It has been a long-time coming, but in just 12 days' time, the much-hyped Apple iPad will hit UK stores. We descontruct the device to discover whether it is a must-buy gadget or, at £699, just an expensive toy
It is the most over-hyped device since the iPhone and now that the iPad is finally nearing its UK launch date of 28 May, there's just one question: is it worth buying? If you already own an iPhone or an iPod Touch and wish it had a much bigger screen, the answer is probably yes – if you can afford £429 for even the most basic model. If you already own a notebook PC and would like something smaller, the answer could well be no; you'd be better of with a netbook at less than half the price.
Such rationality may not stop you from succumbing, however. The iPad is a wonderfully shiny new toy from a company that understands seduction. And it's cunningly designed to fit in between your smartphone and your laptop without replacing either.
The iPad is the latest and most popular example of what Intel calls mobile internet devices or Mids. There is a battle between devices that are mobile phones but larger and devices that are notebook PCs (mostly Microsoft Windows) but smaller. It is not just about "chip" technology – Arm chips that power most smartphones versus Intel chips that drive most computers; what really makes phone-type Mids attractive to technology companies and developers is what might be termed "propensity to pay".
It pains the creative industries that computer users generally won't pay anything for a four-minute song, but will happily pay £1.50 or more for a ringtone version of it. PC users won't pay to send and receive thousands of emails a year, but will pay 10p to send one SMS text. The iPad is clearly on the "will pay" side of the great divide, which makes its users much more attractive than any number of netbook buyers on the "won't pay" side.
At the moment, most iPad apps have been written for the iPhone and adapted. But there is clearly lots of potential for newspapers, magazines, books, games and other apps designed for the iPad's brilliant-looking screen.
All the apps have to be approved by Apple, which maintains control not just over the content (no porn, for example) but also how they are written: the latest edict bans Adobe Flash software, which is used by a huge number of websites to create animated graphics and simple games and to show videos, and any apps written in Flash then converted for the iPad or iPhone.
Apple's "walled garden" approach upsets people who mistake the iPad for an open, general-purpose computer. But the iPad isn't a mini-Macintosh. Conceptually, it's more like a Nintendo DS, and where's the torch-flamed rebellion against Nintendo?
Another thing to bear in mind is that the iPad is missing a lot of functionality: it has no camera for videochats; no SD card slot for loading photos from your camera; and no USB. Like the first iPod and iPhone, it's just a starter for a string of enhanced versions that will tempt you to buy a new model every couple of years, or when the sealed-in batteries no longer work. And you'll be delighted to buy every one.
Those made of stronger stuff can wait for similar tablets based on the Google Android software already used in many smartphones. Scaled-up Android tablets won't have the iPad's sheer class, but it's a free, open-source Linux-based system that will enable hundreds of companies to compete.
The more open system will usually win in the end, as competition drives down prices. Consumer market-research company NPD reckons sales of Android devices have already overtaken the iPhone in the US. But Apple does already have roughly $40bn in the bank to show it can make plenty of money from its unique proprietary approach.
THE IPAD DECONSTRUCTED
The casing
The iPad feels reassuringly solid, thanks to its brushed aluminium unibody case. While many small electronic devices are now made of plastic, the iPad's contoured base "is machined from a single billet of aluminium", according to the iFixit website. This makes it relatively heavy – 680g (1.5lb) for the basic model – but gives it a feeling of quality. The actual size of the iPad is 242.8mm by 189.7mm, which is slightly smaller than the Kindle DX.
The screen
The first thing that catches your eye with the iPad is the vivid 9.7in LCD colour screen. It uses the same capacitive touchscreen technology as the iPhone and iPod Touch, which is both sensitive and surprisingly accurate, though it's admittedly a bit on the shiny side. It uses IPS (in-plane switching), which is more common on TVs than laptops and provides a wide range of viewing angles. Ebook readers, such as the Amazon Kindle, Sony Reader and Plastic Logic's Que, have monochrome e-ink screens that are easier to read in daylight, but the iPad's screen is better for web browsing, games, movies and other applications. The resolution is 1024x768 pixels, which is less than high-definition, and not widescreen. In fact, it's the 4:3 shape that was popular on notebook PCs a decade or so ago, which means movies usually appear with broad black bands top and bottom.
The batteries
The iPad has two long, thin, lithium-ion polymer batteries that lie side by side at the bottom of the case with the dock connector cable between. This should provide a total of 24.8 watt-hours which should keep an iPad going for about 10 hours, depending on use. However, just extracting a battery involves a 21-step process and special tools, according to one expert guide, so it's unlikely you'll ever change them yourself.
