Wednesday was a very big day for me.  Even though I worked late into the morning Tuesday night on a project for work, my wife kindly came in at 9:58 am and woke me so that we could watch the web as Apple announced the long awaited tablet.  For over a year I’ve “known” approximately what this tablet would be and have impatiently awaited it’s arrival.  After all the news was out I can’t say that I was blown away, but on the other hand I wasn’t extremely disappointed either.  It is mostly what I expected it to be.  I was bummed about several things, but also pleasantly surprised at the price.  And after a few days of reflection I have a couple of things I want to say about the soon-to-be-in-my-hands iPad.  So read on for my thoughts about the missing flash, missing camera, weird aspect ratio, the product category and a prediction for release day.

The Transparent Apple Game

I honestly believe Apple execs had the perfect iPad design with all the amazing bells and whistles, sat around a huge conference table about a month ago and said “ok, what critical features can we take out of version 1 and delay until version 2, 3, 4, etc?”  This is Apple’s MO and it’s completely transparent now.  The new “One More Thing” has been replaced with “taking out one critical feature”.  Steve Jobs thinks that if he releases the perfect iPad now there will be no reason to purchase another one next year.  And he wants us on the hook like a heroin addict coming back each year for a new fix.

I bet the rumors of the front facing camera and the idea of it logging you in by seeing your face are true, but just not for this release.  By removing the camera in version one, Apple keeps hold of our cahones and guarantees that we’ll come back to buy version two.  Especially if it has that cool face recognition feature that jobs can impress us with in a presentation.

But the problem is two-fold.  First is that we now know their game.  Second is that iPad is in too high a price tag class to pull the game off successfully.  In order to get the top of the line iPad today it will cost $830 plus $30 a month.  With tax and accessories thats about a grand on day one.  But if I KNOW that I’m going to be buying another new iPad in a year (to get the camera), it makes me think that I should only buy the cheapest one now.  In the long run Apple looses.

Product Class

It really brings me to this question: What Apple product class does the iPad fit in?  If you look at Apple’s website and click on “Mac” in the header it will show a sliding list of all Apple’s Mac computers. When the iPad is released will it be in this category, or will it be listed along with the iPhone and iPods?  I expect Apple to place it with the latter but I actually disagree with this classification.  The iPad really is about as powerful as my current couch computer, the Hacintosh Dell Mini 9.  I didn’t explicitly list it in my iWant post a week ago, but I really want the iPad to be something I can carry back and forth to work INSTEAD of my Mac Pro, and at home I want the iPad to replace my Mini 9.  The missing camera prevents it from completely replacing the home couch computer because we use it to iChat AV with the grandparents.

I expect Apple will migrate the iPad from being an iPod type device to being a mac computer.  With the iWork apps it’s clear that Jobs knows that he needs it to be functional to justify the price tag.  And I expect that a year or two from now the My Cloud computing features that I described in my iWant post will become a reality.  Let’s even call it a prediction for 2011.

The Name, No Flash, and Other Annoyances

I can’t say that I was happy to see the name iPad.  It’s so laughable and obvious that I don’t even have to say it.  But only a couple of days later I’m already over it, used to it and I think most everyone else is too.  It’s sort of like when your 4 year old starts telling poopie jokes.  It’s funny for about a week and then you don’t want to hear it anymore.  When you stop laughing they eventually stop joking about it.  It’s the same here.  Jokes are funny the first time you hear them, not the 100th.  The iPad joke can’t last more than about a week or two, and by the time it actually hits the streets it will have been a passing fancy.

The no Flash thing on the other hand is really getting old.  I don’t know how these guys can say with a straight face that it’s the best way to view the web.  I had really hoped that the tablet would have Flash.  But it doesn’t really surprise me that Apple is going to be greedy and prevent us from watching Hulu for free instead of buying TV shows from them.  Again, Apple is transparent.  We get it – you want to make money on every aspect of the product.

Still while the missing Flash is a huge annoyance, it is software, and software can always be fixed.  Someday Apple could change their stance and put flash in mobile safari, or someone could write an app for that, or the web could migrate towards html 5.  Not to mention that this thing will be hacked in no time.

