iPad Archives (8 posts)
iPad vs Galaxy Tab
The Samsung Galaxy Tab is now on sale in Canada. I took one look at the price and wondered why anyone would want to purchase a Galaxy Tab over an iPad.
Samsung Galaxy Tab - $649, 16 GB, 7” screen, 7 hour battery
Apple iPad - $549, 16 GB, 9.7” screen, 10 hour battery
So for $100 more you get a smaller screen, less battery life, and fewer apps. On the plus side you get Flash and a 3.2 MP camera. I think this is going to be a tough sell when you can an iPad for $100 less.
It has taken Apple 30 years but they’ve finally managed to make a superior product for less money than the competition. It used to be that you would pay a premium for anything Apple made. That seems to have ended with the iPad.
Posted in iPad at 8:56 PM | Comments (0)
Samsung Galaxy Tab Is Not An iPad Killer
I just read the Samsung Galaxy Tab review at TechRadar and it doesn’t sound like Samsung has an iPad killer on their hands - “the Galaxy Tab is not as slick as we were hoping it would be. In fact, it’s not slick at all.”
According to TechRadar the Galaxy Tab suffers from:
- poor performance
- hyper-sensitive accelerometer
- poor battery life
- no WiFi version
Google admits that Android 2.2 OS is not optimized for tablets yet so this might be why the Galaxy Tab has a few problems. Maybe this is why the battery performance is so bad. In TechRadar’s testing the Tab only lasted 4 hours!
Samsung’s tablet also gives off a fair amount of heat. No wonder they went with a smaller screen than the iPad. I wonder how long the battery would last if the screen was the same size as the iPad’s? Cupertino has nothing to worry about yet.
Posted in iPad at 4:12 PM | Comments (0)
BlackPad
Research In Motion is supposedly getting ready to launch their BlackPad to compete with the iPad. A lot of companies are rumored to be prepping their iPad killers but a I don’t think any of them will enjoy the success that Apple has.
RIM just released the Blackberry Torch to compete with the iPhone. The problem is that the Torch has a small 480x360 screen that was cool back in 2007, lacks apps and fails to impress Android or iPhone 4 users.
How will RIM compete with the iPad? According to BlackBerryCool.com it will have front and rear facing cameras (like the iPhone 4), Bluetooth and no 3G support. There is still no word on whether it will have a slide out keyboard for business use.
Apps? There hasn’t been much talk of killer apps to compete with Apple’s App Store. Still, circle November on your calendars and stay tuned.
Posted in iPad at 9:09 AM | Comments (0)
Why I Love The Wired iPad App
I resisted purchasing the first issue of Wired magazine for the iPad. I bought the June print edition for $5.99 CDN instead. I heard all of the negative criticism about the magazine app - URLs don’t open up in a web browser, email addresses aren’t clickable, you can’t copy and paste text and so on.
I didn’t think the iPad Edition of Wired was worth the $5.99 CDN. So I took a pass.
Wired dropped the price to $3.99 CDN and I decided to take a second look. I really enjoyed the experience of reading the magazine on the iPad. Given a choice, I would prefer to read the iPad edition of Wired.
Clicking on an email link at the end of a story will now open up Mail and allow you to email the writer of the story. I still found that links didn’t work in the stories and ads but I didn’t care. It’s almost like reading the print addition - no hyperlinks and no copy/paste of text. I’d rather focus on reading one of the articles instead of getting sidetracked with another website anyway.
There are a few neat features such as embedded video and multiple charts. In some cases the video is used perfectly but I found the charts to be a little gimmicky, although, they are efficient in terms of saving space in the layout.
I don’t know if it is the novelty of a new app but I find that I’m reading more of the magazine in the iPad edition of Wired. The layout is beautifully customized for the iPad screen in portrait or landscape view. So far, I’m very impressed and look forward to next month’s issue and the new features that Wired plans to to introduce.
Posted in iPad at 9:39 PM | Comments (0)
Forrester Research Is Wrong About iPad Sales
Fortune wrote a commentary about a recent Forrester Research that seemed to indicate that iPad sales will plummet. Forrester Research predicted that only 3.5 million tablet computers like the iPad will be sold in 2010.
On June 22, published a press release on its website - Apple Sells Three Million iPads in 80 Days. If you believe the Forrester Research report, then Apple will probably sell another 500,000 iPads in the next 6 months. This doesn’t even take into account the other tablet computers that are on the market.
If anything, iPad sales are speeding up. As more people get a chance to use the iPad they tend to want one. I haven’t come across anyone that didn’t want an iPad. A lot of these same people aren’t sure what they would use the iPad for but they still want one.
I’m beginning to wonder if Sarah Rotman Epps actually used an iPad before she wrote her report. Her forecast for tablet computers is way off. Epps just doesn’t get it.
Use the iPad for a couple of hours. Read a magazine, surf the web, play a game and check the latest weather forecast, and then you’ll begin to understand why iPads are flying off the shelves.
Until you actually use the iPad, I don’t think you can really have an opinion about it that matters.
Posted in iPad at 8:46 PM | Comments (1)
What iPad Apps Are You Using?
I’ve had my iPad for a week now and I’m slowly figuring out what apps are actually useful as opposed to eye candy apps to show off the features of the iPad. I’m always curious to see what apps others are recommending. Let me know what works for you.
