This time, I will report on what I consider the more mediocre aspects of the iPad. The "ugly" in the classic trio.
(1) The design. The aesthetics of the device are pretty weak. It certainly looks like a small iMac or a large iPhone, but is that really a good thing? That’s not really a great goal. For those who haven’t held one in your hands, imagine a large rounded rectangle thickened to about 5 centimeters. While that sounds awesomely thin, in fact the device gets even thicker in the middle, making it unstable when placed flat on a table. No doubt the designers wanted it to seem thin, but making the edges thinner than the middle is like a bald guy with a comb-over or a fat guy in a muscle shirt: it’s just pretending to be something it’s not. If you insist on sticking with the bland design, at least make it uniformly thick.
(2) The affordances. “Affordances” is a fancy word for doorknobs – physical (or virtual) elements that help you use a device. Designed well, they invite you to interact with them to do what you want and need; designed poorly, they confuse and frighten you. The iPad has five physical controls, and they are all terrible. I spent a long time in the graphical UI looking for volume control before realizing that the toggle switch on the side was the only way to adjust volume. There were no clues written on the device for any of the buttons – even simple, standard icons were missing. One of them I never touched because I was afraid of what it might do.
Under affordances I include the lack of any kind of handle. Related to design (see point 1, above), the basic rounded rectangle shape and touch screen provided no useful way to hold the thing. If you want to use it for any length of time you might want to hold it in front of you with one hand, but since there is no handle and any fingers on the front of the machine could be interpreted as input – well, there’s just no way to do that without fatigue of some kind.
(3) The weight. Speaking of fatigue – the first time I held the iPad I was flipping through a colleague’s vacation photos. At first it was awesome. The finger flip UI and the clear, bright screen were clear wins. Then I realized my arm was about to die. The design (see point 1, above) tries to hide the heft, but it can’t be avoided if you hold it up for long. That continued to happen over and over as I used the iPad. The thing is just heavier than it should be for its intended niche. (Maybe a handle would help.)
(4) The phone. Once you get past the signature apps, most of the things you can do with the iPad were actually created for the iPhone. The fact that it looks like a comically oversized iPhone (see point 1, above) is underscored by the apps, that are also comically oversized and incapable of adjusting to the altered aspect ratio as you rotate the iPad to make best use of the relatively large screen space.
(5) The screen. I understand that there are tradeoffs with screen coatings. Non-reflective screens block some of the light so they take more power. Nontheless, the shiny reflective screen makes the iPad pretty hard to use outdoors or in brightly lit environments. I tried to watch a movie in the back yard and even in the shade all I could see in the dark scenes was my own face. It also collect fingerprints, and since it's a touch-screen device that means you have to polish it quite often.
(6) The keyboard. It's kind of a necessary evil on a device like this that the keyboard has to be virtual, without tactile feedback. And to avoid mistyping it has to have big buttons which means that numbers and letters are on different pages. (Although I don't know why you don't flip between keyboards rather than using mode buttons.) But the fact that it's all necessary doesn't make it any less ugly.
Next: the bad!
- jack*
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