My last little complaint is that there’s only one mono speaker.  I suppose the reason they did this is that the device can be used in any of the 4 orientations and so stereo speakers wouldn’t be oriented correctly 3 out of the 4 ways.  Do you place the speakers for a portrait or landscape orientation.  The correct answer by the way is landscape for movies.  But other than movies and maybe games it will probably mostly be used in a portrait orientation, as the docks hold it upright, not sideways.  Also, this can be fixed with the right 3rd party speaker dock or carry case.

The Odd Aspect Ratio

One of the things that really bothered me at first was the really weird 4:3 aspect ratio.  Seeing movies play on it just looked odd.  Since watching movies was one of my main desired uses, at first it seemed to me that it should have been closer to a 16:9 screen aspect ratio.  But now I believe that Apple was correct in their choice of screen size and ratio.  Here’s why:

Above is the Apple iPad playing one of my favorite movies, “Muppets From Space.”  The movie is roughly 16:9 and when played on an iPod you orient the device landscape and can either play it with black letterbox bars at the top and bottom, OR you can zoom in to the center and fill the screen with it (seen below).

In this movie and many others, zooming in doesn’t work because you’ll miss much of the action on the left and right of the screen.  Here we can barely see Rizzo.  However, if we were playing an older tv show or movie that has a 4:3 aspect ratio it would take up the whole screen.  So what if Apple had made the screen aspect ratio 16:9, what would that look like and what would it do to the iPad?  Let’s take a look:

Above is the iPad shrunken down to fit the aspect of 16:9 movie.  But now what would happen if I played a movie on this modified iPad that has an even wider screen aspect ratio, like Iron Man?  It would still have bars at the top and bottom.  What if I played a old episode of Remington Steel with it’s 4:3 aspect ratio?  Now I’d have pillar bars on the left and right.  The problem is that there are at least 3 different popular aspect ratios for movies and tv.  So which aspect is the right choice for a device like this?

Here’s the reality: If apple shrunk down the iPad to the above 16:9 widescreen, you’d just have a smaller device with less screen real estate.  You’d be getting less screen for your money.  And the main purpose of the iPad isn’t to be tiny – that’s the job of the iPhone and iPod Touch.  What’s the difference between shrinking down the iPad and just showing letterbox bars?  Either way you’re getting the same size picture on a 16:9 movie.  But shrunken down you’d get a smaller everything else, including much smaller 4:3 shows.  And check out what happens when you reorient that shrunken down iPad to portrait:

Compare the image above to all the shots in the Apple iPad Gallery (the second page of them).  You wouldn’t want to read an ebook or surf the web on that narrow of a screen.  And it would totally kill the cool double column-ness of the mail app. The 16:9 iPad would be too narrow for everything except 16:9 movies.  And there’s much more to this thing than movies.

A Final Prediction

There’s probably a lot more to be said, but I gots to get some sleep.  I will end with a final prediction about release day.  Sometime between now and 60 days from now when the iPad is released, probably on the day Steve announces it’s release, I expect some new feature will be added.  Excitement has been building towards this for several years but over the next two or three months it will level off.  Jobs will do something else to pump everyone up right before it hits the street.

Now that Adobe has come out swinging we know it won’t be flash. I also don’t expect it to be the camera, since Apple let people play with these last Wednesday.  Although, it’s possible that the 3G version could have the camera since no one has seen it yet.  (still I doubt that.)

If I had one guess it would be price.  It’s highly possible that Apple will announce a $399 base price on release day instead of the $499 tag.  That would really shake things up and get everyone frothing at the mouth.

