Hands-On with the iPad: First Look and Exclusive Video

Posted 01/27/2010 at 7:20pm | by Susie Ochs

To paraphrase Eric Cartman: "Yes, I have used the iPad; who wants to touch me?"

EIC Paul and I were supa-stoked to get some hands-on time with the iPad after this morning's event. We played with it for about 90 minutes, lingering as long as we could even while Apple's uber-patient gadget-handlers politely mentioned (and rementioned) that "we're getting ready to shut it down."

Shut it down?! Never! We are geeks with a new toy! Christmas morning and whatnot!

Okay. Calming down now. Anyway.

First impressions: Yowzers, that's a nice slice of hardware. The fingerprint-laden touchscreen worked like a charm -- we asked if it had the "oleophobic" coating that the iPhone 3GS has, but the reps only shrugged. Don't worry, we journalists are at least 20 percent greasier than the general public, so you won't need your own Apple handler following you around with a screen-cleaning cloth, as we did.

Software wise, we did run into some bugs. But Apple has time to make some more tweaks prior to shipping, so we're actually not too worried. But the software keyboard wasn't rendering properly in some instances (we saw it in Notes, Mail, and Safari, in landscape orientation only). The full-screen, iPad-optimized first-party apps looked gorgeous, especially the Calendar and the iBooks apps.

The demo units also had some iPhone apps loaded right from the App Store -- unmodified, the same exact versions you have on your iPhone today -- so we could test the full-screen zoom. This resizes the app's interface to fill the whole 9.7-inch, 1024x768 screen by doubling the pixel size. In Facebook, which features mostly text and thumbnail size images, this was really noticeable; the text looked "pixelly" instead of smooth, and the compressed thumbnail size images looked, well, compressed and thumbnailish.

But in a faster-moving app with lots of motion -- say, Need for Speed and Super Monkey Ball -- the pixellation was less noticeable although it's still there. Both Need for Speed and Super Monkey Ball were highly playable in zoom mode, and seeing the action on a larger screen was more immersive and enhanced the playing experience. We can't wait to see what the game developers, especially, can do when they have some time with the iPad SDK and really get to take advantage of the larger screen and faster microchip.

What else? It's light, at just 1.5 pounds. You can hold it comfortably in lots of ways, either balancing it on one hand tray-of-drinks-style and using your whole other hand to navigate, holding it in both hands and driving with your thumbs, or laying it on a table or your knees for the two-index-finger poke. I never felt like I was going to drop it, and the word "flimsy" couldn't have been further from my mind. It's thin, the aluminum is classy looking, and videos and photos look great on the black-framed glossy screen.

No camera, that surprised us. This would be a great video-chat device if it had a forward-facing iSight. No USB port on the case to connect a hard drive, but there's no Finder anyway. No card slot; you can only load photos through iTunes. The only backups are via USB syncing with iTunes. We asked if MobileMe customers would be able to sync contacts and calendars wirelessly and were told Apple had nothing to announce on that yet. We were glad to see it's got Bluetooth, the compass, and Location Services, but bummed that location isn't GPS based; instead it uses Wi-Fi hotspots and 3G towers to locate you. Worked well in downtown SF, though.

Are you still on the fence? We admit that 50 percent of the Mac|Life staffers who got to play with the iPad today are ready to order one as soon as it's available. The other half, well, still respects the hardware and the pretty-pretty-shininess of the whole thing, but wants to wait to see how the software evolves -- especially third-party offerings built expressly for the iPad -- before taking the plunge.

Any questions we can answer for you? Hit us up in the comments.

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allen098

May 15, 2010 at 1:46am

Top post. I look forward to reading more. Cheers
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annie12

April 09, 2010 at 12:32am

You really know your stuff... Keep up the good work!

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annie12

April 09, 2010 at 12:31am

Top post. I look forward to reading more. Cheers

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fdp

January 28, 2010 at 10:36am

"No card slot; you can only load photos through iTunes."

Not quite true. There is an SD card adaptor already available.

jyuichi

January 27, 2010 at 11:12pm

Having seen how nice Mac|Life's digital edition looks on iPhone, I hope to see that carried over to a slick iPad interface. :D

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CPTKILLER

January 27, 2010 at 8:54pm

The iPad has the potential to have as big an impact as the first Mac. The concern is what Aps will be developed for it. It's strength is its utility in that it can do a lot of different things. See the Apple pitch on the Apple site.

The gaming potential is good especially for a Baby Boomer still into games. However, its best use can and should be with media and books. One would hope that the Apple magazines took the lead with a reduced price for monthly issues and electronic only copies. Time will tell.

As a reference device for technical folks, it can hold a lot of info. One must assume that it will be a GO TO device for field engineers and architects. There is an obvious need for Aps for this. Since I'm slowly but certainly getting out of the profession, I will hope that it can read and allow mark-ups on Inventor, SolidWorks, AutoCAD and similar software. Add MS Project or P3 to this and you have something great for work outside of the office. Engineering calculators or some better technical calc's on the iPad iWork Suite would be great.

All in all the future looks interesting.

Hands-On with the iPad: First Look and Exclusive Video

Hands-On with the iPad: First Look and Exclusive Video

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