
David Pogue’s Review of the iPad from 2 Angles - asnyder
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/01/technology/personaltech/01pogue.html?hp
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Groxx
_Apple asserts that the iPad runs 10 hours on a charge of its nonremovable
battery ... in my own test, the iPad played movies continuously ... [for] more
than 12 hours. That’s four times as long as a typical laptop or portable DVD
player._

This is one thing I've always found interesting. Apple _underestimates_ their
battery life in every product I've laid hands on, even under relatively high-
power operations. And they claim longer battery life than any other similar
product.

~~~
immad
With my mac laptops I have consistently seen high battery life at the start
and it has diminished considerably after a few months. Does this not happen
with everyone else?

~~~
cubicle67
not here (sample size of one). I still get 5-6 hours use from my 1st gen
unibody macbook; the one with the removable battery.

~~~
brettnak
I have the 2nd gen unibody macbook pro ( the one without the removable battery
) and I still see 5 - 6 hours of battery life. I can usually get more if I'm
just watching movies on it. Youtube & Hulu et. al. seem to be the biggest
battery killers for me ( 4 - 5 hours )

~~~
ryanhuff
I am impressed and dismayed by your experience. My 2 year old MBP (pre-
unibody) gets only 45-60 minutes of battery time. Did the unibody MBP's see
that much of a boost in battery performance?

~~~
allyt
Yes. Apple completely changed battery designs between the removable and the
non-removable versions. The latter will last significantly longer.

~~~
grinich
Here's a video from Apple with a fantastic overview of the new tech:

[http://www.apple.com/macbookpro/overlays/battery-
video.html#...](http://www.apple.com/macbookpro/overlays/battery-
video.html#overlay-batteryvideo)

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oliverkofoed
Maybe it's just me, but i was hoping for deeper insight into how the device
feels in day-to-day usage, not just a list of features that i might as well
have read on Apples info pages.

Stuff like: how the device feels to sit with for longer periods of time, is it
more natural to type with one finger or both thumbs when sitting, can i read
while lying down... All the stuff that isn't just "it has this amount of ram,
you can view videos and the web on it and...."

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joe_the_user
An interesting thing about the review is that the photo on the left shows a
person using an ipad on rack with one finger. With a bit of reflection, it
should obvious that you would not want to use a computer for even a minute in
such a fashion.

This hardly seems like a hard-nosed, critical appraisal: _"The iPad is so fast
and light, the multitouch screen so bright and responsive, the software so
easy to navigate, that it really does qualify as a new category of gadget."_
"brighter brights" and "whiter whites" indeed.

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blehn
finger prints everywhere, illegible in sunlight, poor ebook selection, too
heavy for extended use, miserable typing experience...seems like these points
would apply to "Everyone Else" as well, no?

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j_b_f
Less space than a Nomad.

~~~
blehn
you missed my point. "less space than a nomad" was precisely a "techie"
criticism of the iPod. That the Nomad had a 6GB capacity and the iPod 5GB was
irrelevant to most people.

Conversely, not being able to type comfortably or hold the device for more
than 10 minutes without getting cramps--these are major usability issues that
will affect _everyone_. iPad proponents seem to think people won't need to
type on these things. Aren't they for casual web use? How do you write emails,
blog posts, comments, usernames and passwords, URIs, google queries, tweets,
IMs, etc. without typing? These tasks are trivial on regular keyboards, I'm
not sure that will be the case on the iPad (I know it's not the case on my
iPhone).

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10ren
His third-last paragraph nails it: It's a "consumer device", not a producer
device. This _particular_ issue hasn't hurt the iPhone...

BTW: "Nomad" was so appropriate, being appealing to techies but not to normal
people.

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ilamont
Pogue is usually a great writer, but this was strangely disjointed. He wants
to like the iPad, but feels obliged to give a semi-critical "techie" review,
apparently in anticipation of the inevitable hate mail that follows any hint
of pro-Apple bias.

I'm curious to try out the iPad after reading his and Mossberg's review, but
can't imagine shelling out a lot of money for what is essentially a leisure
device that doesn't fit in my pocket.

~~~
eli
I really don't think he wrote a split review because he's worried about
fanboys.

I think it's just what he said: people really seem to love or hate the iPad,
based mostly on their background.

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froo
He's 100% correct too.

Personally, the iPad isn't for me. I want less screen time in my life, not
more - and the iPad doesn't fill any gaps that warrants me purchasing one for
myself.

That being said, I did order one for my grandmother. She's been pestering me
about getting the Internet and I felt like it would be a device that was less
daunting for her than a mouse/keyboard combination.

~~~
gloob
The thing that most troubled my grandmother when she got her computer wasn't
the filesystem or the mouse/keyboard combination; it was the fact that the
computer knew which emails she had looked at and which she hadn't. She found
it very unnerving.

Apologies if I've drifted off topic.

~~~
froo
Not off topic, my grandmother just cannot use a mouse. She's sat in front of
my PC and is absolutely baffled by it.

I might as well have asked her to do Differential Calculus.

However, I think the iPad will be different. If she's playing say, solitaire
and wants to move something - she touches it with her finger and moves it.
Easy.

~~~
j053003
Yep. Getting one for my grandfather for this very reason. The only computer he
seems to be able to understand is the touchscreen photo-processing computer at
Walgreens.

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cubicle67
I have to admit I'm surprised that both reviews (this and the Walt Mossburg
one) state they were able to achieve well over Apple's claimed 10 hours batter
life playing video, both reaching almost 12 hours.

I'm surprised because a) that's one hell of a long time, and b) Apple, like
everyone else I guess, tend to overstate battery life and reviewers seem to
find it almost impossible to replicate the published claims.