Here are some of the apps that I couldn’t do without:
I use this app to manage all of my passwords and logins on my Macintosh, iPhone and now my iPad. I can synch my iPhone and iPad via Wi-Fi with the Macintosh version of 1Password and keep everything up to date. This is one app I can’t live without.
My version of 1Password Pro for iPhone works on the iPad and the interface is stunning. I’ve read a lot of negative things on iTunes App Store about the iPad version being really buggy but so far so good.
Next to Safari, I use Twiiterific the most on my iPad. This is a gorgeous app that makes using Twitter a great experience. I still use Tweetie 2 Twitter on my iPhone but given a choice I would always be using Twitterific.
The best thing about Twitterific is that it is FREE althought I would gladly pay to use this app.
Online backup, file sync and sharing made easy. If you want access to your files from your Macintosh, iPhone and iPad then Dropbox is your best bet. I backup files to my account, share larger files with clients and store working files so that I have access to them wherever I am.
I have a basic account that doesn’t cost a thing and provides me with 2.5 GB of storage. How amazing is that?
CloudReaders is a free book/comic viewer, fully optimized for iPad. It supports PDF, CBZ, ZIP, CBR and RAR format.
Until iBooks gets upgraded later this month to read PDF files, this is the best PDF reader on the iPad in my opinion - fast, ad-free, and doesn’t cost a thing. I like that it also provides a Two-Up display for reading and based on the reviews it performs better than some of the paid apps out there.
I purchased the pro version of Instapaper for iPad ($4.99) which lets me read save web pages offline. I have a Wi-Fi version of the iPad. If I know that I’m going to be in a dead zone like the subway then I can read web pages that I stored earlier.
Other Apps
I purchased Moto X Mayhem for 99¢ - a great little motorbike side scrolling game that can be addictive.
The Marvel Comics app is very cool. Check out the free comics to get a feel for the app and then choose from paid comics for just $1.99.
The Weather Channel Max has great graphics, 5 day forecast, weather radar and more. Free app.
The Epicurious Recipes and Shopping List is another beautiful app with a lot of recipes from epicurious.com. The tab interface is really well done. I also have this for the iPhone but almost never use it.
The WSJ and New York Times Editors’ Choice are decent apps but I prefer to read the web versions of these newspapers in Safari. Same goes with the IMDB app. The website is much better than the actual app.
EW’s Must List is an interesting app for the simple approach it takes with the interface. PCalc Lite is another app I actually use quite a bit. I can’t understand why Apple wouldn’t include a simple port of the calculator app for iPhone.
So what am I missing?
Posted in iPad at 11:46 PM | Comments (1)
The West Wing Loves Their iPads
The Washington Post says has a story on how the West Wing loves their iPads:
The folks who gather early every morning in the West Wing office of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel have something new in common these days. Practically everyone has an iPad - or will have one very soon.
I was curious to learn what kind of apps people in the White House are using on their iPads. It turns out that Scrabble, all of the newspaper apps, Epicurious and the Vanity Fair magazine app are popular.
Posted in iPad at 10:56 PM | Comments (0)
Loving my new iPad
I cancelled my pre-order for an Apple iPad when I found out that it would ship sometime in June. I waited a month for it to come to Canada. I’m not ready to wait another month while shipments trickled in.
I checked Twitter for “iPad availability in Toronto” and was surprised to see that Carbon Computing still had some in stock. Today I phoned them and picked up the second-last iPad (16 GB Wi-Fi version) in their store.
3G? No thank you. I already have an iPhone 3G for when I’m out and about which isn’t very often. I work at home and wouldn’t really use the 3G option. The Wi-Fi version of the iPad should be perfect for my needs.
Why buy an iPad in the first place? The simple answer is that I’m an Apple fanboy. I drank the Steve Jobs cool-aid. I also design websites for a living and want to be able to design sites so they render properly on an iPad. Apple sold 2 million of these things in the last 60 days. The tablet market isn’t going away any time soon. It’s still too early to tell if the iPad is a game changer but if it is, I want to be prepared and that means using an iPad.
A lot of people say, “I don’t get iPad.”. The commercials and the print ads don’t tell the full story. You really have use an iPad and experience it to see what all of the fuss is about. The web browsing on this thing is great. I don’t know how but web pages load much faster on my iPad than they do on my desktop computer. Everything feels fast, the user interface looks amazing and it is a lot of fun to use.
I’m typing this blog post on the iPad and I’m surprised at how quickly I’ve adapted to the on-screen keyboard. In landscape mode the keyboard is almost full-size and quite usable.
If you’re a photographer then I think you will love this device. Photos look great on the iPad and it’s a great way to show your portfolio. Optimizing my photos for this device is now on my to do list.
You can use most of your iPhone apps on the iPad but they don’t fill the screen. There is an option to display apps at twice their size but they don’t look very good. Try using the iPad version of Twitterific to manage your Twitter account and you’ll be impressed. Twitterific is free and much nicer than the new Twitter app for iPhone.
Using the iPad is similar to the experience I had when I purchased my first Macintosh in the late 1980s. I can’t put it down and turn it off.
Posted in iPad at 6:58 PM | Comments (3)
