What are the cons of the iPad 2?

[shijinn]

RealityChuck - i have an ipad 1 too, but different experiences with you.

2. i think it has been said often that the ipad is a media consumption device. many people like to disagree though, so i understand your point of view.

3. i’ve heard great things about drop box.

4. never happened to me - upgrading was smooth, quick and automatic.

5. I have the ipad for about a year now and it still lasts about 10 hours in my case, though i have the untested feeling that the so called multitasking is draining it faster. untested because 10 hours is really all i need.

6. You can set your browser to something other than mobile safari if you want.

7. Opera is either universal or HD. it’s cool but it has little features. i prefer Atomic Web Browser.
   so essentially, your complaints boil down to no flash and poor input. since an onscreen keyboard is inherent for a touchscreen device, it seems to be just the lack of flash then.

[Balthisar]

@Omniscient

Every example of it being used is usually to say “hey, watch this video I watched on my computer the other day!” or “look at these pictures I took on my iPhone or camera”. It’s essentially a glorified mobile display. Now, that’s not entirely a bad thing since sharing stuff is a legitimate purpose and it’s clearly better at that than a smartphone and most computers which might happen to be in the other room. Why would you want to spend that much money for a device that is so limited in real world use?

That’s basically for how I use ours around the house. For serious work (e.g., content creation) it’s easier just to go to the study and use one of the machines there. As for “why spend that much money” is has to do with the utility outside of the house.

It sucks for composing anything. Even a brief email is easier to compose on a smartphone than on a iPad. It sucks as a camera, royally, and doesn’t travel well at all. The battery life is not very good and it’s not very functional as a mobile video device because of the flash limitation, lack of a DVD/SD/USB drive and battery life. It’s OK as a web browser so long as all you’re trying to do is check the weather or some scores or read a new article, but if you’re doing anything more involved that requires composing (message boards, facebook, commenting) you’re almost certainly better off with a laptop or desktop.

Actually I can’t agree with any of this, except for Flash. I only ever want to see restaurant websites when I’m in an unfamiliar area, and too many of them still use Flash. Compared to travelling with my business laptop, despite the on-screen keyboard and lack of mouse, it’s the best piece of traveling technology that I’ve ever owned. I can do (but not necessarily as easily) everything that my business laptop can do, and then some (and it has 64 GB versus the 40 GB drive my laptop has!). Of course my laptop is a behemouth “mobile engineer workstation,” and not a light, little netbook, so my experience is based on that.

@RealityChuck

5. Upgrading the OS wipes out your data and requires you reinstall much of your software.

This always used to suck, but I was pleasantly surprised that the 4.3.1 to 4.3.3 upgrade didn’t require this. I hope it’s a sign of things to come.

Like many Apple products, it’s a cool toy, but not really a practical tool.

Just out of curiosity, what other Apple products do you mean? Their phones are useful phones, their iPods are useful music playback tools, and their PCs are useful PCs.

[jasg]

The biggest con that I have run into is that the iPad is simply not a device for folks who:

1. Want netbook / laptop replacement
2. Dislike Apple or iTunes
3. Want full control so it can be hacked, customized or extended with peripherals
4. Must have Flash

If those items are important to you, don’t get a tablet.

As noted, as a safe from malware, media consumption device it works well. I’ve watched family members from 2 to 92 use and enjoy it, even when a full fledged computer is not for them.

[Onomatopoeia]

@jasg

The biggest con that I have run into is that the iPad is simply not a device for folks who:

1. Want netbook / laptop replacement
2. Dislike Apple or iTunes
3. Want full control so it can be hacked, customized or extended with peripherals
4. Must have Flash

If those items are important to you, don’t get a tablet.

As noted, as a safe from malware, media consumption device it works well. I’ve watched family members from 2 to 92 use and enjoy it, even when a full fledged computer is not for them.

I think you meant to write: If those items are important to you, don’t get an iPad. Your numbers 2 and 4 are accommodated by most other tablets, and your number 3 is accommodated by any tablet with an open source OS.

[Gorsnak]

@Onomatopoeia

I think you meant to write: If those items are important to you, don’t get an iPad. Your numbers 2 and 4 are accommodated by most other tablets, and your number 3 is accommodated by any tablet with an open source OS.

And 1 is pretty much satisfied by the Asus Transformer if you pick up the keyboard dock with built-in trackpad.

[jasg]

@Onomatopoeia

I think you meant to write: If those items are important to you, don’t get an iPad. Your numbers 2 and 4 are accommodated by most other tablets, and your number 3 is accommodated by any tablet with an open source OS.

