My wife brought home an iPad from the high school where she works this weekend because the school is trying to assess the iPad's usefulness as an educational tool. My son spent the most time with it and he likes listening to music and watching videos. He loves the thing. Honestly, I don't know why we didn't have one already, as I've been threatening to go buy one for several weeks now. I think it is an amazing concept - and still do, but I'm less crazy about the implementation after having spent a few hours with it. Here's why:
The first thing I wanted to do was check email on a Google Apps account I have. After opening the Safari browser, I went to login to my account and that's when my iPad experience started to sour. When you position the cursor to enter text on the iPad, a pop up keyboard appears on the bottom of the screen, but it doesn't have any numbers on the keyboard. There's a key that switches to a numbers view, but that version doesn't have any alpha keys. It's not that hard switching back and forth between the two, but typing a password that passes even minimal security standards becomes more convoluted than it ought to be. Yes, Mac fans, I know there are real accessory keyboards you can get for it, but you have to admit, the pop up keyboard is sort of a kludge. There is PLENTY of room there to do better and this is only going to encourage people to use flimsy passwords. Yes, I've seen the online videos showing clever iPad keyboard tricks, but none of them address this shortcoming.
Another thing that bothers me about the iPad pop up keyboard is that it displays password text in the clear before changing them to black dots. What's THAT about Apple? My guess is that they were concerned that people would not have confidence with their typing and so they decided to briefly display password characters as they are being entered. Are they trying to protect customers from the frustration of having virtual fat fingers by displaying what should otherwise be secure information? Hmmm, at this point I'm starting to think that security was given the lowest priority on the iPad. Not that I'm a big security guy, but the digital world is fraught with far too many threats to be so non-chalant about it.
That said, Windows Vista drove everybody crazy by going overboard on security, and it's not hard to see why Apple might have chosen to avoid similar "features", but the keyboard actually is very easy to type on and the keys seem oversized, if anything. There should be some way to show numbers and letters together, allowing people to easily create whatever passwords they desire and it shouldn't show secure information in the clear, even if it is for a brief moment.
Anyway, Safari on the iPad doesn't work with Google Apps, (and email accessed through it) something that took me some time to figure out. It apparently has something to do with the fact that the Safari browser used on the iPad is the same mobile version as on the iPhone, having certain functional reductions. I wasn't surprised to to find compatibility problems between Apple and Google and I assume this sort of thing will continue to be an annoying contest for years to come. I started using Google Apps years ago and the iPad doesn't get me there. That's a problem.
I was able to access my Google Apps email account using the integrated email app and selecting Gmail. This worked pretty well, the setup was straightforward and figuring out how to use Gmail on the iPad was a snap. Again, the thing I didn't like was that I was not able to access my Google Docs from this app. I tried a number of ways and finally gave up after diving into the forums and finding there would be no happy ending today.
So I decided to find another app, maybe something more fun. But first, I went to log out of Gmail and couldn't find the secret decoder ring. I figured this had to be pilot error - how can you not have a logout function for email? As much as I tried I couldn't find my way out of Gmail. Good lord! So I hit the forums again and found out, sure enough, there is no way to log out of Gmail on an iPhone- and by extension - an iPad. If you want to shut down access to Gmail after having set it up, you have to delete the account from the email application using the "settings" application. Seems a bit extreme if all you want to do is make sure people can't peek at your email.
Now, its important to lay blame at the right party here, which is Google in this case. And although I'm tempted to say this is probably some treachery waged against Apple by Google, the main issue is that Gmail on the iPad is just the iPhone version running on it's younger and larger sibling. A lot of people choose to keep their email access open all the time on their smartphones so they can stay on top of messages without having to constantly log in to see them. But there are also times when people just want to lock down their information so others can't see it. The iPad is a tablet and not a smartphone, and whereas smartphones are personal devices that you can hide in your pocket, the iPad - simply by virtue of it's size is more exposed to mischief. Not only that, but its also something that people seem to like sharing an awful lot. If we had one at home, I'm sure there would be some contention about who gets to use it.
Anyway, the point is, not allowing somebody to log out of an account where there is sensitive, private information from family members, co-workers, financial accounts and other important sources is simply ridiculous. Not only can your personal, private information be compromised, but there is also the risk that somebody else can access your account and send fake emails on your behalf - without you knowing about it.
When I explored apps at Apple's online store, I definitely got the feeling that a lot of them were designed for the iPhone and didn't really translate all that well to the iPad. Opera's Mini Browser was a good example. The functionality it had was decent, but the scaling of it on the screen was far less than perfect.
On the positive side, I really liked the book reader, which I thought was stellar and might be the ultimate app for the iPad. But if all I want is a book reader, I'd probably prefer a Kindle, with its included wifi service. In short, the iPad is new - and I think it shows. I'm still interested in getting one sometime, but I have to figure out if I want it to be more like a PC than a smartphone. Today, I'm inclined to look for a tablet that is less of a computing toy than the iPad is.
