But there are a few areas that feel a bit crummy, when compared with the rest of the experience. Considering how many apps Apple had to completely overhaul for the iPad’s presentation in January, it’s no surprise to find a few rough edges, on the otherwise fantastic device.

File syncing

I understand why Apple is hesitant to add any kind of file system to the iPhone OS, but considering how much emphasis was placed on the iPad apps at launch, you would think that they would have come up with an elegant way to get documents on and off your iPad.

Unfortunately, in reality it’s a huge pain. Ted Landau took the time to document all the steps it takes to actually get a document into iWork on your iPad, none of which are particularly intuitive. Plus you then have the hassle of managing revisions and tracking multiple copies of the same file.

The iPhone app SimpleNote and Notational Velocity on the mac show how document sync can be done right. Some apps are also adding Dropbox support, which gives you an idea how file sync in general could be improved. Given the fact that Apple has already done a lot of the hard work by creating the MobileMe and iWork online services, one can only hope that we’ll see seamless, cloud-based file syncing added sooner rather than later.

Safari caching

If you open multiple tabs in safari on your Mac, switching between them is instantaneous. In mobile safari, you can never be sure whether the tab will open immediately, or whether it will need to be reloaded over your wifi or 3G connection. On the wifi-only iPad, where users can’t be sure they’ll always have access to an internet connection, webpage persistance is particularly an issue. The fact that Offline Pages (iTunes link) is currently one of the top free iPad apps in the App Store would seem to underline this point.

Mobile Safari’s limiting caching abilities are most likely due to the limited amount of RAM in the iPad, which has just 256MB, however as Rentzsch has pointed out, it should be possible to offload pages to the solid state drive as a workaround, although it’s not a trivial problem.

Calendar event creation

Making event creation in calendars difficult seems to be one of Apple’s favorite UI slip-ups. The calendar app on the iPad is gorgeously designed and it makes browsing through calendar entries a visual pleasure.

But the interface for adding entries seems to have been cut & paste directly from the iPhone version and doesn’t make any use of the additional screen real estate the iPad offers. You get the impression the designers spent all their time working on the rest of the UI and simply stuck the editing controls in there at the last minute.

Consistency between the two platforms is of course a good thing, provided it doesn’t slow the user down unnecessarily. I would argue that you could better use the iPad’s screen real estate to make a much more efficient and intuitive event creation UI.

The problem is feature overlap: if a netbook can do some, but not all of the same things a notebook can do – why not just take the notebook? You’ll need a bag to carry either, so there’s only a slight difference in size and weight to consider. Smartphones on the other hand can do some of the same things a notebook can do, but have a clear size and weight advantage, as well as a telephony features that a notebook doesn’t offer.

The iPad might suffer from the same problem as netbooks. It offers a lot of features offered by both other device categories, but it also presents these features in a new, multi-touch interface. But is the new interface and compact form factor enough to convince users to ditch their smartphones and notebooks for certain tasks?

Browsing some of the initial comments about the iPad, most users are initially very enthusiastic, as you would expect with most highly anticipated new CE devices. However, some users are already reporting that the initial excitement has worn off:

Jeff Jarvis tweets:

“After having slept with her (Ms. iPad), I am having morning-after regrets. Sweet and cute but shallow and vapid.”

Update: Turns out Jeff is actually returning his iPad:

[...] “(I) simply don’t see a good use for the machine and don’t want to spend $500 on something I’m not going to use.”

Funemployed entrepreneur Nat Friedman posts on Facebook:

“24 hours later, I must admit I’m not sure what I’m supposed to be using this thing for. The charm is wearing off.”

On a more anecdotal note, I recently had a few friends over for a party and they were playing with an iPad borrowed from work. Most of them were fascinated by the device and wanted one, but couldn’t really see much use for it apart as a “toy”.

Unlike the iPhone, which you always carry with you anyway, the iPad is something you need to actively seek out and use. With many people purchasing iPads without a clear idea what they’ll be using it for, it’ll be interesting to see whether Apple’s latest can win a permanent place in user’s day-to-day lives, or whether it will be yet another gadget collecting dust somewhere. My guess is that it’ll be the type of gadget you use regularly – just not as often as your phone or notebook.

What are your thoughts? Are you starting to get bored of your iPad – or has it already become indispensable?

Apple has done such a great job of establishing best practices for nearly all types of UI interactions that it’s not often you see news kinds of UI interaction introduced by third party developers.

But when Atebits introduced Tweetie 2, it also introduced so-called “spring reloading”. Basically if you pull down past the end of a list, causing it to spring back, you can refresh the current list of tweets.

Many reviewers noted the ingenuity of this design, as it effectively turned a habit of many users (namely playing with the springy lists) into a useful feature. This design has since been adopted by several other applications and seems as though it may become a de facto UI convention on the iPhone OS.

Here is the original Tweetie 2 design:

Foursquare is basically a straight up copy:

This is Gowalla’s take on it – the logo appears to let you know you’ve pulled down far enough:

And the Wikipedia app Articles uses the design to lock or unlock your screen orientation:

It’ll be interesting to see if this convention is adopted by more applications going forward – or if Apple will even perhaps add it to their own apps. But at any rate, it’s nice to see good UI innovations from a third party developer being adopted by others. I can’t wait to see what Atebits and others come up with for the iPad.

• Why doesn’t it seem to have the Weather, Stocks, Clock or Voice Memo apps?
• Why is there space for a camera?
• -insert latest techcrunch rumour here-

For what it’s worth, I believe it’s entirely possible Apple might be holding back certain features so there’s something new to announce around the time it’s actually due to ship. In fact, there’s a precedent for this.

Shortly before the original iPhone was scheduled to launch in 2007, Apple announced two major (supposedly last-minute) improvements.

The first was a battery life upgrade (which was probably achieved by software improvements), the second was that they were “upgrading” the display to a glass screen – which seems like such an integral part of the overall device that it would have to have been planned all along.

My guess is that we’ll see one or two minor iPad announcements in March, but it probably won’t include a camera.

1. Times

This fantastic RSS reader is already multi-touch aware and is a dream to use on MacBooks with multi-touch trackpads. You tap to read full articles, 3-finger swipe up to return to the overview or 3-finger swipe left and right to switch between sections. The gorgeous UI is the closest thing to reading a real newspaper on your Mac and Times could be a perfect match for the iPad.

2. CoverScout

The coverflow-esque UI in CoverScout is a perfect fit for the iPad: You can swipe through your albums, double-tap to start a search and then drag a cover from your search results to an album to apply it.
The search results bubble introduced in CoverScout 3 is also very reminiscent of the new popover list UI element introduced for the iPad.

Whilst you can certainly argue whether this is the type of application you would use on the iPad, the interaction style seems as though it would be an ideal match.

3. Djay

If there’s one application that would really work well with a touch-screen UI, it’s Djay. Being able to use a MacBook multi-touch trackpad as your DJ controller is nice, but a 9.7 inch touchscreen control would offer a much better, hands-on experience. Currently it looks as though access to the music on your iPad will be restricted though, making a real port of Djay unfeasible.

2010

It’ll be interesting to see which Mac applications will be turned into iPad versions and what level of sophistication iPad apps have. Will they stay simple and iPhone-esque? Or will we see Mac application developers come out with truely desktop-challenging versions of their products? 2010 should be an exciting year for developers…

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