Yep, I meant to say iPad. Fingers don’t always follow instructions… ask the test group I worked with

Still though, the real point here is that many of us who build, tweak and maintain our own PCs and write software get a lot of enjoyment out of doing that. Just like some people like maintaining or souping up their cars - even though most just drive them.

After 20 years of Windows programming, if find that I greatly enjoy just relaxing, reading and surfing on an iPad. Laptop and Desktop do the other stuff better, but are more of a hassle.

[breezman]

@Balthisar

All tiny-lens and tiny-sensor cameras suck. I’m actually impressed at how good it is despite the tiny lens and tiny sensor. But yeah, the cameras suck on all iDevices.

I disagree. The camera on the iPhone 4 is, in my opinion, quite good, and it is certainly superior to the one on the iPad 2.

[Unintentionally_Blank]

The best thing I’ve heard is: the iPad does 80% of the things that 80% of people do. And I think it gets the short end of the stick by a certain complement. “does not have an SD card slot, but the Galaxy Tab does”…except the card slot is disabled, and will be available Real Soon Now.

Likewise, iOS was FLAYED for not having cut and paste…and yet windows mobile 7 shipped without it…even though Microsoft had released 6 earlier mobile OS versions that DID have cut and paste.

I’ve used varying versions of Android on a Rooted nook color and while I can see the geek draw, and I AM a geek…when I’m using the iPad, I want something that just works, and the iPad does that really well. Android on the nook, once rooted, was REALLY crummy.

I get the impression the Android will probably be 95% of what 20% of people do. It will do more…eventually. But I don’t think it’s as well put together yet. I just keep hearing too many waffle words in product reviews.

I went from lugging around a 17" desktop replacement laptop and a backpack full of crap to a sack lunch and the iPad…I can’t TELL you how that’s improved my commute.

[scr4]

@Unintentionally_Blank

“does not have an SD card slot, but the Galaxy Tab does”…except the card slot is disabled, and will be available Real Soon Now.

I don’t know about other Android tablets, but the micro-SD slot on the EEE Pad Transformer has worked fine from day 1.

I’ve used varying versions of Android on a Rooted nook color and while I can see the geek draw, and I AM a geek…when I’m using the iPad, I want something that just works, and the iPad does that really well. Android on the nook, once rooted, was REALLY crummy.

That’s because the Nook was never designed to be a general-purpose tablet. It’s an e-book reader. The processor (800MHz single-core) is barely fast enough for that use. All tablets that ship with Honeycomb have 1GHz dual-core or better processors, as far as I know.

I get the impression the Android will probably be 95% of what 20% of people do. It will do more…eventually. But I don’t think it’s as well put together yet. I just keep hearing too many waffle words in product reviews.

What waffle words? Admittedly Honeycomb 3.0 was pretty rough around the edges, but 3.1 is very stable and refined.

[Unintentionally_Blank]

@scr4

What waffle words? Admittedly Honeycomb 3.0 was pretty rough around the edges, but 3.1 is very stable and refined.

you just used them. “3.0 was rough”

When push comes to shove, all the iDevice killers HAVEN’T been iDevice killers.

To be perfectly honest, the iPad isn’t without it’s limitations (the aforementioned camera…they went cheap to hit a price point.) but the compention can, at best, hope to be fractionally better than the iPad 1. Heck, the iPad 2, for all it’s statistics is fractionally better than the iPad 1.

(What! Are you blind! The speed! The Magnets! The Cameras!)

My point is this: There’s a huge jump from a world that doesn’t have a modern tablet to one with the first iPad. Everything from there on out will either fail because it’s not adequately cooked, or succeed because it’s fractionally better than the first iPad.

Yeah, yeah, the iPad2 has UBER grpahics and will make the iPad look old and busted by comparison. Sure…but that’s not what most people use it for…8 times teh graphics power doesn’t count for squat in Angry Birds.

The original iPad is a relatively light, very rigid, long lasting, fast enough, well polished device…and that ecosystem has sold 200 MILLION devices.

It’s hard to characterise that, in ANY way, as a failure. Likewise, you couldn’t sell that many if it were inherently flawed in ways that matter. No flash? Not really important. No USB? Not important enough for the masses. No Tegra2? Evidently not a problem if the vast majority of the owners don’t play Dead Space Tablet edition. Are the masses sheeple? Perhaps, but buying what everybody else does brings with it a host of benefits in software, accessories, secondary sales, etc.

It is NOT a standalone single computer for everybody…as an adjunct, it’s pretty nifty, and really cut back on the time I spend in front of my laptop. I could say that might change with iOS 5…but then I’d be using waffle words.

[Markxxx]

The real question is whether you should wait for the iPad-3

Just google around for rumours of what might be on it