For the first time in a very long time, I purchased a product on launch day. Old Adam would respond, “no big deal” but new Adam was a bit disappointed in himself. Why succumb to the pressures of the bloggers and their glowing reviews touting the amazingness of iPad 2 or the Apple fanboys and their lining up for no apparent reason? The iPad 2 has given me a marginal upgrade in the experience of my first generation iPad 32GB WiFi but that marginal difference has made all of the difference. Glowing review? Not quite, but I’ll do my best to remain unimpressed by the newness of this tablet and provide some insight on why I feel the line and the price paid was worth it.
At 8AM, I clicked the order button on Apple.com for an iPad with a smart cover. The email confirmation said, “Will ship on or before April 10th.” Ship times are now approaching 5 weeks. This is unacceptable and beyond how long I wanted to wait. I was in Austin for the annual South by Southwest conference and would soon be flying across county to my home in New Hampshire followed by a wedding the next weekend and a trip to Miami following that. April 8th was a weekend I planned on being in New York City and I truly felt that a month wait was unacceptable. I cancelled the order and went to the conference. After my sessions were done, it was 3:30 and I got in line as 60th place for a 5PM opening. There was the usual group of media interviewing people in line and passers by who kept asking, “what are you waiting in line for?” I saw a few of my blogger friends who were there doing coverage and, at 5:30, I walked in and purchased an iPad 2.
I paid $829 for the Verizon iPad in white with 64 gigabytes of capacity.
The first thing I can say for any traveler is the 3G model is absolutely worth it. There are tech geeks around who will try to steer you away from this setup and they’ll say that you can add tethering to your iPhone for $20 a month or you can buy a MiFi and have 3G on all of your devices at once. They’ll say that 3G isn’t important because Wi-Fi is everywhere. These geeks are wrong. If you want the experience of a portable tablet then you will want a model with 3G. Tethering from your iPhone uses the iPhone’s already small data cap of 2 gigabytes per month, Wi-Fi isn’t everywhere like bus stations, airports (at least for free) or independent cafes. You can’t use Wi-Fi in the car or in between meetings while hopping in a cab. You can get by with a WiFi only model as I have for the past year but, after a weekend with Verizon 3G, I’m hooked and won’t be going back and canceling service unless it’s a month where I’m absolutely sure there is no travel involved and my day to day for the month involves work & home like clockwork where both places have WiFi. 3G service increases the resale value and is ultra handy even if you’re only going to pay for 200 megabytes and use the iPad from an airport during a layover. 200 megabytes is still cheaper than airport WiFi in some cases. The Verizon MiFi or Clear “box” that can serve WiFi to a few devices at once takes 60-90 seconds to boot up. 3G on the iPad is instant and always on when the WiFi connection goes away. Trust me on this. 3G has changed how I use the iPad.
The new iPad is nearly 2 times as fast at installing / launching applications and performing tasks like saving documents. It screams in game play and shows far more details than the previous iPad. The previous experience wasn’t bad but iPad 2 makes it better. That’s all I have to say about speed. You don’t have to experience this and, if you want a faster iPad, upgrade – it’s that simple.
The iPad has additional ram. This hasn’t benefited me that much since I’m pretty mental about closing applications. Once I launch an app, I quickly double-tap the home button to kill the other app I was just using. I do this all day except for the rare times when I want to post a tweet and switch right back to reading a blog post. Other bloggers have said the increased ram helps but I don’t care too much about that as the previous iPad never felt hungry for more ram other than that whole comment about safari remembering what pages were open. I close every single Safari page before closing and then quitting the app so I could care less about that as well. If you’re not anal retentive about open apps, you’ll probably notice a performance boost that comes with additional ram.
The iPad 2’s size isn’t that much smaller than the original but it’s as if you reduce 10% of weight from a piece of paper and suddenly, you have nothing. Apple’s fight against the fat of their computers is coming to a point where I don’t believe they can make them any thinner yet the iPad 2 is stronger than ever. The enclosure is sturdy and stiff and solid and Apple has shaved more millimeters than I ever thought was possible while retaining the spacious screen and enough bezel for comfortable holding from a guy with very large hands.
