The iPad 1

A review, nearly 4 years later.

"In five years I don’t think there’ll be a reason to have a tablet anymore."

Thorsten Heins, CEO, Blackberry

We're used to breathless reviews of the latest gadgets, written before the rest of us have a chance to even see the gadgets in real life. The reviewer gets a couple weeks - or sometimes just a couple minutes - with a new device, tries out the new features, and declares it a winner or loser in today's market. The next day, it's time for a new gadget. Rinse. Repeat.

It's not bad, per se - I do the same with apps for reviews, and obviously most movie reviews are written after watching the film once. Restaurant reviews? Why, they're typically written after only eating a couple entrées in the restaurant, and hardly can really tell us how everything in the restaurant will taste.

But how about something different: a review of a gadget that's far past its prime, one that's all but obsolete but still in service?

Enter the iPad 1. Blackberry's (now former) CEO predicted that 5 years from now, tablets will be passé at best, so where does Apple's original tablet stand today? The iPad 1 is increasingly a tech dinosaur, shadowed by The New iPad and the iPad Mini - and whatever tablet Samsung is promoting this week. But it still works, and many of us are still using it in 2013. My wife and I still used it daily until she got an iPad 4 earlier this year — and now my Mom used the old iPad 1. It's still working, and is still a game changer for anyone without a tablet today.

Most Techinch Magazine readers will be familiar with the iPad already — you may even be reading this issue on one right now. But I thought there was something to the idea of capturing my thoughts on Apple's first real tablet, an experiment that was inspired in part by Patrick Rhone's review of his iPad 1 late last 2012. So here's my take on the iPad 1.

The Tablet That Started it All

My first Apple tablet wasn't official a tablet at all, but rather a Newton MessagePad 2000, given to me in, of all things, 2000 after the company he worked for decommissioned them. It was my first Apple product, one that introduced me to the puff of smoke that now graces the OS X dock when you remove icons, and the pull down to trash can animation that was in Notes, Mail, and more until iOS 7. But, for the most part, the Newton was a novelty, one where I kept a journal and used an on-screen calculator and practiced writing in Graffiti since it was far more accurate than the Newton's own software. It was fun, but never something I ever used for all that much.

I was a bit late to the iPad party, getting my iPad 1 in early January 2011 (after I won a giveaway; thanks BraveNewCode!). At the time, the only laptop I had was a PC netbook, which I used exclusively when traveling - it was too annoying for much else. I purposed that the iPad would replace it completely as my on-the-go computer.

And it did that, and more. I was still in college at the time, and ended up typing up numerous essays in Pages, even submitting them thanks to iCab Mobile's support for file uploads (the lack of file uploads is still the biggest frustration I've had with my iPad until now - something that's been fixed for pictures in iOS 6 which the iPad 1 can't run, but is still an issue for iOS overall). At the time, I was both writing for AppStorm and doing tech support for Flow for work alongside college, and the iPad 1 performed remarkably well for both of those jobs. The built-in 3G made getting online on the go insanely simple, something that felt miraculous compared to sharing internet from my old phone then or using a 3G dongle. And I'd easily get 8-10 hours of use out of the iPad even through a full day of work on 3G, something you couldn't beat on a computer until this year's MacBook Airs were released.

The first and most obvious complaint about the iPad is that no one would want to type on the on-screen keyboard all day. But, for myself at any rate, I found I could type far more accurately on a cramped bus with the iPad's on-screen keyboard than I could on my old PC netbook or my newer 13" MacBook Air. The former was simply too small and flimsy, and the latter is large enough to make use on public transit a public nuisance. The iPad, on the other hand, was just the right size to fit in my lap and let me type rather accurately without taking up too much space. And yes, I can touch-type without looking at the iPad screen — it still amazes me that I can thumb blind on my iPhone, but typing on the iPad is equally surprising. And yet, it works.

