For years rumors abounded about an Apple tablet,
dating all the way back to the days of the iPod.
Excited Apple fans the world round watched as
more and more sources and rumors flew,
all exclaiming a brand new tablet PC
that would do to netbooks and laptops
what the iPhone did to the smartphone market.
The rumors covered everything from a touchscreen MacBook
to a 12” version of the iPhone.
On January 27th, 2010 Apple CEO Steve Jobs
finally announced the long awaited Apple tablet, the iPad.
With the release of the iPad 2
Apple has improved on the original formula
of the impressively popular iPad 1 in several key areas.
Right off the bat you’ll see how thin the new iPad 2 is.
At a mere third of an inch thin holding the iPad 2
is just like holding a thin notebook.
The tapered edges of the tablet slide nicely in your fingers
and make the iPad 2 perfect for just lounging back
and surfing the web or using apps.
It is also lighter, coming in at 1.3 pounds.
All of this adds up to a great experience in using the iPad.
The hardware is very clean in true Apple fashion.
The front is dominated by a 9.7 inch IPS display
with a resolution of 1024x768.
The display, which carries over from the original iPad
and is slightly lower resolution than competitors
such as the Motorola Xoom
still looks great with fantastic viewing angles.
You’ll also find the trademark Home button
which backs you out to the Springboard
along with a front facing VGA camera.
Around the sides reside a switch that can mute the iPad
or lock the orientation, a rocker to turn up and down the volume
and on the top you’ll find the sleep/wake button and a headphone jack.
The back of the iPad is a solid piece of aluminum
which not only looks great but feels nice in the hand.
Towards the bottom you will find a speaker which is surprisingly loud and clear,
perfect for watching movies.
At the top left there is a 0.7 megapixel camera capable
of shooting 720p HD video. Neither camera is particularly great
however they serve their purposes for FaceTime.
Speaking of FaceTime, Apple’s video chatting standard
comes with the iPad 2. With it you can video chat with friends
who have an iPhone 4, iPod touch 4G or a Mac with FaceTime installed.
It generally works well and is certainly a nice feature to have on the iPad 2.
The iPad 2 runs iOS 4.3, the exact same operating system from the iPad 1
which itself is derived from the iPhone. It is very simple and intuitive to use
with a list of your installed applications on the homescreen.
There are a variety of prebuilt apps that come with the iPad including Photo Booth,
a YouTube application, the iTunes and App Stores, Google Maps, the iPod player,
the Safari web browser and more. In addition you can download some of the
thousands and thousands of apps available on the App Store, making the iPad 2
the most compelling tablet as far as apps go. While the interface is great and works,
there are features that could be added. Android Honeycomb tablets have a variety
of great widgets that can be placed on the home screen
which is certainly a feature the iPad could adopt.
The technical specs include a new 1GHz dual core Apple A5 processor
along with 512MB of RAM and a PowerVR SGX543MP GPU.
Put together this means that the iPad 2 absolutely screams, able to load
full desktop webpages in the same time as most laptops
and handle very graphically intense games.
Despite all this battery life is really impressive in such a thin package.
Depending on your usage you can expect anywhere from 8 to 11 hours
of juice on a single charge, typically on the higher end of that and
falling perfectly in line with Apple suggestion of 10 hours.
So overall, what do I think of the iPad 2? It’s a stellar device for viewing the web,
playing games, watching videos and so on. The much thinner design makes the iPad 2
great to hold and much thinner than any other tablet on the market today.
While it’s certainly not perfect, the screen could be higher resolution
and the cameras could look better than if they were made in 1999
overall the iPad 2 offers the best combination of features and design on the market today,
not even counting the fact that it’s considerable less expensive that many of it’s competitors.