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Apple iPad Review

redbenflies

The iPad is an interesting piece of technology. I had a chance to review one for use at my job. While reviewing it I found the included apps and software to be very intuitive and easy to use. The iPad I used had no 3G account, but it was easily configured for any available wireless internet. It has a lot of neat bells and whistles, such as being able to sense which direction is down, so by tilting the screen toward you friend, it automatically flips the picture so they can see what is on the screen without having to turn the device around. It ran all the apps with virtually no hesitation and I had no issues with crashing or lockups (pretty typical of Apple products). The ability to zoom out and in by simply moving your fingers apart or together while touching the screen was also a nice feature.

However well the iPad runs, it did have several drawbacks that make it unusable for my job. The first is that it has no USB ports. You can transfer data by email, or possibly by an app you would need to buy from Apple, but no facilities for transferring data by a flash drive. What about peripherals? You can’t plug a printer into it, so I guess you would need to set it up with a networked printer. That means that there is a whole market of peripherals out there that you can’t use on it.

Also, it’s Safari (web browser) was very limited. When visiting a site like youtube.com (pretty popular site), it was very limited to what video’s it was able to play. It also suffers from it’s inability to use any site driven by Adobe Flash. Apples CEO has stated that it will not ever use flash. They will not approve any apps or allow flash to be used on their iPod. The iPod apparently has some conflicts that are irreconcilable with Flash… causing it to overheat and lockup.

Safari also has some drawbacks with the programs we use regularly in our workplace for tracking parts and log info, which is pretty important for us to use. You can access the program, but it is unable to expand the views, which seems to require Microsoft Internet Explorer (Firefox doesn’t work for that site either).

As an overview, I think the iPad has some great possibilities in the workplace, or as a fun toy, but unless Apple loses the “we’ll tell you what you need” attitude, PC’s will forever dominate the market.

Looking at what is being worked on, I see some great PC and Android based “pads” coming out this summer that have the potential to fill the niche our company is looking for, and be able to use. The ones that Google and Asus have been putting together have internal GPS, USB ports, and all kinds of other features that will make them a lot of fun to use. Looking forward to trying them out!

Ben Horning

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