3:37pm Tuesday 8th June 2010
By Colin Miller
After months of hype, the iPad is finally here.
Billed by Steve Jobs as the gadget that will revolutionise the way we use the internet, the main question posed is whether any of that is true, or is the iPad just a rather big iPod Touch?
Well, yes and no.
I must admit that when I first picked up the iPad I felt a bit like what a dwarf must feel like when presented with an iPod Touch.
However after a couple of hours of playing with the world's priciest rectangle, I have to admit I’m rather smitten with it.
We'll get the obvious out the way first - the iPad does everything the iPod Touch does. It plays videos, music, surfs the internet and there is an endless library of apps available – some brilliant, some completely useless.
The most striking thing is the picture quality - having copied across several films from my iPhone, the presentation is every pixel of the quality I could of wished for.
The contrast is striking, making the device ideal as a show piece for family videos and photographs.
For me the most pleasant surprise with the iPad has been its reliability as a musical toolbox. With the built-in microphone and a multi-tracking app (priced at £3.49), I was able to record a piece of music within minutes with fairly impressive results.
The iPad handles the various music synthesisers available on the app store better than its smaller cousin ever could – for obvious reasons. The bigger screen makes the music playing experience so much easier. When using similar apps on the iPod Touch, I would be hitting bum-notes all over the place and generally making a nasty racket, not sweet melodic music.
It's also now clear that Apple are trying to muscle in on the handheld gaming market, and the iPad makes no secret of that.
Though the screen is bigger, I still have trouble with the touch screen controls on games such as Resident Evil 4 and N.O.V.A, and I’m hoping that one day Apple will address this with a bluetooth control pad (...I can dream).
Having said that, some games make great use of the tilting mechanism, such as Real Racing HD and EA's Need for Speed. The touch screen controls are also suited puzzle games such as Angry Birds and Peggle.
It should be noted that if you have any previously purchased apps most of them will function on the iPad. At first it will display them in their original resolution, but tapping the 2x button in the corner will increase it to fit the full screen. However, neither the apps nor the iPad are looking their best in this lower resolution.
A neat addition is the introduction of iBooks – a store where you can download a variety of novels and biographies. It's also encouraging to see other publishers such as Marvel and Imagine have embraced the same mechanic by making their publications available in the app store. With the reasonable asking prices for each issue, it makes the iPad the ideal platform for reading comics and magazines.
The iPad is by no means the perfect gadget though. Apple’s refusal to accommodate Adobe Flash is both baffling and infuriating, and the hefty asking price is rather questionable when you consider you can get a laptop with twice as much power for less cash.
The omission of any SD card slot is questionable as well, but with Apple releasing the iPad camera connection kit, one does wonder if this was a financial decision to get more out of their punters.
When I first got an iPad a lot of people questioned what it was for. I'll be honest, I just wanted a flash new gadget to play with.
What makes the iPad unique is the very same thing that made the iPod Touch and iPhone so appealing. It's the combination of the app store and iTunes.
There is literally something there for everyone and, if you own an iPad already, no doubt it has already proved useful to you in a way you wouldn't of expected.
Unless of course you are an Adobe Flash developer – in which case there isn't an app for that.
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