With the same layout of iPhone, iPad has to do several things better than either of the categories so well established before: browsing, email, video, music, eBooks, etc. Once I had doubted the utilitarian of iPad, not to mention the exact definition of the product. However a period of applying it in real situations, the actual orientation and purpose of iPad is becoming more and more clear.

The interaction design of iPad’s functions advance include: a touch screen of 9.7 inch, half-inch thick. It weighs 1.5 pounds and comes with 16, 32 or 64 gigabytes of flash memory storage. Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity built in. Jobs said the device has a replaceable battery that lasts 10 hours and can sit for a month on standby without needing a charge.

The experience of using a touch screen this large is surprisingly intimate. iPad is so easy to get into that anyone who has not used a computer would be able to start using the iPad right away not even metion the children and the senior citizens. This will contribute immensely to the widespread use of iPad. Speaking of iPad’s long battery life, it could achieve 8 hours of use – longer than the most laptops; The large glass screen is controlled by tapping and sliding a finger around which makes more fun for use. Besides，the mechanical keyboard and mouse could also offer easy operations.

Reading 

With its grayscale display and does-one-thing-well approach, iPad uses the free, open e-book standard, ePub format. The layout of iPad’s reading interface is incredible. The format is meant to function as a single format that publishers and conversion houses can use in-house, as well as for distribution and sale. It looks like ePub is as close to the MP3 of ebooks as it comes. And it supports digital rights management. Stanza and iBook are available for the iPad ebooks reading. Stanza is a powerful free ePub reading that brings the ebooks with a online reading interface which is unrivaled in its clarity and ease of use. Many ePubs are available for your online reading without local file synchronizing.

There is one problem for iPad reading which caused by iPad’s weight. For long-form reading, the iPad is also larger and heavier than the entry-level Kindle. The iPad can be held with one hand, but that hand may soon tire. IPad’s weight limits the its superiority as an electronic reading in some way. It is necessary to come up with a fixed base for long time reading.

Game

There are plenty of game app which is the most popular software in the on-device App Store. Game is the main function besides ebook. PUZ games take the most part while some others which are not so easy to play. For example，the best platform of FPS games is PC; while nes nintendo entertainment system for action games; screen-touch-PUZ games could be operated smoothly on iPad. There are many entertaining games most of which could scarcely comparable to large games that operated on game console or PC. The limit of iPad functions make it impossible to run large online game such as Resident Evil and Final Fantasy. The worse is the storage limitations – some user got the first generation iPad with a 16GB capacity, only 16G of storage. It is too small to run massively online game.

IPadd is defined at the beginning an entertainment end between the smartphone and netbook. It could，no doubt, offer entertainment very well. But it could scarcely comparable with PS3 and MMO game yet. 

Digital Photo Frame

Digital photo frame is a electronic product with small liquid crystal box to display digital photos. IPad has the built-in Digital photo frame which could display the digital photos on it. The clarity of photos on iPad is far beyond that on normal digital photo frames judging only by the appearance of picture image. However，it is impossible to display digital photos outside without the access of SD and USB. So the big digital photo frame without SD and USB is, kind of, on the way out.

Video

IPad doesn’t play Adobe or Flash video but only HTML5 by far with the 1024*768 resolution. No flash compatibility, which due to the fact that multi-touch devices are not compatible with Adobe Flash because of the MouseOver code. This normally does not present a problem because of the work arounds in place. Without Flash support, you can not use the iPad to access these features. Still, its 1.5 pounds and slim shape give the iPad some advantages over a regular laptop. It’s like a ‘large screen product that lives on the couch,’ said Yves Behar, who designed the One Laptop Per Child machine at his design firm Fuse Project. ‘It will be the ultimate media controller and media consumption device.’

Music

IPad has built-in iPod App with the familiar interface of iTunes. You can synchronize local MP3 music to the iPad via iTunes. Apparently iPad is too large to be a MP3 player. With smaller size, iPhone or iPod is the better choice.

Browsing

Its built-in Safare explorer makes the appearance of gages far more clear than that on iPhone when you browsing. You can visiting most of the sites on the 1024*768 screen without zooming. Simply by virtue of its size and resolution you see much more of the page, and the use of popovers rather than iPhone-style full-screen menus makes for a calmer, more settled experience that perfectly fits the concept behind a tablet device. iPad Safari declares itself differently from iPhone or Mac/Windows Safari, so unless a website specifically decides to make the iPad site use the iPhone-optimized version, you’ll get the “real” version.

Mobile Office

Objectively speaking, iPad has no superiority to laptop or other Office tools. Apple doesn’t allow plugins of any kind, no SD, no USB, no video output; There is no replacement for the power of most plugins; The other missing ingredients for the closed system are open platform and App. However, all of them above added together could be invisible when comparing with the portrait mode keyboard.

For example, the virtual keyboard filled with almost the whole screen so I could see only a few lines of the words from the remote terminal during a remote host, the appearance just like visiting SSH on the cell phone or something. Most of the Office users are using the office products of Apple. Exporting of the Apple products to PC  may cause imcompatible events with Microsoft office products. Using the virtual keyboard is slower and more mistake-prone than typing on a mechanical keyboard because the virtual keyboard offers no tactile response. So for the officers, the virtual keyboard is the most nagging impractical part.

 Actually, IPad is not a laptop but an entertainment and net end between the smartphone and laptop. As a casual computer, it indeed have some advantages over a regular laptop. Though the lack of clarity about how this product should behave is still seems confusing the users of iPad. Compared with laptops, netbooks and smartphones the iPad lies somewhere in the middle. We’d rather play games on Wii or PS3 than iPad; rather browse via netbook; While reading ebooks, iPad is too heavy; as in office, iPad doesn’t have the mechanical keyboard and open platform we need.

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