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>Mossberg: Has the potential to profoundly change portable computing

“For the past week or so, I have been testing a sleek, light, silver-and-black tablet computer called an iPad. After spending hours and hours with it, I believe this beautiful new touch-screen device from Apple has the potential to change portable computing profoundly, and to challenge the primacy of the laptop,” Walter S. Mossberg reports for The Wall Street Journal. “It could even help, eventually, to propel the finger-driven, multitouch user interface ahead of the mouse-driven interface that has prevailed for decades.”

In his extensive full review, Mossberg covers many areas, including, but not limited to:

• The iPad is much more than an e-book or digital periodical reader, though it does those tasks brilliantly, better in my view than the Amazon Kindle.
• I’ve been using my test iPad heavily day and night, instead of my trusty laptops most of the time. As I got deeper into it, I found the iPad a pleasure to use…
• My verdict is that, while it has compromises and drawbacks, the iPad can indeed replace a laptop for most data communication, content consumption and even limited content creation, a lot of the time.
• I was impressed with the iPad’s battery life, which I found to be even longer than Apple’s ten-hour claim, and far longer than on my laptops or smart phones. For my battery test, I played movies, TV shows and other videos back-to-back until the iPad died. This stressed the device’s most power-hogging feature, its screen. The iPad lasted 11 hours and 28 minutes, about 15% more than Apple claimed… Oh, and all the while during this battery marathon, I kept the Wi-Fi network running and the email downloading constantly in the background. Your mileage may vary, but with Wi-Fi off and the screen turned down from the fairly bright level I used, you might even do better.
• I also was impressed with the overall speed of the iPad. Apple’s custom processor makes it wicked fast. Screens appear almost instantly…
• I found the iPad virtual keyboard more comfortable and accurate to use than the cramped keyboards and touchpads on many netbooks…
• The Web browser also works beautifully, and takes advantage of the big screen to show full pages and cut down on scrolling.
• Watching videos, viewing photos, listening to music, reading books and playing games was satisfying and fun.
• Apple’s optional iPad word processor, called Pages, is a serious content creation app that should help the iPad compete with laptops and can import Microsoft Office files.
• The photo app is striking, and much more like the one on the Mac than the one on the iPhone. The device can even be used as a digital picture frame. The iPod app is beautiful, too, as are the calendar and contacts app.
• I was able to try a pre-release version of The Wall Street Journal’s new iPad app (which I had nothing to do with designing), and found it gorgeous and highly functional—by far the best implementation of the newspaper I have ever seen on a screen.
• I also found iBooks, Apple’s book reader and store, easy to use, and read a couple of books on it. I consider the larger color screen superior to the Kindle’s, and encountered no eye strain.”The first iPad is a winner. It stacks up as a formidable electronic-reader rival for Amazon’s Kindle. It gives portable game machines from Nintendo and Sony a run for their money,” Edward C. Baig reports for USA Today. “At the very least, the iPad will likely drum up mass-market interest in tablet computing in ways that longtime tablet visionary and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates could only dream of.”

“An often-asked question after Jobs unveiled the tablet at the end of January was: What is iPad’s purpose for being? I answered that question by surfing the Web, watching the movies Up and Michael Jackson’s This Is It, reading the late Sen. Edward Kennedy’s True Compass, playing Scrabble and an accelerometer-driven game called RealRacing HD, and boning up on the periodic table of elements,” Baig reports.

“The iPad is not so much about what you can do — browse, do e-mail, play games, read e-books and more — but how you can do it. That’s where Apple is rewriting the rulebook for mainstream computing,” Baig reports. “There is no mouse or physical keyboard. Everything is based on touch. All programs arrive directly through Apple’s App Store. Apple’s tablet is fun, simple, stunning to look at and blazingly fast. Inside is a new Apple chip, the A4.”

“What does a successful iPad launch mean for traditional netbooks? They’ll have to adapt or disappear,” Baig reports. “Apple is taking solid aim at the burgeoning electronic-reader market dominated by the Kindle. Judged solely from a sizzle standpoint: There’s no contest… Newspaper and magazine layouts look vastly superior on the iPad compared with Kindle. The iPad is backlit, so you can read in the dark. You have to supply a reading light with Kindle.”

Baig reports, “Apple has pretty much nailed it with this first iPad, though there’s certainly room for improvement. Nearly three years after making a splash with the iPhone, Apple has delivered another impressive product that largely lives up to the hype.”

