Apple iPad review

Third-party apps

At launch there are thousands of third-party apps available: the iPad is compatible with almost all the 150,000+ iPhone apps on the App Store. But once you’ve used full iPad apps, running an iPhone app feels very limiting; they run either in a window in the middle of the screen at standard size, or scaled up to double size with the attendant pixel blurring.

We tested a number of third-party apps designed for the iPad, and results were mixed. One of the stars is the $9.99 Scrabble app, which is as close to playing on a real Scrabble board as you could hope for. There’s even a free companion iPhone app allowing you to use the iPhone as your tile rack; you flick the tiles from the iPhone to the board on the iPad.
The BBC News app, which sadly won’t be available in the UK until the BBC Trust gives the all-clear, is similarly impressive. In landscape mode you flick through the thumbnails that sit on the left-hand side of the screen; press one you’re interested in and the story appears on the right-hand side. Then flip to portrait mode and the story fills the whole width of the page.

Given the limited time developers have had, it’s no surprise that some of the other apps we tried were still rather buggy. They’ll need updating now that developers can test on the actual device rather than the emulator.

Conclusion

The iPad is the first in a series of products that could transform the industry; we know HP is releasing its slate later this year, Dell is producing a 5in slate based on Google Android, and rumours abound that both Nokia and Samsung are producing iPad rivals, too.

We can see why. Although the iPad isn’t a replacement for your main computer, there is an argument for it as a secondary device. Many people will be able to manage quite happily with just a desktop machine and an iPad, or one of the many slates due to appear in the coming months.

That said, don’t be fooled into thinking the iPad or its future competition can match a laptop running a full-blown operating system. And the iPad in particular is restrained by Apple’s controlling influence, as is shown by the crippling lack of support for Flash.

Then again, what the Apple iPad has that no laptop can match is fun. It’s difficult to express just how easy it is to use this device. We can see gadget lovers joining the Apple faithful in the queues outside the Apple Stores when it’s released in the UK later this month.

Price when reviewed: 16GB, $499; 32GB, $599; 64GB, $699 (UK prices TBC) (£0 inc VAT)