The Apple iPad 2 Review
by Brian Klug, Anand Lal Shimpi & Vivek Gowri on March 19, 2011 8:01 PM ESTiMovie
by Vivek Gowri
Apple launched two new content-editing apps along with the iPad 2 - GarageBand and iMovie. iMovie is a $4.99 app available exclusively for iPad 2 (an updated iPhone 4/iPod touch 4 equivalent was launched simultaneously), so I'll start there.
iMovie basically lets you do a decent amount of video editing on the iPad itself. You can edit videos shot on the iPad, or video content imported from SD card using the camera connection kit. Unfortunately as we discovered in our testing, nearly all other sources of video aren't supported by iMovie. If you have grand visions of doing all of your video editing on the iPad 2 you'll want to hit the reset button on your expectations (or wait a few years until it's actually possible). Honestly, I can only see myself using it for video shot with the iPad, it makes the entire video editing process very streamlined on the device and makes video editing something you can do on the go. Just to test it out, I shot a series of videos of my car and stitched them together using iMovie, then added some titles and a soundtrack.
Being able to touch and swipe through the video clips and change the transitions and video cut points using a tactile input method actually makes it a lot easier to use than one would expect. Swipes and gestures rule the day, and it's a great way to edit various clips and put them together in a cohesive manner.
There's not a lot in the way of different options to deal with crossfades and transitions between clips, but the cross dissolve transition that is used as a default is pretty decent for amateur quality videos, especially since you can edit the length of the transition, and the various theme-specific transitions work too, if a little bit tacky.
But this is a video editing app for a 1.3lb tablet; considering that fact, you can get some pretty solid quality video out of it at the end. I'm pretty pleased with the video that I got out at the end, take a look for yourself.
You get a decent number of export options - Facebook, Youtube, Vimeo, CNN iReport (there's a CNN iMovie theme that can be added to videos as well), iTunes, and Camera Roll. From the camera roll, you can copy it to a computer and basically do whatever you want with it. iMovie isn't going to replace any serious video editing application, but I can see it being very useful during CES or another tradeshow - shooting video on the iPad, cutting it down, adding a few transitions, and uploading it in a matter of minutes, all from the same device.
Garage Band
by Vivek Gowri
GarageBand is a new app that Apple is releasing for both generations of iPad, for the same $4.99 price as iMovie, and beyond the basic premise of creating audio tracks from scratch, it's actually not that similar to the desktop app.
Apple has loaded a few instruments in GarageBand - a set of piano and keyboard options, a few drum kits, a vocal sampler/audio recorder from the mic, and even a virtual guitar amp, but the real story is the "Smart Instruments" that they have included.
Meet my brother, Gokul Gowri. He's 12, in 7th grade, and plays violin and piano at a relatively high level. I handed him my iPad 2 with GarageBand and asked him for his impressions.
After messing around with the included piano, he started experimenting with Smart Instruments. The first thing he said was that Smart Instruments could basically play the instrument for you, making good sounding audio clips and multilayered tracks easy to compose for even non-musically inclined people. There are four Smart Instruments - Piano, Bass, Guitar, and Drums. The Guitar is probably the most impressive one of the lot, with 6 strings and the ability to pick or strum at them. The cool part though, is that Smart Instruments will add the chords for you. They're preset chords and unfortunately, users can't define their own chords. That would let more advanced musicians really customise the guitar to their liking (my brother abandoned the smart chords really quickly after discovering he couldn't change them). The nice thing is that you can turn them off and pick your notes on the 6 strings individually. Smart Bass is exactly the same, except it's a four string bass instead of a guitar.
Smart Piano works similarly in that it takes away the actual keys and gives you a pad to press to get the note, with an option to sustain the notes. Smart Drums is another interesting one - you're provided with a grid dependant on volume and pattern complexity that you drag the various drum elements onto to generate a full rhythm.
And then of course, there's autoplay. Press the note, it'll play an entire clip for you, with the complexity of the clip depending on the level of autoplay selected. It's pretty cool if you're not a music person, but if you are, you can actually produce an interesting rhythm with the different options in Smart Instruments. There's a maximum of 8 tracks allowed, and you can duplicate and loop them to create a full song.
My brother decided to hold an impromptu recording session and ended up with this:
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vol7ron - Sunday, March 20, 2011 - link
Smoking the magic of realism, that's the point this device needs to hit. You can take that back to your IPS gods.I didn't say it was feasible to happen right away, but that's where it needs to be for the low-end devices. The upper-end of the spectrum should land in around $450.
