Ipad 2 - 5 out of 5 ??

[admin_exported]

I notice that you give the Ipad 2 full marks in your review. I'm not saying its not a good gadget but surely it cant get 5/5.

Why do you not make any deductions for the following points in a device thats designed to consume media.

- No Flash Support
- No Java Support
- No Tabs on Browser
- No widgets, or animations
- No 1080p video playback, and low bitrate support at 720p
- Limited video/audio codec support
- Dongles at extra cost needed for USB & HDMI
- Poor cameras
- Poor multitasking support
- No memory slot
- Tied to Itunes

 

[John Duncan]

I notice that you give the Ipad 2 full marks in your review. I'm not saying its not a good gadget but surely it cant get 5/5.

Why do you not make any deductions for the following points in a device thats designed to consume media.

- No Flash Support
- No Java Support
- No Tabs on Browser
- No widgets, or animations
- No 1080p video playback, and low bitrate support at 720p
- Limited video/audio codec support
- Dongles at extra cost needed for USB & HDMI
- Poor cameras
- Poor multitasking support
- No memory slot
- Tied to Itunes

Almost tempted to go and buy one to find out...

 

[Anonymous]

Possibly because What HiFi, Sound and Vision reviews both critically independently, and doesn't have the acute anti-Apple bias that you have.

 

[Anonymous]

So are you saying that the Ipad2 doesnt have these flaws ?

They have to be worth at least 1 star deduction. I would have given the Ipad 2 a 4- and the xoom a 3 - at least until the xoom gets it firmware update.

 

[John Duncan]

Depends. Should all CD players have a star deducted for not playing DVD-A, DVD, Bluray or VHS?

 

[Anonymous]

Only if they're made by Apple

.

 

[professorhat]

Or should all TVs be deducted a star for not having DLNA support, BBC iPlayer, Lovefilm etc., no matter how good a picture they display?

 

[Joe Cox]

Plenty of valid criticisms, many of which we mentioned in the review. I think the short answer is we could make a similar list for all the iPad's rivals, except it would be a lot longer.

As ever, we're thinking about what the majority of our readers want, and how well the product then delivers on that. With that in mind, the iPad2 is well worth its five stars in my book.

 

[d4v3pum4]

I completely agree with the above. Apple products nearly always seem to get 5* regardless of their flaws. Other products are docked *'s but not Apple. I was amazed to see the Apple TV getting a polar opposite review from the original review recently. The Boxee box mysteriously swapped places. Why did WHF take so long to realise this? Boxee box owners seem to have known this for a while. I digress.

Just out of interest, when will a WHF cover not feature an Apple product? I stopped subscribing to Stuff magazine as it was simply an Apple brochure and also completely lacking in substance. It was just pages upon pages of photographs and very few words, except when Apple launched something and it was on nigh on every page. It appears WHF are going down the same route. Yes, Apple products are cool and attact media interest but that doesn't mean that one has to feature on every cover in between launches. How about some balance now and again?

 

[Andrew Everard]

Next issue, on sale Thursday, highlights Arcam and B&W products on the cover. OK, so they're iPod dock systems, but...

 

[Paul.]

- No Flash Support Only people who care are Flash Developers. Battery Hog
- No Java Support Only people who care are Java devs. Works in web apps.
- No Tabs on Browser Coming in iOS5. Has separate pages already, same idea, just a different graphical metaphor.
- No widgets, or animations Hints from the beta code suggest this is coming. Animations, not sure what you mean. If you mean the swirly background animations android has that is good for nothing other than battery hogging, not really interested.
- No 1080p video playback, and low bitrate support at 720p Coming in iOS5
- Limited video/audio codec support VLC app is free, can play whatever you need
- Dongles at extra cost needed for USB & HDMI Who needs dongles when airplay is free?
- Poor cameras Buy a camera. Tablets with cameras (for anything other than video chat) is convergence gone mad i tells ya. I saw someone on tv filming wimbledon with an ipad, they looked ridiculous.
- Poor multitasking support. I think its awesome. Its the secret to the ipads battery life and speed. Also, no modern OS should need to download a task killer app. Task killers are in the top ten downloads for android, was the same on symbian phones 6 years ago.
- No memory slot Buy a dongle. You got me there.
- Tied to Itunes Don't personally see this as a negative, but if I was using iTunes on a PC maybe I would. Alternatives available once jail broken.

 

[bigboss]

Actually, lack of flash & java support annoys me on my iPad 2. Otherwise I wouldn't be even switching on my laptop.

 

[noogle]

Interesting to see the current Blackberry tablet TV ads focusing on its ability to run Flash...

 

[noogle]

- No Flash Support Only people who care are Flash Developers. Battery Hog

I think that's a bit of an exaggeration - Flash is a very broadly used technology across the web. I also think "battery hog" is Apple's spin - I've never seen independent confirmation of this.

 

[Paul.]

My own testing shows I don't have to charge my laptop as often when I use 'click to flash' and that my browser is faster, and crashes very rarely. Most Mac users know this all too well, as Flash is the number one (and pretty much only) cause of browser crashes on a Mac. Phones mostly have hardware encoding that is not compatible with flash flv, so battery life is significantly improved when using h.264 as its processed by the GPU not the processor. Flash quite literally hogs the Processor, when video should go to the GPU.