~~~
metachor
As other people have mentioned, Apple consistently understates the battery
life of their products in market copy while also pointing them out to be
longer than those of competing products.

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bmalicoat
That tidbit about the Scrabble app is very interesting. Using an iPhone or
iPod Touch as a local, private screen while using the iPad as a shared game
board could be used in a lot of cool ways. Only problem of course is it is
over $1k worth of gadgets.

~~~
allyt
I think the idea is that the individuals in your family already own iPod
Touches or iPhones (we do), so as soon as someone has a iPad, you're set.

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jsz0
It seems obvious the iPad is directly aimed at the larger net book market
instead of the relatively small digital reader market. Not many people are
going to carry and iPad _and_ a laptop. If the iPad is a device you buy
instead of a net book, which by extension is a device you buy instead of a
larger more functional laptop, Apple may not have an uphill battle here. Net
book customers have already decided they don't want to spend $1k+ on a laptop,
they can live without an optical drive, they can adapt to a small awkward
keyboard, etc. In other words they are people who have already started to
abandon the idea of a computer as being a fully functional all encompassing
device in favor of form factor, price, and portability. So I think Apple
clearly has a big market but they'll have to stress the things the iPad does
better than a net book. Multi-touch web browsing, gaming, better battery life,
better build quality/design, easier to use, no malware/spyware problems, etc.
They'll need to quickly fill in the remaining gaps of functionality before
customers have the dreaded "oh it doesn't do _that_?" experience.

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JunkDNA
I know I'm not in the majority here, but as a person who commutes to work via
a 40 minute train ride each way, the iPad would be very attractive in addition
to a laptop. I'm pretty much glued to my iPhone during the entire ride. The
small screen size can often be a problem, especially if I want to do something
like post a comment here. Even though I have a 15" Macbook Pro, the ergonomics
are all wrong to comfortably work on it. I have to work with the keyboard slid
partially up my stomach with my arms in an awkward position because the screen
angle isn't sufficient otherwise. It's also not connected to the network
(thanks to no tethering from AT&T). The iPad would have near perfect
ergonomics and connectivity that is way cheaper than what I would have to pay
for an AT&T data plan and laptop dongle.

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allenbrunson
Pogue claims there will be 1,000 apps in the iPad app store on day one. If
Apple will hurry up and finish reviewing my game, mine will be one of them.

If that number is true -- only a measly thousand -- then I'm pretty excited.
Based on the buzz I've heard in the blogosphere, and the chatter on Apple's
own dev forums, I would have guessed more like ten thousand. At that number,
competition for eyeballs is pretty fierce. But if it's really only a thousand,
then I stand a real chance of making some money.

~~~
c1sc0
That seems very low. At those numbers releasing _anything_ on day 1 should pay
off. I will be there with two apps hacked together in a single day each.

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ntoshev
_the iPad is not a laptop. It’s not nearly as good for creating stuff. On the
other hand, it’s infinitely more convenient for consuming it_

I wonder if there is a killer app in algorithm-assisted sketching and drawing
with your fingers on the iPad. Consider zooming, automatically having lines
meet perfectly, having the "artistic" filters from Photoshop, different
drawing tools, etc.

~~~
arethuza
I want to get an iPad so I can try supporting this kind of interaction in
OpenShapes (<http://shap.es/docs>) - probably using Raphaël
<http://raphaeljs.com/> as the rendering component

The bulk of OpenShapes is in JavaScript - so should be good fun making the
editor work with the touch interface.

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cma
"U.S.B. jacks"

Ugg, NYT style guide.

~~~
CamperBob
Yeah, I heard you can get those from I.B.M. :-P

When your style guide _requires_ you to misspell proper names, that's when you
know it's total crap.

~~~
mbreese
I.B.M. is the correct style for the company's name. Their official name is
still International Business Machines. Therefore, it is an acronym and should
be shown as such. "IBM" _isn't_ the proper name of the company. You could
argue that it's a marketing term (it's certainly a trademark). From my limited
USPTO search, it looks like "IBM" wasn't even registered as a mark until 1990.

U.S.B. is in the same boat... it's an acronym. If they really want to get the
NYT on board, they'll have to change the name.

Side note: this isn't the case with AT&T (anymore) as that is the company's
official name. AT&T doesn't actually stand for anything (officially).

I know it's pedantic, but if the New York Times stops caring about such
things, who will?

~~~
jrockway
_AT &T doesn't actually stand for anything_

Too bad they dropped the name completely; they could have just changed
"telegraph" to "[wire]tap" and they would have been totally up to date.

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sunchild
As soon as you use the words "netbook" or "giant iPod", your review is missing
the point entirely.

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blinks
Clarification would be good, here: what is the point, exactly, that you'd be
missing?

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conorgil145
_Review for Techies - The Apple iPad is basically a gigantic iPod Touch.

Review for Everyone Else - The Apple iPad is basically a gigantic iPod Touch._

Big Surprise.

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hackoder
"The bottom line is that the iPad has been designed and built by a bunch of
perfectionists. If you like the concept, you’ll love the machine. The only
question is: Do you like the concept?"

Love the concept- But I'll wait until HTC/Google come along and give it some
missing features (webcam, expandable storage) and the extra oomph that the
geek in me appreciates (multi tasking, maybe a keyboard (maybe a sliding one
like the HTC Tilt?))

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glhaynes
You say you love the concept but then you show that you completely don't get
the concept.

