’t know whether semi-pro musicians actually use GarageBand (Mac) or go straight to a more professional package.

I tried plugging my guitar in. I could tune it using the tuner in Garageband but it didn’t seem to connect. Too bad because I really wanted to try that too when I saw the iPad 2 promo video.

Photo booth

The Photo Booth app feels fast and snappy. What does it do? The same as Photo Booth for Mac: use the webcam to take photos of yourself, and then there’s some options to add special effects to your photos. I can’t imagine ever using it but 16 year old girls are probably going to go crazy about this.

Mail

Mail set up in 20 seconds. Entered my Gmail account info and it started pulling in info. Superb. Mail in landscape mode is wonderful. Easy archiving and a good overview of your latest messages.

Calendar

Setting up Calendar: this would have been a 20 second setup if I only had one Google Calendar. I have multiple calendars (work, birthdays and private) on Google Calendar, but I use iCal (with BusySync) as the client. I never go to the actual Google Calendar web interface. Only 1 of my calendars showed up in the app.

A quick Google search led to this settings page where you can choose which calendars should be synced to iOS.

I can’t comment on the use yet since I haven’t used the app enough yet. I figure in the next few weeks I’ll try to use the iPad more for professional purposes (using Pages, Numbers, OmniFocus, Calendar, Dropbox, …) and write up a review of how well that goes.

iPod

I does what it has to do, play music. Some of the UI is confusing and will take some time to “get”. For instance I don’t know how to play a playlist yet, and I’ve tried.

Apps (free)

Twitter

Twitter for iPad: this rocks. Best Twitter client I’ve used so far? Hell yeah! The touch interactions feel perfect and it doesn’t feel as awkward as Twitter.com.

De Morgen HD

I read part of the weekend newspaper in this app: it’s nice that they offer a “grace” period to test the app. Then you have to pay I guess. It has a view to read the articles web style, and then there’s a PDF view. I find reading PDFs on the iPad cumbersome with all the panning, scrolling and zooming. Feels like a budget solution. Is the De Standaard app any better?

Trends HD

Trends HD: this app is another PDF wrapper. I don’t read Trends regularly and the only free issue was from November. Don’t bother.

Apps (paid)

Canabalt

I originally bought Canabalt for the iPhone. Nice surprise: it’s a universal app meaning it includes both an iPhone and iPad version. I didn’t have to pay extra for the iPad version. In the video below it’s obvious the performance is much better than on the iPhone. Don’t know Canabalt? Try it online here.

RealRacing HD

Fun racing game, shows off the graphics capabilities of the iPad. It’s nothing compared to GT5 or even Forza on the Xbox 360 but still, it looks fine. The game is a pretty classic racing game style where you go through a career mode and earn money and reputation to get faster cards. The controls are interesting: acceleration happens automatically and you steer by tilting your iPad left or right. Braking: touching the screen.

Angry Birds Rio

Angry Birds Rio: now I see what Steve Jobs meant with improved graphics. Super smooth, sixty frames per second action. The art is a whole lot better too. Unfortunately it’s still the same old game repackaged so if you were tired of the old Angry Birds: this is nothing new.

SuperBrothers: Sword & Sorcery EP

Weird adventure style indie game with awkward controls but very stylized and nice graphics and oh, it’s humorous too. I’ve only played it for 10 minutes but wondering what’s next. Definitely worth a try.

Safari

Safari feels fast and smooth. Web pages load fast. If you read your feeds/Twitter/… sometimes you’ll encounter a piece of content you can’t play or view. Mostly this is because the iPad doesn’t support Flash. Sometimes it’s wrongly detected as a cell phone and the web page says “this video is not available for mobile”. My sister sent me an audio file (Windows Media Audio) and I couldn’t open it.

Also annoying: I can’t view my charts in Google analytics. At first sight the available Google Analytics apps seem to look like… well… crap. Any suggestions?

TextExpander

TextExpander on the Mac: serious productivity booster. TextExpander on iOS: sucks. It can only expand text within the app itself. This will seriously hamper my productivity when using the iPad for any “serious” work. On the Mac I can fill out web forms in seconds because I have all my info saved by the browser and/or in TextExpander.

Reeder for iPad

Awesome! Like the iPhone version but better. You can easily send articles to Instapaper or Pinboard/Delicious, the in-app browser lets you preview content before actually going to Safari, the reading experience is pleasant and the UI looks good.

iMovie

The little video of the 3 games above was shot with an iPhone 4. Getting the video files to the iPad was a 10+ step process involving iTunes and iPhoto: if I’m on my computer anyway, why not use the (better) editing tools there?

The iMovie app worked really well and intuitively (this counts for GarageBand too). I was able to edit a video in less than 20 minutes. It doesn’t have too many possibilities but it works well for the kind of videos “amateurs” make: family videos, travel videos, showing their new toys. This opens up something hard (video editing) to everyone. Well, iMovie for the Mac already did that, and the latest Windows Movie Maker (Vista/Win7) is pretty great too. But still: I thought it was really easy. When the video was done I could send it straight to YouTube. Big applause for the UI team!

iTunes content

The iBooks selection: clearly Apple has no deals with publishers in Belgium because all I see are old books that are in the public domain like Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea and Oliver Twist. Quite a disappointment (well, I knew this before buying the iPad)

They did go to great lengths to not “lie” about this on the website: the iBooks page on Apple Belgium/Netherlands doesn’t make promises about book selection like the US page.

An iPad is probably a way better device if you live in the US since then you have movies and series on iTunes, at least a half decent book selection on iBooks and you have Netflix which is probably epic.

Stability

Is the iPad’s software stable? I’ve had my iPad crash once this weekend, when I loaded FlightControl for iPhone while updating 32 applications at once: I can see that’s a bit of a stretch. I’ve had a few app crashes, which send you back to the home screen. I haven’t lost any data so far.

Conclusion

This was a detailed review of the iPad 2 in which I talked about almost everything I could. I realize some parts of this review might sound like white whines, that’s what you get for going into detail I guess.

I think the iPad is a wonderful machine: it beats a laptop for many things, but it won’t replace one. There are some serious limitations to using it as an actual work tool like, you know, file management. Some very basic features like opening ZIP files from e-mails are missing.

I think it will be mostly used when I’m relaxing on the couch in the evenings. It feels more like a “play” device than a professional device. but it will definitely be useful in some situations: showing the portfolio in a first meeting, taking notes, sending e-mails on the train (thanks to the 3G).

If I had kids it’d probably be great to keep them silent: the app store is full of learning games and the iPad is easy enough a kid can handle it.

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