Overall Impression

Overall I’ve still very excited about the iPad.  I’ve come to understand and agree Apple’s choice on the screen aspect ratio.  Most everything that is missing can be fixed in software and therefore added at any time.  I am bummed about flash missing but it wasn’t a surprise.  The only hard feature missing is the camera, and while I believe that Apple will add this in version 2 I’m not going to wait another year to pick one up.  Maybe someone will release it as a peripheral, which would be an ok solution for the times when I need it.  So I will buy one (or several) the day it comes out and upgrade later if I need to.  I’m an early adopter and always have been.  I was the first person in my circle to buy a TiVo, and I had an iPhone from the first day and have loved it ever since. I think the only time I’ve been burned by early adopting was HD DVD.  So I’m not that worried about the iPad.  The only question now is which model do I get and do I need GSP and 3G.

1. User Experience and Fatigue

Top on my wish list is of course just the fact that it will be the ultimate gadget from a user experience perspective.  Specifically what I mean by that is comfortable to use in many different situations, easy to carry and store, something that can be tossed around and not get scratched, and something that naturally becomes just as much as appendage as the iPhone has.  I expect nothing less from Apple.

My wife’s been experiencing some arm pain, similar to a carpel tunnel type injury, because of her use of the iPhone touch screen.  In the past I’ve suffered some from playing too many Xbox 360 games.  More recently I was getting sore from playing a game on the Wii.  Any new user input device can come with use-related injuries.  I hope that the new Tablet OS is comfortable to use and doesn’t create too much fatigue.

Example: I actually painfully wrote my first draft of this post in the notes app of my iPhone, in bed, while my wife was asleep beside me. Hopefully I haven’t painted a creepy picture, but night is often when I get inspiration to write and a laptop is simply too large and bulky to take to bed. I always sleep with my iPhone near by.  And lately I’ve been wondering if a 10 inch tablet would be more or less conducive to bedtime work (and typing) than the iPhone.  Ease of typing is a huge concern when considering how one would (or will) use touch screen tablets in the real world.

2. Power Cords / Interface Cable

As silly as it might seem I would love to see the tablet use the same interface connector as the iPhone / iPod touch. I already have so many of these laying around. Already have them in my cars, next to my bed, at my office, and at home.  I don’t want to all the sudden need a new set of cables. Sony kills me wih all their different batteries and power adaptors. Recently I spent 3 hours trying to find a lost power cable for my video camera which is why I did a writen review of the webstation instead of a video review. I did find 3 other Sony power cable and 2 other Sony battery chargers. But they’re all slightly different and incompatible.  Annoying!  So please Apple – keep to your own standard.

3. Powerful Processor.

I felt the iPhone 3gs was a significant improvement over the original iPhone in terms of speed. I hope the tablet will be MacBook pro fast. If it’s going to be more costly than a well equipted netbook it should be more powerful as well.

4. Real Flash Support.

Come on, mobile safari is fine for the iPhone but this thing needs to support hulu, the real YouTube, and flash gaming.  I know that Apple’s MO is to try to ‘encourage’ media buying from and for the device, but I hope it’s not at the expense of blocking hulu or any other media that I might want to play on it.

5. My Cloud / Mobile Me

I’m crossing my fingers for a killer remote desktop / screen sharing app.  Get this concept: if you could use the mac tablet with a mobile me / back to my mac account to access and control your main home mac from anywhere, in a way it would be like being able to take your home computer with you everywhere you go.  In a way it would be just as good (or maybe better) than having the tablet run the full Mac OSX.

I read someone online mention that if the tablet ran the full os it could take sales away from the desktop computer business.  I think it’s safe to say that it won’t “run” the full OS X.  But I think if the tablet acts as a controller or a window to your desktop computer, it actually promotes desktop computer sales.

It also opens up a new possible business for Apple: renting virtual (cloud) Mac OSX computer desktops to tablet users.  Rather than purchasing a $5000 mac pro, purchase a tablet and rent the power of a mac pro that you access via your tablet.  I believe that improvements could be made to the concept of remote desktop that would enable it to be more like actually having that computer inside your tablet.  Things like how files and data are shared between the two devices, and how input data could be recorded at a higher frequency – could make it possible to even use photoshop remotely.  But in this concept the remote computer is in a farm somewhere in the cloud.

