iPad – Stay Frosty

iPad Pro (2018) First Impressions

Some initial thoughts after trying out the new 2018 11” iPad Pro for a couple of days.

I picked up a new 11″ iPad Pro this week, to replace my original 9.7″ Pro. I’ve been using it for a couple of days now, so here are some of my initial thoughts in no particular order:

love

thicker

The screen feels much bigger (and it is!). iOS and its apps have more room to breathe. Although it would’ve been nice if it were a tiny bit wider to keep closer to the original 4:3 aspect ratio.
This thing is a fingerprint magnet! Seems to show up way more fingerprints than my original Pro.
I’ve not had a device with ProMotion before, and wow – animations feel super slick. Scrolls like butter.
I’m still getting used to how to hold the iPad now that it has thinner bezels. In one hand, you end up with your thumb resting on the edge between the front and side of the device, as the bezel isn’t wide enough to place your thumb there without touching the screen.
The majority of the third party apps I’ve tried so far haven’t been updated for the new screen size, which means black bars at the top and bottom of the screen. In landscape, this makes the new aspect ratio (no longer 4:3 on the 11″) even more obvious, and I’m still getting used to it.
Face ID works very well, but can be a little awkward in practice due to the camera being situated along just one edge of a device that can be (and is) used in any orientation. Now that the home button is gone, it’s not always immediately obvious where the front camera is when you pick up the iPad – particularly if you’re using it in a dimly lit room. For example, if I’m reading in bed I’ll often hold the iPad in portrait orientation and rest the bottom of it on the bed covers. But half the time it turns out that the iPad is ‘upside down’, so the Face ID cameras get blocked by the bedding. The iPhones X don’t have this issue because the notch helps you know which way is up.
This is an incredible, futuristic, fast device. It feels fantastic to hold, looks amazing, and is a joy to use. I’d love to use it for all my computing needs. Xcode for iPad, please!

And a few thoughts on the new Smart Keyboard Folio:

The new Smart Keyboard Folio is much sturdier than the old Smart Keyboard Cover, and is certainly much more stable when typing on your lap. The iPad can also now be positioned in at a shallower viewing angle, which is much nicer than the very steep angle of the old cover.
I was worried that it’d be difficult to put the iPad into / take the iPad out of the folio, but it’s actually very simple thanks to the magical array of magnets present in the new Pro.
The magnets are so strong, it’s now more difficult to collapse the iPad when it’s propped up in the folio. I haven’t yet worked out the right places to grab it without either touching on the screen or mashing on the keyboard.
Because the new folio wraps around the front and back of the iPad it does increase the bulk, and it’s even heavier than the Smart Keyboard, which already added quite a lot of weight to the device. Laid flat, the new Pro in the folio is about the same thickness as the thickest part of the old keyboard cover:

Codify

I love the iPad. It’s casual, immediate, and more intimate than a laptop ever will be. There are wonderful apps available for most activities you could want to do on an iPad: reading, writing, drawing, listening, watching, playing; the list goes on. Much of the time when I want to perform some task (or just relax), I will now reach for my iPad instead of my laptop if possible. However, until now I have been unable to use the iPad for one of my favourite pasttimes: programming¹.

Enter Codify. Codify is a new iPad app that lets you create simple games, prototypes and simulations directly on an iPad. You write code in the Lua language using a fantastic code editor (more on that later), with an API that’s very similar to Processing. You can then run that code straight away; play your game, experiment with your prototype, tweak your simulation. It’s fast, easy, impressive, and fun.

Continue reading “Codify”

iPad Initial Impressions

So, last night I got to play with an iPad for a couple of hours (thanks @davea!) and thought I’d post some of my initial impressions. Obviously these are my thoughts, your mileage may vary.

It’s smaller than you probably think it is
It’s exactly as big as you thought it was if you were sad enough to make an actual-size cardboard model of it months ago
The screen is gorgeous. Really bright, the colours just jump out at you, and the viewing angles are unreal. Photos look brilliant on it, but you see a slight lack of resolution in text when you’re zoomed some way out of a web page.
That said, because the screen is a piece of glass, it seemed as though glare could definitely be an issue depending on where you’re sat. I was trying to read Winnie-the-Pooh, and I could just see my face reflected in the screen because I was in the wrong position.
It feels really nice in your hand. It’s a good weight (although lighter would be nicer) and it feels reassuringly solid.
It’s fast. I’d read all the reviews saying how quick it was, but I didn’t expect it to be quite that quick. Everything just feels so slick and fluid, and I think this is a very big part of why I found it so nice to use.
Web browsing and Google maps are just brilliant. Again, there was a lot of hyperbole about how browsing the web on this thing is a totally new experience and you have to try it to understand it – and whilst that’s a little OTT, I kind of get where they’re coming from. It feels very different (in a good way) from anything I’ve used before. For casual web surfing, lay back on the sofa or in a comfy chair, and for actually reading web pages, I think it’ll be brilliant.
The Instapaper app was probably the nicest reading experience I came across while trying out the iPad. With the default font settings, it’s totally gorgeous. I could spend hours and hours working my way through my Instapaper reading list on this thing.
Reading PDFs is also a pretty great experience. It’s so nice to be able to flick through a PDF, and hold it like a book. A vastly better experience than reading them on a laptop or on my Sony Reader (which is far too slow for PDFs, and they don’t work well with that screen size).
Photos look great, and the slideshows work really well. The iPad would make a brilliant digital photo frame whilst not in use.
The keyboard surprised me by being much more usable than I was expecting. Portrait mode’s a little cramped, but landscape seems nearly full size. Straight away, I was typing very quickly with very few mistakes. I could see myself inputting a lot of text without the need for an external keyboard. NaNoWriMo 2010, perhaps?
It seems a very social device. Sure, we were all interested in trying it out and so it got passed around a lot – but it’s just so easy to spin it round or hold it up to show other people something cool. Or to load up an app and hand it over to someone to play with. It’s very unlike a laptop in that respect.
The ‘just a big iPod Touch’ comment that people have made is total crap. iPhone OS on a device this size is a very different experience. The extra screen space adds a lot. Web browsing in particular feels completely different to browsing on an iPhone.
My iPhone now seems very small, cramped, and slow.

I liked it, and can’t wait to get one. I think my primary use would be reading – Instapaper, websites, feeds, and PDFs. And I think I would use it a lot for all of those things. In fact, other than coding and managing my photos, I could see it replacing my laptop for a lot of things I do with my computer – namely, using the web, email, etc. And for me, that’d be a good thing – I hate being stuck behind a laptop when all I want to do is read. It’d be a nice distinction, because laptop would be for getting something done (coding, etc), and iPad would be for leisure. The iPad would also come in very hand whilst coding, for reference books, etc.