Source: Here

Pogue: Designed & built by perfectionists; If you like the concept, you’ll love iPad

“Apple asserts that the iPad runs 10 hours on a charge of its nonremovable battery — but we all know you can’t trust the manufacturer,” David Pogue reports for The New York Times. “And sure enough, in my own test, the iPad played movies continuously from 7:30 a.m. to 7:53 p.m. — more than 12 hours. That’s four times as long as a typical laptop or portable DVD player.”

“The iPad is so fast and light, the multitouch screen so bright and responsive, the software so easy to navigate, that it really does qualify as a new category of gadget,” Pogue reports. “Some have suggested that it might make a good goof-proof computer for technophobes, the aged and the young; they’re absolutely right.”

“And the techies are right about another thing: the iPad is not a laptop. It’s not nearly as good for creating stuff. On the other hand, it’s infinitely more convenient for consuming it — books, music, video, photos, Web, e-mail and so on,” Pogue reports. “For most people, manipulating these digital materials directly by touching them is a completely new experience — and a deeply satisfying one.”

Pogue reports, “The bottom line is that the iPad has been designed and built by a bunch of perfectionists. If you like the concept, you’ll love the machine.”

Source: NYT

Baig: The first iPad is a winner

“The first iPad is a winner. It stacks up as a formidable electronic-reader rival for Amazon’s Kindle. It gives portable game machines from Nintendo and Sony a run for their money,” Edward C. Baig reports for USA Today. “At the very least, the iPad will likely drum up mass-market interest in tablet computing in ways that longtime tablet visionary and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates could only dream of.”

“An often-asked question after Jobs unveiled the tablet at the end of January was: What is iPad’s purpose for being? I answered that question by surfing the Web, watching the movies Up and Michael Jackson’s This Is It, reading the late Sen. Edward Kennedy’s True Compass, playing Scrabble and an accelerometer-driven game called RealRacing HD, and boning up on the periodic table of elements,” Baig reports.

“The iPad is not so much about what you can do — browse, do e-mail, play games, read e-books and more — but how you can do it. That’s where Apple is rewriting the rulebook for mainstream computing,” Baig reports. “There is no mouse or physical keyboard. Everything is based on touch. All programs arrive directly through Apple’s App Store. Apple’s tablet is fun, simple, stunning to look at and blazingly fast. Inside is a new Apple chip, the A4.”

“What does a successful iPad launch mean for traditional netbooks? They’ll have to adapt or disappear,” Baig reports. “Apple is taking solid aim at the burgeoning electronic-reader market dominated by the Kindle. Judged solely from a sizzle standpoint: There’s no contest… Newspaper and magazine layouts look vastly superior on the iPad compared with Kindle. The iPad is backlit, so you can read in the dark. You have to supply a reading light with Kindle.”

Baig reports, “Apple has pretty much nailed it with this first iPad, though there’s certainly room for improvement. Nearly three years after making a splash with the iPhone, Apple has delivered another impressive product that largely lives up to the hype.”

Source: Baig

Andy Ihnatko: One of the best computers EVER

Ihnatko says that the iPad is one of the best computers ever. He starts his review by saying that the iPad meets or exceeds all of the hype that preceded the release, and then goes on to mention that “it’s a computer that many people have wanted for years.”

As in Walt Mossberg’s review, Andy comments that it can easily last 10 hours on a charge, it can hold just about any piece of media you ever want to carry with you, and that it does the “dull compulsories of computing (Mail, the web, and Microsoft Office-style apps) so well” that the iPad will, in many cases, take the place of a standard laptop computer.

Ihnatko, who has had the pleasure of playing with an iPad for the last week, gushes about Apple’s innovation, saying “I’m suddenly wondering if any other company is as committed to invention as Apple. Has any other company ever demonstrated a restlessness to stray from the safe and proven, and actually invent things?”

The result? As he says, “The iPad user experience is instantly compelling and elegant… It’s a computer that’s designed for speed, mobility, and tactile interaction above all other considerations.”

Ihnatko thinks that Apple got the design of the iPad right because “the excitement slips away after about ten seconds, and you’re completely focused on the task at hand… In situation after situation, I find that the iPad is the best computer in my household and menagerie.”

Source: TUAW

iPad – will start to change the face of mobile (AND perhaps portable) computing from April 3rd. 🙂

Anyone on ecademy who considers themselves in business needs to look very closely at the iPad.
http://www.apple.com/ipad/guided-tours/