6. Remote for Apple TV

The Remote app on the iPhone is one of my favorite apps.  Think of this app but bigger, better and stronger and for Apple TV.  The convergence between the computer and the TV could be solved by using the tablet as an input device for a computer that sits on your TV.  About 4 months ago I saw this (http://www.vimeo.com/6712657) interesting video of the 10/GUI user interface concept.  The basic idea is that the screen is duplicated down to a touch screen where your keyboard would be.  Watch the video.  This concept would work great as an interface for your TV as a computer.  Right now web surfing on a TV is a horrible experience.  Using this MO it could become second nature.  The Apple TV could become a device to visualize your tablet’s screen to your TV and conversely the tablet could be the ultimate remote for the Apple TV.  This marriage could honestly be a game changer.

7. Tablet as a Phone

Ok, I think this is a stretch but it’s possible.  So of course I don’t want to pay for both iPhone connectivity and tablet connectivity.  It’s possible that the tablet could be a ‘phone’ and inlcude a small handset or headset that wirelessly connects to the tablet.  Not bluetooth please but something with a much longer range like wifi.  And the handset would need a small touch screen so you could dial with it and search contacts (like an iPhone Nano).  But all the real work would happen in the tablet.  It’s probably impractical but it’s still made my list.  Another option in this same vein would be for the tablet to get it’s 3G from your iPhone, which is more of a traditional tethering concept.

8. eBook eMag reader – NOT eInk

I’m not much of a book or magazine reader, but this video (http://vimeo.com/8217311) got me excited about what electronic magazines could become.  Still eInk does me no good.  eInk doesn’t emit light except for backlighting models which look about as good as my Newton.  I think if you want an eInk reader that’s easy on the eyes go buy a Kindle or a Nook.  Maybe Apple can have an ebook mode which changes the lighting on the display and makes it easier on the eyes.  Still, it needs to have a beautiful screen for watching movies.  That’s more of a priority for me.

9. Front facing camera

Please.  Everyone knows why and everyone wants this.  And we don’t want to wait for the 4th hardware version.  Just give it to us.  Thanks!

Conclusion

My overall hope for this tablet is that it will have many many real uses.  Not just be a big iPod Touch or another gadget that I’ll buy and carry around and surf the web with.  But be the one device that basically does it all – an honest game changer.  Apple has a huge opportunity to change the way we use computers here.  I just hope that they don’t disappoint us all on Wednesday and just announce a new iLife.

First let me do the whole reviewer disclaimer thing… On what can only be described as a moment of weak ignorance, I ordered a Camangi WebStation.  That was December 4th and I paid full price.  Normally I wouldn’t plop down almost $400 for a product that no one has seen or tested yet, one that in the early videos looked quite questionable, and one from a company that I’ve never heard of before.  But I did.  Against all common sense I hoped that it would be a decent solution to use until Apple gets theirs out.

At the same time I also contacted Camangi in an attempt to get an early “review unit.”  We did correspond back and forth a bit but ultimately they decided to not supply me with a “free” unit but rather promised to simply ship my purchased unit to me via a faster method than everyone else’s – so that I could review it (hopefully) before they start arriving to the 1000′s of people who ordered them. Therefore the unit I reviewed here is the one I paid full price for, and my buyer’s remorse is certainly adding to the sting here a bit.  But then again most things I discuss on this site are items that I’ve purchased.  So take that bias in to account if you feel it’s relevant.

My Couch Computing Concept

Our previous current couch computer is the hacintoshed Dell Mini 9.  It works well, is fairly fast (for an atom processor running OS X), it’s fully a mac, and cost about $300-$400 retail.  And it’s small.  We mostly use it for quick imdb lookups while watching tv and movies, and my daughter plays flash games on it.  So in my perfect world, the ultimate couch computer would be a smallish tablet, no keyboard to get in the way, easy to stow between couch cushions, but would be as fast and responsive as the dell or as an iPhone.  It needs to have full web capabilities, support flash video (unlike the iPhone), hulu, youtube, and all that.  It should also act as a PMP so that my daughter can watch videos on it in the car or wherever.  It needs to be multi-useful.