BTW, you misunderstand R&D and cost procurement. Just because these devices have a hefty starting price does not mean the cost of materials is even 1/1000 of that price. Whether the service providers are eating the price, or not, it all comes down to the fact that these devices do have a large mark-up. I think you need to consider the cost of an iPod Touch to the iPhone if you need a simpler way to compare - the 3G modem doesn't cost $300 lol and the Touch still had a high mark-up.
"when the competition with a 2 decade head start still hasn’t been able to compete on price" ... no one has had a 2-decade head start. Technology (manufacturing and supply chain) and costs have both shifted over the last 20 years to make things more affordable. You come at this with an emotional response of "that can't happen", when I say it can and it will. Be care about being shortsighted it will come back to bite you one way or another.
name99 - Sunday, March 20, 2011 - link
Look, if you want a crappy cheap computer, go out and buy one. They make $50 computers (none of that extravagant $100 OLPC nonsense) for India powered by 6502s.But at the end of the day you are being disingenuous. You don't ACTUALLY want a $250 PC --- you can get something like that today if you buy a second hand Eee on eBay. What you want is an actual iPad, not something with a tenth of the functionality, but at $250.
Good luck with that.
And spare us this "eventually". If you're not content with a $250 eBay Eee now, buy the time the $250 iPad equivalent comes around, the real iPad 5 will be quadcore, 2GiB of RAM and a retina display screen, and you STILL won't find the cheap equivalent an acceptable choice, not when there's a real device at $600 that is so much better.
medi01 - Monday, March 21, 2011 - link
"Competition" has such devices for as low as about 100$, go google. They don't come with IPS panel or good battery, but how much do those parts cost?Competitors like Samsung do not have any reason to lower prices, as they are competing for different customers anyway. Not to mention, people perceive cheaper devices to be inferior.
medi01 - Monday, March 21, 2011 - link
PSThere are NETBOOKS (from Acer, Lenovo or pretty much anyone) with multi-touch screens for below 300$.
michael2k - Monday, March 21, 2011 - link
They also weigh 2 to 3 times as much and have half or less the battery life.sean.crees - Monday, March 21, 2011 - link
I still am amazed when people complain about the iPad being too expensive. I remember a little over a year ago everyone expected it to have a starting price of $999. It debuted at half that, and people still complain it's too much.It's now a year later, and even Apple's competitors cannot make a device that is competitive with a $499 starting price point or less.
Here is where i see the iPad fitting in. The console and notebook have effectively replaced my PC. Everything i used to do on a PC i now do on either my notebook or my PS3. You're always going to have a cellphone. The tablet then does what you used to use a notebook for 10 years ago.
You end up with a cell phone, a tablet, a notebook and if you want to game, a console.
I don't know if a tablet will ever replace a notebook, maybe for some who can't afford all 3 and have to choose between a tablet and a notebook and don't need the productivity and power you gain with a notebook. Like how a TV is just for media consumption, a tablet is the same but you carry it around with you.
Mishera - Tuesday, March 22, 2011 - link
People complain about the device being too expensive because for what it is capable of doing, and compared to other devices it is overpriced. For Apple the price makes perfect sense for what they portray as a luxury device. It starts with enough room to drop the price (which they did sort of) and to be able to introduce another smaller ipad at some point in the future without cutting into their sails of macs. That's probably why they went with their keyboard choice.I thought about buying one but came to the conclusion that it simply was far to expensive to justify, especially since all I needed was an ereader, and later a new laptop. But I ended up getting on for Christmas so I wasn't complaining. Turns out the iPad is for EXACTLY what Steve said it was for. This is essentially a couch companion. This takes care of all my computer need when I'm at home and don't have to do work. But that's about all it's good for since it's too big to feasible carry around and doesn't replace your laptop.
I still stand by my belief that the ipad is overpriced though much more attractive at $400. I think tablets will be very important in the future, it's just that they are far away and apple right now is only interested in making consumer devices while everyone else follows them. But right now everyone seems happy with just a new toy..
george1924 - Saturday, March 19, 2011 - link
DSC_2328.jpg and DSC_2364.jpggeorge1924 - Saturday, March 19, 2011 - link
Great in-depth review though! Still can't get excited about tablets very much yet. I've had fun playing around with them, but don't think I could justify it along with a laptop, desktop, etc...MonkeyPaw - Saturday, March 19, 2011 - link
Yeah, and the problem with playing with them at the store is that they always look really gross. I was messing with a tablet at a store today, and immediately washed my hands afterwards. I'm not a huge germ-a-phobe, but when I guy blows his nose, then approaches the electronics, I just start getting uneasy. I guess the screen just shows what's on all the mice and keyboards there, too. :p