New iPad Thoughts March 29, 2012

Got me a New iPad

One of the key things I do with my iPad is read Kindle books. It's a great device for reading and for much more. I spend almost as much time staring at the iPad screen as I do at my computer screen every day.

When the new iPad was announced with a higher resolution screen, I hopped on Apple's web site and ordered one for myself. Of course, I justify the purchase because I need to insure that Visi.Pro works on the latest and greatest iPad hardware. ;-)

The new iPad experience

The new iPad arrived while I was in London. But I got it from my PO box the Monday following the Friday arrival date.

The first thing about the new iPad is it's much heavier than the iPad 2. It has the heft of an original iPad, but has that fragile iPad 2 feeling. I wish Apple had packaged the new iPad up like the original iPad… in a slightly beefier package.

The second thing about the new iPad is the screen is spectacular. There are no words to describe how much nicer the new screen is vs. the iPad 2. It's a night and day difference. Reading web pages and Kindle books on the new iPad is mind-blowingly excellent. My kids recently turned me onto DragonVale and DragonVale looks so, so, so much better on the new iPad.

The new iPad feels even more responsive than the iPad 2. The original iPad feels sluggish. The iPad 2 feels "natural." The new iPad feels supernaturally slick. It's almost as if it's anticipating what I want to do. I just love the responsiveness.

I think the non-numerical naming of the iPad is the right thing to do. It's just like the MacBook Pro or the MacBook Air. There are different models and the models have different attributes. The models are generally referred to by the release timeframe (e.g., spring 2011 MacBook Air). That kind of naming seems to be more about the product family than a given iteration of the product. I hope Apple applies that same thinking to the iPhone.

But it's not all good.

Steve Jobs would never have released this product

Steve Jobs was notorious about insisting that his products were amazingly slick. This slickness is an Apple hallmark and in my opinion, a critical part of why Apple has captured the hearts, minds, and wallets of a broad spectrum of consumers. Apple stuff "just works" and is that much better and nicer than competitive products.

The new iPad runs warm. No, it's not "too hot to handle" hot… it's just unexpectedly warm. It's unexpected that the new iPad doesn't feel like the iPad 2… and it's a rough edge that Apple should have dealt with. How? Dunno… that's the hardware engineer's job, but I think that Steve Jobs would have insisted that the new iPad not run warm.

The new iPad takes a dogs age to recharge. Yeah… I know… that's because it has a bigger battery. But the charger that comes with the new iPad does not deliver a correspondingly larger wattage. I've got a mental map of when and for how long I have to charge my iPad. If I'm taking a 5 hour flight, I've gotta get the iPad to around 80% and that takes about 3-4 hours. Well… with the new iPad it takes a ton longer. No, I haven't timed the charge cycle, but it's more than a few hours ahead of a long event. Once again, this is the kind of rough edge that I don't expect from Apple.

Conclusion

If you do a lot of reading or close-up work on your iPad, the new iPad has the most excellent screen you'll ever seen.

If you're buying an iPad to watch movies, play some games, and maybe read your Twitter feed, you'll be better off buying an iPad 2. The iPad 2 performs very, very well and the screen is really the only thing that differentiates the two machines and the value of the better screen may or may not be outweighed by the heavier, less comfortable, less convenient new iPad.