The processor
Apple could have based its new tablet on the Arm chip, used in the iPhone and iPod, or on an Intel Atom, which is a low-power/low-cost chip compatible with the processors used in its Macintosh computers, as well as in most Windows PCs. It chose the Arm route, creating a system than can't run full Mac OS X or Windows applications but runs the same operating system and apps as its older but much smaller stablemates.
But, as it often does, Apple went further. Instead of buying an off-the-shelf Arm (which includes system-on-a-chip designs such as Nvidia's Tegra and Qualcomm's Snapdragon, widely used in smartphones such as the Google Nexus One), Apple developed its own 1GHz A4 system on a chip. Presumably, this development was aided by Apple's purchase of PA Semiconductor, a small Californian chip design company, for $278m in 2008. X-rays reveal that the A4 processor package includes an Arm similar to the Samsung-sourced chip in the iPhone, plus two Samsung memory chips that provide 256MB of memory. The A4 provides snappy performance in the iPad, though there are more powerful dual-core Arm designs that could be used in later and much better multitasking versions of the iPad; the current graphics chip could also be upgraded.
Apple and Arm have a long history and Arm might not even have been founded if Apple hadn't wanted to use its chip in the Newton Messagepad, a touchscreen organiser or PDA, launched in 1993. The Arm, originally the Acorn Risc Machine, was first used in the Acorn Archimedes desktop computer. It was renamed Advanced Risc Machine and spun off into Arm Ltd, which was owned by Acorn, Apple and chip company VLSI. Arm-based chip designs are now used in more than one billion phones every year.
The software
The iPad's software does, very obviously, make it look like a big iPhone or iPod Touch. But rather than just being multiplied up to fill the bigger screen, the best programs – including Apple's – have been adjusted, sometimes subtly, to fit their new home. A vertical iPhone app might work better with two side-by-side views on a horizontal iPad screen, for example. And as well as split screen views, there are also popovers to provide extra navigational aids. As with the iPhone, there are plenty of apps for sale or free through Apple's appstore, though it may seem more oriented towards selling you movies and music.
The most obvious drawback is the lack of support for software found on the web, mainly Flash and Java programs. People who play Facebook games such as Farmville are out of luck. And although Apple boss Steve Jobs proclaims the virtues of the next generation web language HTML5 as an alternative, this is an incomplete set of standards not widely implemented and lacks the development tools beloved of Flash and Java developers. It means the iPad fails to deliver the full web and it could be years before everything is in HTML5 format.
The lack of full multitasking is also a drawback for people used to computers – should you have to quit what you're doing to send a couple of instant messages?
There are also a few usability issues. After consumer testing, usabilityconsultant Jakob Nielsencorrect pointed out that commands are not used consistently across applications. So while you can swipe the screen with your finger, you can't be sure what will happen. Worse, there's no obvious way of finding out what an action ought to do.
But this is the first version. Apple can make many improvements and the developers of new apps and websites will soon learn to cater for what could be a very lucrative new audience.
The storage
Although the iPad is sometimes touted as having a solid state drive (SSD), which is the sort of drive you get in some laptop PCs and even netbooks that can benefit from their speed and reliability, it doesn't. The iPad, like the iPod Touch it resembles, has Flash memory chips soldered to the board. Flash chips, which have nothing to do with Adobe Flash software, are commonly used in MP3 players, USB memory sticks and similar devices. These memory chips provide iPads with 16GB, 32GB or 64GB of storage without adding the bulk, weight or cost of a real disk drive, or of an SSD designed to fit in its place. This is a pity because having an SSD would make it feasible to swap out Apple's drive for a larger one, or in the case of a dead iPad, to rescue the user's valuable data and access it from a different computer.
Wi-Fi or GSM?
The iPad comes in two basic versions: one has only a wireless Wi-Fi connection, while the other has a micro-sim slot and can also work with a mobile data connection.
Wi-Fi will suit most iPad buyers who will be able to use it around the house or at Wi-Fi hotspots in cafes and so on. The GSM connection will enable people to use their iPad while travelling: Wi-Fi is not always available on trains and even less common in cars, but you can often get some sort of mobile broadband signal, even if it's very slow. However, since the mobile connection adds £100 to the price of an iPad, plus running costs of perhaps £10 or more per month, it's not worth buying unless you will actually use it. The iPad isn't designed to work as a mobile phone, though, as with the iPod Touch, you could always use it as an internet phone.
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