As I held the iPad in my hands for the first time I knew that it was going to change something about the way I consume the internet and produce content for MacStories. I mean, I had no justified reason to believe the iPad was going to change anything, at least not after holding it for a few seconds and simply staring at its screen. But just like every revolution in our fast running technology world, it’s about the details, even those that you don’t see but perceive after a few seconds. My first encounter with the iPad was an impression, more than an approach.
Touching the screen was almost awkward, for as much as it’s beautiful. It’s huge, the bezel perfectly blends with it in away that it reminds me why this is state of the art in mobile technology, and the back allows an almost perfect grip on the device. The screen is the iPad, and touching it for the very first time looked like a bad move, as that would compromise its state of immaculate tablet coming from Steve’s mind. I’m glad the Apple logo isn’t illuminated though, it’s much more classy this way. Also, I doubt the screen is oleophobic: fingerprints were all over after a few taps, so as someone on the internet suggested maybe they wanted to write oleophilic. Who cares, as long as the physical impression has been that great.
Holding an iPad coming fresh out of the box is like holding a baby: you’re afraid of dropping it on the floor, but you can’t stop looking at it. It’s a good feeling.
The software impression wasn’t that great: as I turned on the device it suddenly asked me to connect it to iTunes, so it seems like it was a good choice to wait until I came home to try it, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to do anything but stare at an iTunes logo. Even those pixels are crisp, trust me. Another thing I didn’t like about the software impression was the first iTunes setup: pretty much like the aforementioned app, it’s flawed. And absolutely clunky.
First I had to manually sync and there was no guided process to set the device up: I think something like the Mac OS X one would be just great for the iPad. Then I hit sync, because I prepared myself for the iPad and I already had some apps waiting to be installed. iTunes started syncing, so I waited 10 damn minutes for the synchronization to finish. You know why it took so long? Because the little genius synced all the apps I had, including the iPhone-only ones. I had to manually go through the apps list, check off all the ones I didn’t want and sync again. All in all, it took 20 minutes to have the device up and running like I wanted it to be, and this is an aspect Apple has to seriously work on, considering that not everyone is like me (us) and doesn’t want to wait to have an iPad ready, with the wrong apps.
Now that I’m on it: running iPhone apps in compatibility mode is useless. Text is doubled, UI elements are doubled, and when not doubled it’s a terrific waste of real screen estate. If Apple announced this feature because they feared they wouldn’t have that many apps available at launch - well, I hope this is going away in OS 4.0. All the apps I care about are coming out as universal downloads, and there’s no point in using this feature except for increasing the number of available apps in press releases.
The first thing I did after the setup was to try Safari and see if it was really that good as Steve promoted it. I fired it up, opened MacStories and took a few pictures with my iPhone to show them off on Twitter.
Browsing the web with the iPad retains a radical different feeling than iPhone’s Safari, and it definitely doesn’t feel like staring at web scrolling on your Macbook screen. Holding the web in your hands is a great experience, and it’s grown on me during these past weeks so much that now I prefer to surf the web on the iPad rather then the Macbook. HTML rendering is blazing fast with pages that don’t require heavy resources, it’s just fast when it comes to complex pages like Facebook and Zootool. But I think that it really isn’t about speed, not as much as touching an entire webpage feels so good and natural.
If someone ever had a vision of the web as it was meant to be, Safari on the iPad gets tremendously close to it.
Tapping on links makes more sense than just pointing and clicking, scrolling feels like moving your finger on your favorite newspaper. But most of all, Safari for iPad wins over the Mac and iPhone versions because it merges the best things about them (iPhone’s touch input, Macbook’s large screen) and creates a unique experience made of no zooming and lots of fingerprints: being able to touch a website in its entirety is something no one has ever accomplished before, and now that I have it I can’t imagine going back to the old mobile way anymore.
Yes, the old mobile way. Despite the iPad and the iPhone being described as mobile devices, I think there are really profound differences between the two of them: the iPhone is mobile and mobile only, the iPad is a mobile device that can run tasks you used to accomplish on a desktop environment. Basically, it’s a mix - something I didn’t think I needed and it turns out to be something I can’t live and work without anymore. It’s not a portable desktop or whatever you might call an enhanced mobile machine, it’s a tablet that fills a gap Apple has been talking about for months and you don’t know you were stuck into until you try an iPad. It’s like being told “Hey, we know you need something new to start all over. Take this.”
Just like with people, sometimes it’s all about the first impression and the details you notice and how something feels after a few seconds. The iPad is no exception.
Tune in next week for the last post of our iPad Story series, “Apps, of course”
