Apple's iPad - The AnandTech Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi, Brian Klug & Vivek Gowri on April 7, 2010 9:39 PM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Mac
- Apple
- iPad
- Mobile
User Interface: The Next Generation
For years we've wondered how desktop applications would get the multitouch treatment. While the iPad isn't a desktop computer, it does show us how multitouch will scale up to larger, deeper applications. And it can work very well.
Surprising is the fact that some of the biggest innovation in the UI department doesn't come from Apple, but from 3rd party developers instead. Will Smith (no, not the Will Smith, but still a cool dude) tweeted that the Epicurious app shows the potential of the platform. Now everyone has been talking about what does and doesn't show the potential of the platform, but Will wasn't wrong.
This app is a chef's aid, a recipe app. You can pick from different categories of food, browse lists of recipes by user ratings (updated over the internet) and it'll even put together a grocery list for you based on the recipes you've selected. The UI looks nothing like any smartphone, notebook or desktop application.
In fact, it doesn't even look like any Apple application either. It's perfectly unique and is tailor made to its job. It's an extension of Steve Jobs' take on the iPhone keyboard. For years smartphones had physical keyboards that were present in the same configuration regardless of what app you were running. The iPhone helped change that. For decades applications have all conformed to their underlying OS and its UI constraints. The iPad is Apple signaling the end of the cookie cutter, conformist UI.
Five years ago you might buy/laugh at a gadget that just does the function of the Epicurious app. Today you can run it along with thousands of others on the iPad. It's like the transition from fixed function silicon to general purpose processors. The iPad is the general purpose gadget.
ABC's player app is the same way. It looks nothing like the Epicurious app, or anything else on the iPad. You almost forget that you're using the iPad when you're using an app like this, your focus is entirely on the content.
That's just the first thing that came up, I don't actually watch it, I swear
This sort of innovation is unfortunately too few and far between on the iPad today. I don't doubt that it will come, but it's just not here yet in quantity. Most developers just got access to the iPad on This is why everyone keeps talking about the promise of the platform. Unfortunately spending (at least) $499 on the promise of more excellence to come is something only a habitual early adopter can afford to do. In many ways this echoes the original iPhone's launch. I feel like the iPhone made a stronger case for itself on day one, and viable iPhone competitors were years out rather than 0 - 12 months out in the case of the iPad.
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softdrinkviking - Thursday, April 8, 2010 - link
it occurs to me that i would want a way to protect the screen from getting scratched, and that would mean acover or case that would take the place of the clamshell design of a netbook/notebook.
why would i want to pay a price premium for a device with slower performance which only achieves acceptable functionality with the addition of expensive peripherals?
even after all the peripherals, i still lose the ability to effortlessly prop-up a netbook on my lap and type an email, or set a netbook up on a table in a coffee shop.
nothing about the tablet form factor is convenient for on-the-go usage for me.
the only situation where i can possibly imagine this being a preferable form factor is for wall mount usage or some other kind of "always left out in the open" type of use, like a universal remote control, or a mini home television viewer in the kitchen.
but it seems too expensive for those uses to me.
there must be a better alternative.
MacTheSpoon - Thursday, April 8, 2010 - link
Thanks for the great review. I was shocked you'd typed 40% of it with the iPad.Would you mind doing a comparison between the iPad keyboard and a physical keyboard? Since there is no utility to measure WPM for the iPad, maybe you could time how long it takes to type the same passage on both--something with some semicolons, quotation marks, and/or em dashes would be ideal, as I'm curious how the virtual keyboard stands up when the user must switch between layouts.
Brian Klug - Thursday, April 8, 2010 - link
You know, this was something I was dying to address a few times. I'm hoping that the iTextspeed application developers update their code soon to be iPad compatible, because that's something I want to test for sure.I've gotten to the point where I can touch type in landscape pretty easy, but I can also type pretty fast on the iPhone (around 80 WPM using their application). If and when it's updated, we might do something and include the update.
If it helps any, this was also composed pretty quickly from an iPad. ;)
Cheers,
Brian Klug
solipsism - Thursday, April 8, 2010 - link
1) How did you get a 720p video on the iPhone for the video test when the allowable maximum "up to 1.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second" video?2) From my testing, the iPad uses about 20MB more than the 3GS on startup. Most, if not all, of this is for the GPU. I've also noticed that native apps are also using more RAM. While the 3GS has enough to support standard multitasking the iPad does not. Even switching pages in Safari on the iPad would have to be reloaded while the 3GS does not. This will even more of an issue with the 3G version of the iPad. This gives me doubts about multitasking unles iPhone OS v4.0 is much more efficient (making 3.2.2 a stand in, which looks to be the case) and Apple has a more intuitive quasi-multitasking concept to unveil today.
Brian Klug - Thursday, April 8, 2010 - link
I can't speak about the RAM usage - are you using iStat or similar?However 720P H.264 video is certainly supported, which is what we used. I tested all the different profiles in handbrake, all of them work if you keep the video at or under 1280x720:
"H.264 video up to 720p, 30 frames per second, Main Profile level 3.1 with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats; MPEG-4 video, up to 2.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Simple Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats; Motion JPEG (M-JPEG) up to 35 Mbps, 1280 by 720 pixels, 30 frames per second, audio in ulaw, PCM stereo audio in .avi file format"
That's straight from http://www.apple.com/ipad/specs/
I think you're getting confused with the MPEG4 limitation which is indeed 640x480. ;)
-Brian Klug
Ph00 - Thursday, April 8, 2010 - link
sorry to be ot but is that a black mouth cur dog?Griswold - Thursday, April 8, 2010 - link
I'll wait for iPad v2 with reliably working wifi, no overheating, working PDF export, at least a backside camera for snapshots and maybe short flicks and perhaps multitasking. Ill stop here because any more missing features would seem greedy - apple needs a reason to sell you the 2012 iPad...As for atom based ipad - are you nuts? Nobody wants that garbage. Gimme a dual core cortex A9 instead.
Mike1111 - Thursday, April 8, 2010 - link
You mean the 2011 iPad, right? Because there's no way Apple isn't gonna do a yearly refresh cycle like they do with all their iPhone OS based products.Mike1111 - Thursday, April 8, 2010 - link
My mistake. You meant even iPad v2 in 2011 won't be feature complete because Apple needs some features for the 2012 iPad v3.Hm, how do I delete a post?
Lemonjellow - Thursday, April 8, 2010 - link
"Sure, but so could a TV that made me pancakes. Neither is ready yet or guaranteed."Can you confirm or deny that someone is working on said TV project? :- D