What also works amazingly well is using an external keyboard. I linked the Apple Wireless Keyboard I used with my Mac to the iPad, and was pleasantly surprised to find that, even from the beginning, iOS supported most of the best text editing keyboard shortcuts from OS X. It was great on the go, but add a keyboard and it almost felt like a "real computer". And, the iPad 1 even was light enough that you could bring along an external keyboard and not weigh more than most laptops — but really, that's unnecessary, because the on-screen keyboard is that good.

Performance with iOS 4 was good enough that I never really thought about the iPad 1's speed — it simply worked. What did bug me from the beginning was multitasking — or the lack thereof. There was basic app switching from the beginning, but that's all it was: basic. iOS 5 bought the multitasking gestures, though, and that changed everything — at least once they were brought to the iPad 1 with the first update. Sure, iOS 5 felt slow on the iPad 1, and most apps would have to refresh when you switched between them. But doing a tiny bit of Safari research then swiping back to your text editor to keep writing was suddenly simple. If they'd only add CMD+tab to the external keyboard support to let you switch apps without touching the screen, it'd almost be as good as a Mac.

And here's something that I really have always loved about the iPad: you can only do one thing at a time. That's frustrating, and yet, it makes you slow down and just do one thing. Turn off notifications, and there's nothing at all to distract you. It's scary almost how much the friction of switching back and forth between apps feels odd, because you're really not getting much done when you're constantly switching back and forth anyhow, even on a Mac or PC. It's good for you, once you're used to it — enough I almost wonder if it wouldn't be good for most of us to turn off tabs in our browsers.

But I digress. So, the iPad 1 for me was a revolution for two main things: it was easier to use on the go, something that was huge for me as I was traveling a lot the year I used it the most, and it made it easier to focus on just one thing at a time.

Everything Rises and Falls on Apps

Now, on a Mac or PC, there's well-known apps for just about everything you'd think of. The iPad, especially at first, didn't have that advantage — or should I say, it didn't have that curse. Instead, developers were able to find their own way with apps. Apple jumpstarted the iPad with the iWork apps, each of which found its way into my personal iPad-only workflow. Pages, as mentioned before, was the perfect Word replacement even in college, Numbers met my needs for lite spreadsheet use, and Keynote is the gold standard for presentations on any platform — assuming you can use Keynote to show said presentation, something I did from the iPad with the VGA connector. No problems there.

In the same way, the built-in email app was a tool I used daily, and with the iPad 1 it was practically the only email app on the platform. But that was ok — it worked great for my needs, and is always a reminder to me that sometimes we overlook the best built-in apps on platforms because we're so quick to want something shiny and new. Safari, also, was nearly enough, but the aforementioned lack of upload support in the iPad 1 made iCab Mobile my browser of choice whenever I needed to upload stuff — something that's still needed on any iPad today if you need to upload more than just images.

For nearly everything else I needed to do, there honestly was an app for that. Screenshot resizing is something I have to do a lot in my AppStorm work, and OneEdit was an app I just discovered in the App Store that worked perfect for that. Same goes for Textastic for code editing and FTP, iA Writer for writing, and more.

Now, that's where the iPad 1 quickly showed its age. It was fun using Garageband and Diet Coda, but both proved almost too much for it. Newer apps just were too much — oddly enough, for a machine that played back iTunes movies more smoothly than my older PCs ever did.

In the end, the iPad 1 today is still a great reading and writing device. For everything Jobs demoed in the original keynote, it's still perfect. It still gets great battery life, still scrolls beautifully in Instapaper, still is amazing for typing out some thoughts in Notes or Pages or iA Writer. Maps never were as awesome as they seemed they would be, thanks to the lack of turn-by-turn directions, and tabs in Safari were only mildly useful at best with the iPad 1's limited memory.

But you know what? It did the things it did better than anything else I'd ever used — and then enabled the awesome experiences of games like World of Goo, tools like the Paper app for drawing, and animated eBooks that my younger siblings loved. And hey — it still works today, something you can't say for so many competing tablets.

That's not bad.

Originally published on October 8th, 2013 in Techinch Magazine Issue 6

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