iPad Dos Equis: Stay Thirsty My Friends

Apple's event today was everything I wanted it to be. I didn't even have to furiously hit refresh on several liveblogs, because TWiT had a livestream where they read the updates from several sites. That makes it much easier to actually get work done during a Stevenote.

Apple is taking an aggressive stance with other tablet makers. They took a $500 tablet and made it thinner, lighter, bumped up the CPU to dual core, added cameras, and yet kept the price at $500.

Price drives sales in this space. No matter how much the Android and Windows tablet manufacturers will try to outspec the iPad, they will not achieve success outside of the geeks. If the $800 Motorola Xoom is a sign of things to come, Apple will lose some share but maintain a significant lead in the tablet market.

I'm glad Apple deny waste resources on a Retina display, which would have driven the price up. The screen is already beautiful, and I rarely use the device in direct sunlight so glare is not a dealbreaker for me.

The new tablet versions of GarageBand and iMovie are amazing. I only hope that they are not "optimized" for the iPad 2, and run sluggish for those that choose to keep their original iPad.

The iPad 2 is a must get, especially considering that the current iPad still has retained a good amount of resale value. I just Gazelled mine for 70% of its value (before they decreased the trade-in value), so I don't have to come out of pocket much on March 11th.  Before Gazelle, I tried Craigslist. The blessed Henry Artkins quickly reminded me why I don't sell on there anymore:

"Thanks for getting back to me, i want to buy your (iPad) for my sons Birthday he is in West Africa where he works with Shell oil Company, I will be paying you through PayPal, these secures and protects two parties in a transaction... I will like you to send me your PayPal invoice or your PayPal identification email for payment... I will provide you my sons shipping information for shipment as soon as the payment is sent. I will be paying you the sum of ($780 USD) for the cost and shipping, Shipping will be through USPS Express mail. Thanks for your anticipated co-operation.

Remain Blessed,

Mr. Henry Artkins"

The Daily Exercise in Futility

When news about The Daily iPad app first surfaced, I thought that it would be the best of both worlds. My hope was that it would combine the traditional tone and long form journalism of the old guard (NYT, WashPost apps) with the realtime and social nature of the web (Flipboard).

The great thing about these three apps is that they have intuitive user interfaces that load quickly and allow you to browse efficiently to get to whatever you are interested in at a particular moment. I can get in, get what I want quickly, and get out, like those hilarious Windows Phone commercials. Or, I can just browse around and find articles that I wouldn't normally select out of a list. Overall, these apps replicate my pre-Internet newspaper reading experience (Yes Virginia, there was a world before the Internet).

My hopes have been dashed. After using the Daily ... well, daily since it released, several things have irked me about me. Some of the more glaring issues have already been patched, most notably the constant crashing.

These two problems rank the highest on my list of irritations:

1) Load time is sloooowwwww!.

I tried to update the app at 5:30pm after work, and it took about 3 minutes to download. This is WAY too long. I ruled out any network issues because performance was fine before and after the update. To make it even worse, I previously updated the app this morning at 6am. After the painful update, there were only minor additions in te paper. WHAT was it downloading all of that time!?

2) The audio feature is borked

I love, love the idea of having audio. When I am getting ready in the morning, I usually listen to the NPR hourly update and a few on demand stories that I can easily see in a menu and quickly add to a playlist.

Unfortunately, none of this exists in the Daily. There is no menu implementation of any kind to see what stories have audio - there's just an audio button on the main screen. Press that, and it automatically scrolls to the cover page of the first article with audio. Want to read that article while the audio plays? Too bad, that shuts off the audio. Want to skip past it? The only way to do that is to turn audio off, and back up. If you press the forward button, which is located next to the audio button, it simply scrolls to the next story (that may or may not have audio) and shuts off the audio. Ugly, ugly, ugly. Oh, and how in the world can a high profile release not support background audio while multitasking?

In it's current implementation, I don't get much use out of the Daily. The slow loading time makes it impratical to use while not connected to wifi, and the rudimentary audio features does not allow me to easily listen to audio from stories of my choosing. If these two issues are fixed, I'm all on board. Your move, Murdoch.

Get Ready for Christmas in March

March 2nd is an iPad Apple event.  BGR has a supposedly exclusive pic that it now admits may be a render, but its pretty clear from the invite that new iPads are coming soon.  Yes!

At first I didn't really care much for cameras on an iPad, but after using Facetime a few times I can see the utlity.  It's pretty cool to show someone what you're doing while on the phone, as long as you are using a headset. The last time I did this I showed my hungry friend some chicken I was cooking (i.e. making sure the chicken my wife prepared doesn't burn).

I hope Apple hasn't wasted time and resources on a Retina display.  It was a significant expense for the iPhone 4, but the iPad's screen is already beautiful.  I'd rather see a screen that stands up better to sunlight, because the iPad is a pain to use outside.  I'd also rather see a thinner and lighter iPad, which should be expected since Apple always slices off some fat with each revision.

The new iPad definitely needs a faster processor, because multitasking is noticeably slower than on my iPhone 4, which has double the RAM.  As applications get more complex, swithcing between them requires more juice.

Finally, an SD or USB port would be nice, but not necessary.  DropBox and Goodreader have pretty much solved any file transfer issues for me.  I agree that a native Apple solution would be superior, but I'd prefer the iPad to be left without a file system.  The simpler, the better.

My next post will have some rants about some of my favorite and least favorite apps.  The Daily, I'm looking at you - shape up or ship out if you want my subscription!