Thoughts on iPad

In a surprising for pretty much everyone, including myself, turn of events I’ve arrived to a decision that I want an iPad.

My 30th birthday is coming up in less than a week and I kept getting questions about what I would like to get for it. And over the past weekend it kind of dawned on me. I wouldn’t buy one myself as I don’t really have a need for it, but getting it as a present changes everything. I asked my parents and my sister what my budget range is and it turns out that it’s exactly what I would need to get an iPad.

This is where the easy part ends and the “agony” begins. I have a lot of questions that I’m trying to answer and I have a lot of things to weight. The biggest question is this — do I get one now and get instant gratification or do I try really hard to be patient and wait for a 2nd generation? Below are my thoughts on the topic.

Hardware

There are clearly things that are bound to be updated on the next generation iPad which would make a lot of sense to me. It might be a great device as it is but I think it would make a lot of difference with the following changes:

• Front Facing Camera
  Now with addition of FaceTime to iPhone 4 and the promise from Steve Jobs to have millions of devices supporting it, iPad is a great candidate to get one. Sitting on your living room couch and doing a FaceTime call on a nice big screen of iPad? Sign me up.


• Screen
  This is probably the biggest reason to wait for the next version. Older iPhones have PPI of 163. iPhone 4 has 326 PPI! iPad has 132 PPI. Every time I look at iPhone 3GS’s screen these days I can’t believe how fuzzy it is. You get used to good stuff really quickly. Granted, iPad is going to be held farther from your eyes, so a lower PPI than that of iPhone 4 will look fine, but I think at this point it would bother me in its current form. This would be a very logical thing to upgrade.


• RAM
  This is probably iPad’s weakest spot. It only has 256MB of RAM. iPhone 4 has 512. The biggest problem with that is Safari. From what I’ve read it often is unable to keep even a single page cached. Meaning that it does a complete reload of all the pages every time. It might be slightly annoying for reading news, but it’s a deal breaker for a page that you’re trying to fill a form in.

The above 3 changes would make it perfect for me. A built in USB port would be nice, but that’s very unlikely to happen. Currently available accessories will do just fine.

Wi-Fi ONLY vs Wi-Fi + 3G

Now this is my biggest problem with an iPad. It’s absolutely possible technically to use iPhone as a modem tethered through Bluetooth. Yet Apple insists that you spring for an extra $130 if you wish your iPad to get on internet via anything, but Wi-Fi.

I would go ahead and blame it on AT&T, but it seems to be more in Apple’s court. One can just take out a 3G card from his iPhone and stick it into iPad and iPad gets a 3G connection. Also if you feel like you don’t want to do that AT&T lets you subscribe to the data plan on monthly basis, no contract. Have a trip coming up? Get a month of 3G.

In addition to that Apple thought that only a device with 3G should have a GPS chip. I guess the logic is that Wi-Fi one never leaves your home. This is my 2nd biggest question. Is it worth spending $130 on 3G and GPS chips or not?

On The Road

One of the big reasons to get an iPad would be to replace my MacBook Pro when traveling. I’m trying to think of all things I do on it while on the road and see if iPad can keep up:

• Photography
  This is the main reason I lug my laptop around with me on trips — loading the pictures from the camera as backup and checking how well they are coming out on a decently sized screen. I rarely do any photo editing during the trip and do all of the post-processing upon getting home, on my desktop workstation.
  
  Interestingly enough Apple does sell a photo kit that allows one to either load photos from an SD card into iPad or allows you to plug-in a USB cable and a card reader into it for CF (what I need). I just hope that my particular reader will work with it, but otherwise seems like iPad would work just fine for me.
  
  It would be also nice if I could copy the files from iPad back to another card using the same method, for backup purposes during the trip. Having a copy of my photos on the laptop always gives me some peace of mind.


• E-Mail and Web
  Now this is what iPad is very good for sure. It will cover my e-mail and Internet surfing needs perfectly. I don’t do anything particularly difficult with e-mail (such as moving or working with files) and from what I’ve seen the mail client on iPad is great.
  
  Same thing with Safari. The best or one of the best mobile browsers in existence on a big screen? 100% replacement for a laptop during travel.


• Maps
  I usually use my iPhone to navigate on our road trips. But every morning I like to look at my map on the laptop, for a bigger picture. It’s hard to gauge the whole drive sometimes on iPhone’s small screen. And here iPad certainly fits the bill. I use Google maps, so I’d be using the same thing on iPad with much easier navigation.
  
  Now wouldn’t it be great to use iPad on the road where there is no Wi-Fi? GPS into the location you’re at and look at your route on that big screen? Yes, I can’t do that on laptop now anyhow, but it really is a shame that Apple wont allow iPhone+iPad synergy without spending an extra $130.


• Google Earth
  Sometimes I refer to Google Earth for locations of National Park stamp sites. Luckily there is a version of Google Earth available for iPad and iPhone. On iPhone it’s not very useful, but again in iPad it will be great.


• Secure Shell
  Sometimes I have a need to get on the server via SSH when I’m on the go. Obviously I can easily do that from my laptop, but even an iPhone has SSH clients available. On iPhone it’s barely usable because of the limited screen real estate, but I can do rudimentary tasks such as restart Apache for example. I think SSH on iPad will be more than usable — not for some major coding, but for small fixes that might need to be done on the road.


• Photo Processing and Blog Posting
  On rare occasions we do some blog posting on the go. Now our blogging rule is that we do no posts without pictures and pictures don’t go on the blog without going through Photoshop first. Even though there are some photo editing tools available on iPad it’s hard to beat Photoshop. On the other hand I never had much luck with getting photo processing done on the laptop either — the screen is just not big enough and I don’t feel comfortable. HDR is another thing that I won’t be able to do without my usual tools.

I think that about covers it for my laptop task. Overall the only place where I’m going to lose some flexibility is going to be photo processing. Everything else seems like a win.

Synchronization

I’ve started thinking about how iPad would play with my iPhone and it seems there are a lot of weak spots here. I think the problem is that it all rests in the 3rd party developers’ hands. I believe this is about the only place where Android has a winning hand over iOS. It handles cloud syncing much better.

Of course there is a good number of 3rd party and built-in apps (mail, calendars) that can handle syncing just fine, but those are in a minority. Here’s a dumb example — I would like to play Angry Birds on a big iPad screen while at home, but if I’m going to work on a subway I can’t take out my iPhone and continue my progress because iPhone has no idea about the state of the game on iPad and so on.

Hopefully more and more developers will implement cloud syncing in their apps, but it would really be great for Apple to provide some official API and host it on their servers just as they do with Push Notifications.

Refresh Cycle

Now the big question is when will the next generation iPad come around? Will it be handled as iPhones and iPods that get a yearly refresh or will it be more like iMacs and MacBooks that don’t have much of a regular schedule?

Currently iPhones get refreshed during the summer, iPods during the fall. iPad was first announced at the end of January and was released in April. Could we expect the same cycle for iPad 2? Only Apple knows.

Summary

I think that about covers all the topics that have been popping up in my head. It’s going to be nice to have iPad at home and it’s going to be even nicer to have it on the road.

I think the logical thing to do here is to just gather up all my patience and just wait it out until the 2nd version comes around. I can also see great value in having an option of having a 3G connection on it, but I might be just too greedy to pay $130 to even have an ability to use it. This remains to be seen.

What do you think? Do I wait or do I go for it now? Do I pick Wi-Fi only model or do I get Wi-Fi + 3G one?

I’d love to hear some of your thoughts and feedback on the subject.