Mick Huxley

iPad 2 Review

The other week I managed to scam myself an iPad 2 from work for a few days for a test run.  I have always wondered weather I would use an iPad much, but before going out and dropping close to $1000AUD on one I figured a trail run for a few days would help me make up my mind.

To start I love the magnetic covers on the iPad 2.  These covers are functional and stylish.  The cover has groves which allow it to be bent to act as a stand propping the iPad at about a 30 degree angle.  It is also used to put the device to sleep when folded over the screen.  A really good idea in both senses.  Lets get down to the device itself and really it’s just a big iPhone 4 in my book.

The apps….

The apps in the Apple iStore are what sets it apart in the mobile landscape from Windows Phone, Android and Blackberry.  Although these stores are catching up, the range of apps in the iStore is astonishing.  What surprised me though is the limited number of iPad apps though by comparison.  I found this extremely disappointing.

The big apps I was looking forward to trailing where some Twitter clients, Facebook and Citrix Receiver.  Twitter first I tried the native app and Echofon and didn’t like the single column only view in each.  Furthermore as soon as you flick into landscape mode to type (note that the awesome cover that turns into a stand works in landscape mode) nearly 50% of the screen real estate is lost on the keyboard.  This is a feature that annoys me in a number of situations on the iPad.

Facebook app for iPad is well not there… doesn’t exist but the safari experience isn’t too bad and will do.

Citrix connecting back to my Windows 7 Enterprise x64 VDI running on Xen Desktop 5 is a cool feature, but as I have previously blogged about (http://www.mickhuxley.com/?p=125) Windows 7 is not a great touch OS.  It is designed for the keyboard and mouse experience.  Whilst connecting back to Windows gave me a whole new host of things to do it still was greatly let down by the screen real estate disappearing when the keyboard was used.  I know that more screen can be preserved using the iPad and portrait mode but this has it’s drawbacks also. 

Overall this is a short review because (let’s face it) you can’t do much with the iPad that you can’t do with the iPhone. I still find the notebook / netbook a better option.  In fact a slim lightweight notebook with integrated 3G, a good screen resolution (1400×1050 or better), long battery life and an i5 proc would be perfect for what I do.

The iPad is a nice device for consuming content and not creating it but do I really need a dedicated device for this purpose?? No I don’t… not for either personal or professional use.