Unfortunately, the smart cover makes holding the iPad a challenge. When I pull the iPad out of a bag or from the coffee table, I try for a few minutes to hold the iPad with the smart cover folded around back and give up pulling it off and then fight for 45 seconds to get the thing back on once I’m done reading. It’s a chore but the smart cover is generally amazing enough that buyer’s remorse isn’t on my mind…yet. It gets the job done and, in 9 months as an iPad owner, I have never once scratched the back of it despite sliding it across tables, dropping it on concrete and spinning it around like a top while at bars to impress friends. Don’t iPad while intoxicated…
The smart cover is great but, in time, the 3rd party case makers will outdo it. Their offerings won’t be as stylish but they will certainly do a better job of protecting the iPad. Of course, we all know that no one will make an iPad cover as thin and functional as the smart cover. The more of the iPad you cover, the larger the case has to be both in area and in thickness. Apple went the route of “smart” and not “safe” and their cover is sexy and well designed. I love it and, given my iPad 1’s resilience to scratches, I have no problem with an exposed back.
Do I need 64 gigabytes of storage? Absolutely not but, I won’t be happy until every iOS device from Apple has 500 gigabytes of storage and I’m utterly disappointed at the industry’s ability to up the storage each year. It’s sad that we’re still paying outrageous prices for 512GB SSDs. Flash storage is very expensive. I’m one of the guys who, when I bought an iPhone (8gb) back in 2007 jokingly didn’t add a single song to it and kept the 250GB iPod Classic in my pocket along with an iPhone because 8 gigabytes of storage is iPod mini level crap (circa 2003) and, even now, the 32GB iPhone won’t hold much and I have to be selective. The age old question of, “do you need 25,000 songs and 700 movies with you at all times?” will arise and I resoundingly will state, “YES!” because that’s how this works and I want to take 700 movies with me everywhere I go. Please work on that and stop asking me why it’s so important.
I won’t be happy until the iPad can handle this much media:
The question everyone has asked is if they should upgrade or not?
This will sound like an infomercial but, “Do you have $499? Do you want an iPad 2? Then ORDER NOW!” I really believe that humans just want someone to tell them yes so sure, just buy the damn thing. If you want it, just get it. I think it’s a worthy upgrade and one that I truly enjoy using.
Will I get the iPad 3? Most likely, that’s just how I am. Should you get it? I have no clue. It’s one of those things where no one, these days needs a new computer or phone but we get them anyway. All I ask is that you please recycle or sell your old model. Don’t just throw it in the trash. Apple right now is running a program with Teach for America. You can take your iPad 1 to any Apple Store and donate it if, for some reason you can’t find someone to buy it. That’s how I afforded this model, I bought two iPad 2s and sold one of them and am currently selling my 1st generation on eBay. That’s how this works and, if you sell the iPad 1 for $400 and buy a 2 for $499, you basically paid $99 to rent an iPad for a year. Look at it that way.
The iPad 2 is an evolutionary device. Each 2nd generation device from Apple has been like that. I think this is a great upgrade for current and new users. Make sure you buy a Kindle if you’re only going to read books because they’re far cheaper and, if you want to get work done on the iPad like “real work”, please just buy a $999 MacBook Air. You’ll be much happier.
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Update: I’ve already gotten an email asking why I didn’t speak of the cameras or FaceTime or Photo Booth. Why? Because I think you should never decide on an upgrade on the sheer fact that there is a camera built in. Your iPhone or smartphone has a camera, your computer has a camera, your el-cheapo Kodak is a camera. The iPad’s camera is utter crap at taking still shots but since when were you going to have everyone pose while you unlocked your iPad, hold it in front of your face and snap a picture? The moment I see someone do this, I’ll have to refrain from smacking them.
Additionally, I liked FaceTime back when it was called iChat AV and worked with other AIM users. Apple’s promise of open sourcing the FaceTime framework has not happened yet and they haven’t thrown out that “millions of devices” claim since the iPhone 4 launch nearly a year ago. Once Apple allows everyone to write for FaceTime and build the standard out on their own, that’s when I’ll begin supporting it. I get it that Apple ships FaceTime on every Mac, iPad, iPhone and iPod touch but not everyone uses Apple and FaceTime as an open sourced technology can be adopted by Skype, AIM, MSN and *gasp* Android as an open standard. Can you imagine talking to friends from Qik to Skype to iOS all on one standard? It’s sure to happen. Until then, I won’t acknowledge that FaceTime even exists or that it’s a feature.
Besides, WiFi only? Seriously?
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