As to the Only people who care comment... Writing is on the wall for flash. Apple, Microsoft and Google all have no love for it, so its only a matter of time. The real question is, what flavour will HTML5 come in, and how long will it take for all parties involved to agree? Your average consumer doesn't care about flash, youtube, vimeo and god knows how many video sources sources are available to veiw in iOS. Dont think any of them miss the pop up ads, and all the games are available in the app store.

Apparently it was Porn that won the VHS-Betamax war. Porn has sided with iOS 🙂

 

[noogle]

I'd like the choice of whether or not to run Flash. Jobs should just get up on stage and say "Flash - Not Invented Here. We remember Microsoft vs. Netscape and are going to use our market share advantage to take out a technology competitor."

 

[bigboss]

My own testing shows I don't have to charge my laptop as often when I use 'click to flash' and that my browser is faster, and crashes very rarely. Most Mac users know this all too well, as Flash is the number one (and pretty much only) cause of browser crashes on a Mac. Phones mostly have hardware encoding that is not compatible with flash flv, so battery life is significantly improved when using h.264 as its processed by the GPU not the processor. Flash quite literally hogs the Processor, when video should go to the GPU.

As to the Only people who care comment... Writing is on the wall for flash. Apple, Microsoft and Google all have no love for it, so its only a matter of time. The real question is, what flavour will HTML5 come in, and how long will it take for all parties involved to agree? Your average consumer doesn't care about flash, youtube, vimeo and god knows how many video sources sources are available to veiw in iOS. Dont think any of them miss the pop up ads, and all the games are available in the app store.

Apparently it was Porn that won the VHS-Betamax war. Porn has sided with iOS 🙂

To me, it sounds as if Apple hasn't mastered how to support flash

http://www.streaminglearningcenter.com/articles/flash-player-cpu-hog-or-hot-tamale-it-depends-.html

http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/cameras/blogs/imaging/dealing-with-jobss-adobe-flash-hissy-fit-20110626-1gm3n.html

 

[Paul.]

"We also remember Adobe royaly ******* us in the 90's when we were on hard times" I wouldn't be at all surprised if this was personal, Adobe pulled out of supporting Mac software in the 90's when Apple were struggling, and it could have sunk them. For a decade afterwards, Apple were disadvantaged with significantly slower versions of Adobe software on the Mac platform, making Macs appear slower than PCs. So I doubt you will see many older Mac users shedding a tear over Apples 'Bullying' of Adobe.

People in glass houses and all that.

 

[Paul.]

To me, it sounds as if Apple hasn't mastered how to support flash

http://www.streaminglearningcenter.com/articles/flash-player-cpu-hog-or-hot-tamale-it-depends-.html

http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/cameras/blogs/imaging/dealing-with-jobss-adobe-flash-hissy-fit-20110626-1gm3n.html

Using Both HTML5 and Flash as a container for a h.264 video file in a hardware encoded test is really not an appropriate test of flashes performance. Its all the pop up ads and flv files that do the damage.

 

[bigboss]

"We also remember Adobe royaly ******* us in the 90's when we were on hard times" I wouldn't be at all surprised if this was personal, Adobe pulled out of supporting Mac software in the 90's when Apple were struggling, and it could have sunk them. For a decade afterwards, Apple were disadvantaged with significantly slower versions of Adobe software on the Mac platform, making Macs appear slower than PCs. So I doubt you will see many older Mac users shedding a tear over Apples 'Bullying' of Adobe.

People in glass houses and all that.

EDITED BY MODS - please don't link to sites containing inappropriate language.

 

[bigboss]

- No Flash Support Only people who care are Flash Developers. Battery Hog
- No Java Support Only people who care are Java devs. Works in web apps.
- No Tabs on Browser Coming in iOS5. Has separate pages already, same idea, just a different graphical metaphor.
- No widgets, or animations Hints from the beta code suggest this is coming. Animations, not sure what you mean. If you mean the swirly background animations android has that is good for nothing other than battery hogging, not really interested.
- No 1080p video playback, and low bitrate support at 720p Coming in iOS5
- Limited video/audio codec support VLC app is free, can play whatever you need
- Dongles at extra cost needed for USB & HDMI Who needs dongles when airplay is free?
- Poor cameras Buy a camera. Tablets with cameras (for anything other than video chat) is convergence gone mad i tells ya. I saw someone on tv filming wimbledon with an ipad, they looked ridiculous.
- Poor multitasking support. I think its awesome. Its the secret to the ipads battery life and speed. Also, no modern OS should need to download a task killer app. Task killers are in the top ten downloads for android, was the same on symbian phones 6 years ago.
- No memory slot Buy a dongle. You got me there.
- Tied to Itunes Don't personally see this as a negative, but if I was using iTunes on a PC maybe I would. Alternatives available once jail broken.

(had to close my iPad & switch my laptop on just to post this pic....WHF, please sort this out)

 

[Paul.]

