How to Use the iPad Software

Jay takes a closer look at the software found on the iPad when you take it out of the box, as well a few things you may want to download.

Mr. Mobile with Jay Goldman Jay Goldman: Hi, I'm Jay Goldman, and you're watching Mr. Mobile on butterscotch.com. Today, we're going to take a look at the software that comes on Apple's iPad device. Now, this runs the same operating system as the iPhone, so if you're in iPhone user, this is going to feel very familiar. There are some notable differences; unfortunately, one of those notable differences is not multitasking, so the same as the current generation iPhone OS 3.0, there is no multitasking on this device. However, as Apple is recently announced, iPhone OS 4.0 which is coming sometime later in 2010, includes multitasking on both devices, it will be on the iPad sometime in fall, it'll be on the iPhone a little bit earlier than that, and so when it comes out your iPad will be able to do multitasking. So as I said, very familiar to users of the iPhone, it's got the same home screen designed with a lot of icons on here, there's a docile on the bottom, one difference here is that the docile on the bottom allows you to put up to six icons in it, whereas on the iPhone you can only do four, so a little bit easier to get to your frequent applications. Keyboard usage on here is obviously better than it is on an iPhone because the keyboard is bigger and in landscape mode it feels almost the same as typing on a regular keyboard. One thing to note though, it's kind of hard to type when you're holding it in one hand and using with the other, because the screen is just big enough the two thumbs is actually kind of awkward. So you'll find that if you're going to be doing a lot of typing, you're going to want to put it down on something either on a table or on your leg if you're sitting down, propped up you can actually get pretty fast typing on it. Includes a bunch of the same apps that you find in the iPhone, they've all been redesigned for the bigger screen, and generally speaking they look a lot better and work a lot better than they do on an iPhone, particularly because there is less sort of digging into go for wholes where you go down a whole bunches screens and then you have to come all away back out of them. A lot of the apps on here been designed to have a real world metaphor to them. So, for example if you're looking in your contacts book, it actually feels a lot like your looking in a book and you've got sort of the two sides to the book on here. The iCal app on here, looks a lot like you looking in a day planner, and I would actually say that I prefer the iCal app on here than the one on the on a desktop Mac, I'm not a huge fan of that application, and I just find that the one on here works a lot better, lot faster and more responsive. Mail on here is a completely different experiences than it is an iPhone, because you've got your messages down one side of the screen and sort of your inbox view, and then you've got the actual mail that you're looking at on the right side of the screen and the great thing is you can actually scroll them independently. So a lot more useful, a lot more screen real estate, and you can actually open attachments in mail messages, in the application that supports them, so if you get, for example, a pages document and you've got pages loaded on your iPad, tap on that it will popup and open in the right place. iTunes on here is a great experience because they've done a better job I think of taking advantage of the screen space compared to on an iPhone. One thing that's actually missing on here is Cover Flow, so if you're a big Cover Flow user you're not going to find it on here but generally speaking they've done a better job of sort of being able to browse around, I find then they have done on the iPhone and even in some cases better than iTunes on the desktop. Now, one of my favorite apps on here is actually the photos app, mostly because the screen is so great at displaying photos and it's just such a rich experience and to be able to sit down with somebody else and look over photos, let's see we've been on a trip somewhere and right now your options for showing them before is just sort of bringing your laptop which kind sucks, show them on an iPhone, tiny little screen or bring this along and you've just got such a rich experience of flipping through those photos. I love the way that you can look at the album view and expand an album which your pinch and zoom motion to kind of get a preview of photos that are in there, and then switch into that mode, flip through them, you get a little navigation at the bottom show you where at, the whole thing is fantastic. Now, of course, there is no camera on here, so you're not going to be taking photos, but loading photos up and being able to look at them is a great experience. There are four apps available from Apple in the App Store one of them is free that's iBooks which they have talked about a lot, so that's one which allows you to buy books and read them on here. The other three are the iWorks, Keynote, Pages and Numbers, so that's presentations, document editing and spreadsheets. iBooks on here is a great experience may be not as great as Kindle, so if you've got a Kindle you might find that you're not quite ready to ditch that hardware. Reading on here is a Backlit LCD versus the Kindle's e-Ink, the Kindle is easier on the eyes, but the experience on here is really great. So you launch the iBooks application, you get your book opens up full screen, comes with the free copy of Winnie-the-Pooh, there are whole bunch of other free books also available in the store in here. Reading books is great, there's this beautiful page turn effect that follows your finger as you're turning the page back and forth, so you know that experience is great, you can also just tap the turn, so you don't have to do the drag every time across. You can bookmark on individual words which is nice if you want to come back to certain point, there is no note taking ability yet we may see that in a future version, you can increase font size, do searching all the search of things you would expect when you're reading a book. On of the things that we haven't seen though is anything beyond what you would expect when you're reading book so, no real multimedia in here yet may be something that comes in a future version. Apple has said that this supports the e-pub format, so you can load books that don't come out of the store, but again no really rich multimedia experience yet. Also, no magazines in newspapers in the iBooks app as of now, a whole bunch of magazines are during their own applications. For the most part, they're kind of a disappointment; it's a lot like reading the print version except you not have to tap the screen to turn pages. And a lot of them are charging quite a lot for the experience of doing that. So, so for magazines on here been a little bit of disappointment, I will say if you're interested in the direction of where that might be going, that a look online for the wired video of their vision of the feature of the iPad will link to at from the show notes on butterscotch.com. Wired magazine on the iPad view it: http://mrmobile.tv/wired-video So take a look for that video and you'll see a vision of where magazines could be going that's a lot more interesting than what we've seen on here so for. One app, you might want to play with, if you kind of want an idea what that looks like is the Marvel app you can find it in the App Store. Marvel Comics, get it: http://mrmobile.tv/marvel It just gives you really nice perspective of being able to browse through a comic on here, I really like how you can put it into sort of one panel full screen mode and tap to kind of move to the next panel but that mostly across the page really feels like a richer experience of looking at a comic book. The iWork apps are sort of covered in a whole bunch of online reviews. We've in fact done a ten part series on butterscotch.com, so if you want detail on them you can check them out there. How to use the iPad series, get it: http://mrmobile.tv/ipad-series You're not going to replace using your desktop for really long editing but they're entirely usable if you need to some quick work or editing and if you've got sort of the keyboard dock where a Bluetooth keyboard you might even find that pages is really useful for longer writing, but you're not been use the on screen keyboard for lengthy stuff. On the whole this is a great first release, I'm really impressed from a 1.0 product I mean keeping in mind that of course it's preceded by the iPod and a bunch of other things but I have to say that this device really feels like you're holding your future in your hands. I know that sound cheesy but there's really something to manipulating objects on the screen directly with your fingers that just not there when you've got a mouse. And you can do it on an iPod Touch or in an iPhone but it's different on a screen that's this bright and large and with your whole hands. So you know things like the maps application when you're getting in there and you're scrolling around on a fast Internet connection, it's loading instantaneously is a very different feeling. If you're not sure that's you're going to like the iPad, I really recommend that you head out to an Apple Store and play with one in person before you past judgment on it. It's really something has to be experienced first hand and I intended to really understand the device, so go to an Apple Store, check it out, it's a lot of fun to play with and it's only going to get better from here. And by the way if you're looking for an easier way to get a web domain hover.com has a coupon code for Mr. Mobile fans that will get 10%, use the coupon code that you can see on the screen or in the show notes on butterscotch.com. I'm Jay Goldman, this is been Mr. Mobile on butterscotch.com, thanks for watching and we will catch you next time.