So I’ve been excited about getting this unit in – and I spent all Christmas watching the DHL tracking reports to see when it would arrive.  But on the other hand I didn’t have high expectations for it.  It has very little RAM and a tiny processor.  In my correspondence with Camangi I asked over and over about it’s capabilities, specifically with regard to playing video – but they would not answer those questions.  This made me begin to think that the reason they were avoiding my questions (and didn’t want to send me a review unit) was because they didn’t like the true answers.

The Missing Video Review

This was going to be a video review and I will post a video as soon as I can.  Last night was one of the most frustrating evenings I’ve had in a while and I was unable to get much video shot.  To really see this thing on video would prove what I’m saying here, so I want to get some kind of video posted. But in the mean time I did mess around with the WebStation long enough to know what it really is, and wanted to get this review out as soon as I could.  So let’s get started…

What’s in the box

The package arrived via DHL in a small brown paper box, inside which was the retail box.  The box contains the WebStation, a carry sleeve/pouch, a pair of cheap earphones that appear to have a microphone attached, a cloth to wipe the screen, a quick start guide, another booklet containing legal disclaimers, the power supply, and the stand to use it as a picture frame, which is basically a suction cup on a stick.

My first impressions were that the WebStation hardware seemed sturdy enough. It has 3 physical buttons on the front: home, quick menu, and return.  On the right side there are ports for headphones, mini usb, a reset button, a normal sized usb, and DC in.  On the left side are physical volume buttons, on the top is a power button, and on the top back is a micro SD card slot preloaded with an 8GB stick.

(same side from the back…)

On major thing lacking in the box is a real user manual.  The quickstart guide does tell you how to unlock the device, something you’d probably never figure out on your own.  But it’s very slim on details and instructions.  For example, I still have no idea how to load music on the device.  I assume that I need to add a “Music” folder to the memory stick, but that is a complete guess.  Another example is that I was surprised to discover that it would charge off the USB cable when it’s plugged in to my mac.  But also debaffled by the meaning of the “beep-beep-beep” when the screen went to sleep while plugged in to my mac.

Powering it on

When you first press the power button at the top, it takes about 7 seconds before you see the word “ANDROID…”  Total boot time is 54 seconds.  You are then presented with a lock screen that shows the time/date.  Unlocking it takes you to the Launcher, which is a menu of app icons.

Speed and Responsiveness

You have to admit that we’re all used to the way the iPhone works and in a way it is the standard upon which all other touch based gadgets are measured. Since the loss of my 3GS iPhone I’ve been back to using my old original edge phone and have been struggling with the comparitive slowness of that old thing. But the old edge phone screams in comparison to the WebStation.  Actions like touching and dragging to scroll windows are taken for granted on the iPhone, and the WebStation does do that touch scrolling thing, but seems to skip along the action.  One way to describe it is if the iPhone operates at 30 frames per second, the WebStation probably runs at about 5 to 10.  I also found myself accidentally triggering buttons when trying to scroll.  Something that DOES happen on the iPhone occasionally, but was happening A LOT on the WebStation.  And with the overall slowness of the unit, getting into the wrong menu is a pain because then you have to slowly navigate out of it as well.

Here are some speed/usage comparison examples between the WebStation and my old first gen iPhone:

Photos – First off, it’s not a multi-touch display, it is a resistive single touch screen.  So zooming in and out is done via on-screen zoom icons, not multi-touch pinch actions.  The fair comparison here is the responsiveness of touch-dragging scroll around on a photo.  When you first touch and start to drag it takes several seconds before the unit seems to know that you’re dragging.  Then it catches up and does it’s best to keep up with your finger, updating the screen about 5 to 10 times per second.  This sluggishness is generally felt everywhere in the UI.

Typing – When you click on a field where text can be entered, a virtual touch keyboard appears on the bottom of the screen.  Typing is best done one letter at a time, making sure that the UI has got your letter before moving on to the next.  If you type too fast sometimes the keyboard will just go away.  It seems to not be able to keep track of touches faster than about 5 per second either.  Of course this kills my couch computer concept as it’s sort of frustrating to even enter text.

I’ll cover web browsing and video playback in their own sections..