"We also remember Adobe royaly ******* us in the 90's when we were on hard times" I wouldn't be at all surprised if this was personal, Adobe pulled out of supporting Mac software in the 90's when Apple were struggling, and it could have sunk them. For a decade afterwards, Apple were disadvantaged with significantly slower versions of Adobe software on the Mac platform, making Macs appear slower than PCs. So I doubt you will see many older Mac users shedding a tear over Apples 'Bullying' of Adobe.

People in glass houses and all that.

http://mattshaw.org/news/steve-jobs-ironic-master-of-doublespeak-yes-1984/

I fail to see what that has to do with the bit that you quoted of me?

Also I am struggling to beat the word verification system, Im not a Botnet I promise. Time for bed.

 

[d4v3pum4]

- No Flash Support Only people who care are Flash Developers. Battery Hog The only people who don't care are Apple and the sheeple who will believe everything that Steve Jobbs tells them. Maybe Apple need to try harder?
- No Java Support Only people who care are Java devs. Works in web apps. As above
- No Tabs on Browser Coming in iOS5. Has separate pages already, same idea, just a different graphical metaphor. Why weren't tabs there from the start? Just about everyone agrees that they're handy.
- No widgets, or animations Hints from the beta code suggest this is coming. Animations, not sure what you mean. If you mean the swirly background animations android has that is good for nothing other than battery hogging, not really interested. Funny how when a rival product has something that an Apple product does not, it's instantly dismissed as a gimmick or "battery hog"
- No 1080p video playback, and low bitrate support at 720p Coming in iOS5 Not sure you need 1080p playback on a small screen but for output to a TV via HDMI. Ah, wait it doesn't have....
- Limited video/audio codec support VLC app is free, can play whatever you need Great!
- Dongles at extra cost needed for USB & HDMI Who needs dongles when airplay is free? Forgive me but what exactly can Airplay do?
- Poor cameras Buy a camera. Tablets with cameras (for anything other than video chat) is convergence gone mad i tells ya. I saw someone on tv filming wimbledon with an ipad, they looked ridiculous. Agree, don't know why Apple bothered but when they did fit a camera, why did they fit such a crap one?
- Poor multitasking support. I think its awesome. Its the secret to the ipads battery life and speed. Also, no modern OS should need to download a task killer app. Task killers are in the top ten downloads for android, was the same on symbian phones 6 years ago. I don't use a task killer on my Android phone. I don't need one. I have monitored the battery usage and it's minimal. To be honest, I think they're unecessary.
- No memory slot Buy a dongle. You got me there. One of my biggest gripes with products like the iPad is not being to simply connect my camera's SD card etc. to download/upload files or simply view photographs. Also being able to add external memory simply increases the capacity of the device. If you're going to want to start playing back high definition video etc. for a long trip, you need storage and plenty of it.
- Tied to Itunes Don't personally see this as a negative, but if I was using iTunes on a PC maybe I would. Alternatives available once jail broken. iTunes is garbage. I hate it with a passion and only use it to sync my ipods. Why do I have to? Hate, hate, hate it.

Whilst I think the iPad is a nifty device, I can't help feeling it's still a gimmicky toy. After all, tablets are hardly new. Apple have just applied a new spin on them and now everyone and his dog builds one. I personally don't see the point and as I can touch type, I can't see me using one for surfing forums such as this.

Why hasn't anyone mentioned the back light bleed problems that appear to have plagued the iPad 2 from the start? I always find it funny that flaws such as this are never mentioned in reviews. Maybe Apple hand pick the models for review? It's not just Apple though. Arcam and Apple spring to mind amongst others. Strange how reviewers can oversee such gaping faults.....

 

[Anonymous]

Had a chance to play with one at the airport the other day. I must admit the screen is lovely, but for me the wrong aspect ratio. Compared to some other tablets on display at 16:9 it looks wrong. If I bought a tablet, I would watch films on it at night.

The lack of Flash is pretty serious, not just for techies. So many sights have embedded flash, rendering the iPads as not fit for purpose for me. Yes Flash is crap and will be replaced, but for now it's here and not supporting it is simply stupid.

The lack of an SD slot or standard USB is equally bafling. As said above, I want to simply load a cameras pictures on with no fuss. I would also like to transfer stuff from usb HDD.

For me the iPad is far too flawed compared to it's rivals. For my money I think the ASUS transformer is the current leader, undercutting the iPad and including a full keyboard if required.

It certainly doesn't warrant 5 stars. Yes it's a beautiful, sexy device, and easy to use, but as a computer it's a massive step backwards.

 

[d4v3pum4]

......but it's an apple product and therefore must be great. It takes a brave reviewer to buck the trend and actually review it objectively and deduct marks/points/stars for the flaws rather than just brush over them because everyone else will just award it top marks. Who wants to be the odd one out or isolate themselves from Apple? It's all about marketing and the 'experience'.

The EEE Transformer is also the leading contender for me. The added keyboard that adds more than just keys is a big plus. It adds battery life and connections. I've heard of some issues with screens so I'm holding off for now though.