But first I have to say that I was excited about the WebStation being Google Android based.  I don’t even mind it NOT being multi-touch.  I think the overall interface is good, but the processor just can’t keep up with a real user.  If this was powered with the Atom processor from my Dell Mini 9 it would be a completely different story.  But the way it is now the sluggishness is just too much of a factor.

Web Browsing

I think the biggest test should be basic web browsing.  After all, the product is called the WEB station, and therefore should be optimized at surfing the web. The first test was to simultaneously launched both the WebStation and my old first gen iPhone to the home page of this website (tomorrowland.com).  Both devices were on my home wifi network.  The iphone loaded the page about 20 seconds quicker than the WebStation.  Then trying to test scrolling on the WebStation I touched and dragged the screen and instead of it scrolling it launched a link.  In order to ensure that you’re going to scroll you have to touch and hold until you see that it’s scrolling, then drag your finger.  Something that I would find hard to do when going back and forth between using my iPhone and this thing.

The next test is what sites work and what doesn’t.  Well, just like the iPhone, FLASH does not work.  This wipes out hulu and youtube and even my own tomorrowland.com/podcast page, and unlike the iPhone there is no youtube application.  This also wipes out all flash games, which was one of my desired uses for the WebStation.

I’ve already complained about the typing and the scrolling.  But one other thing I noticed is that most apps are web apps.  The ebook reader, and the app marketplace both use the web browser to do their thing.  So if one is slow they all are.

Video

All my hopes and dreams are crushed when it comes to video playback.  It’s no wonder the people at Camangi completely skirted all of my questions about video playback.  My big question to them was can it play full screen video at 30fps.  The answer is a big fat no way!  Not even close.  With the lack of a user manual to detail the specifications for the most compatible video formats I guessed and loaded a couple of samples.  The unit did come preloaded with the promo video from this page, but looks atrocious when playing back.  It seems a shame to not make use of that 800 x 480 pixel screen with movie watching.

The first video I tried was a 3 minute, 22 MB H.264 video running at about 1 Mbps.  Frame size was 480 x 324 at 30fps.  I suppose it was encoded to work on an iPod.  The audio played fine but the picture lagged very far behind, causing it to be grossly out of sync.  The video frames that played did so at about 5 or 10 fps.  Skipping to the middle of the video did catch it up, but it’s clear the device is not powerful enough to play video.

The second video I tried was a movie that was encoded to play on a PSP.  It also played very slow visually while the audio played normally.  It was also very much out of sync right from the beginning.  Very disappointing.

Harsh Conclusion

My suspicion is that the unit is basically a digital picture frame loaded with a cell phone version Google Android with a touch screen.  It came with a phone headset complete with a mic and answer button.  All through the menus there are mentions of things like “baseband” and “ringtones” but it’s not a phone.  And the weird thing is that I don’t think the processor in it is even powerful enough to run a phone.  Had they marketed it as a touch screen digital photo frame with a web browser and sold it for about $100 it would be somewhat reasonable.  And before you think about complaining about how hard I’m being on it, consider this: The WebStation is $390.  For $199 you can get an iPod Touch.  If mac made a 7 inch iPod touch it would blow this thing out of the water.  Completely.  Or for about the same price you could get a Dell Mini 9, or an Archos 7 – which are completely different products, but still something to consider.  Or you could save your money and wait for Apple to release the iSlate and I suspect that will be THE CE product of 2010.

Of course there is more to the WebStation that I didn’t have time to cover, but to be honest the rest really doesn’t matter.  The weather app is nice and works well.  So far I haven’t figured out how to load music on it and so haven’t been able to try out it’s ‘cover flow’ mode.  But essentially it’s about as powerful as a digital picture frame, and that’s very sad. Basically my plan at this point is to call American Express and find out what I can do to return and refund.  In my opinion the Camangi WebStation is a total fail and I can’t recommend it to anyone at any price.

I will update this post with some videos as soon as I get a chance.

Also – Thanks to gizmodo for ‘reprinting’ this review on their site.  It’s always nice to get a link for a hard night’s work.