[NTLK] Opinions sought regarding MP2x00s/first-gen iPads and clumsy people

[Frank Gruendel]

> I would be interested in hearing from people who own (or have owned) both
a 
> first-generation iPad and an MP2x00.

Since my employer has recently decided to make do without 25% of his staff,
I've started figuring out how to fix iPhones and iPods. In case I'll be one
of the 25%, I'd rather not have to live for the rest of my life under a
highway bridge, playing the guitar on the street to feed my family and dream
of Single Malt Whisky :-/

I'm aware that you were asking for iPad experience, but I think my findings
so far apply to the iPad, too. Unfortunately, dead iPads aren't yet sold for
cheap at eBay, so it'll still take some time before I have the chance to
improve my iPad fixing skills...

For one, these beasts are fairly difficult to repair. At least compared to a
Newton. More often than not, you won't be able to get at an iPod's battery
without the risk of cracking the digitizer, the LCD or both. Opening an iPad
would probably be even more difficult. The teardown instructions I've seen
of the new iPad last week are gruesome.

Replacing a Newton battery is easy and risk-free. Replacing an iPod battery
is difficult even if you don't kill anything while opening the iPod.

iPods and iPhones have some annoying defects regardless of the model. Choose
any iOS device that has a screen and search for "white screen". You'll find
that this problem is widely spread and not restricted to particular models.
I have an iPod nano 2G that worked hunky dory until I selected "Eject" in
iTunes yesterday. As soon as the iPod was ejected, the screen turned white.
It has been that way ever since, and nothing has helped. This is definitely
not a hardware problem. Unless under certain circumstances iOS will kill the
hardware.

The way I'm using my Newton, a battery pack will last 1-2 weeks. A brand-new
battery in my iPod Touch (only 1G and 2G tested so far) will last 2-3 days
even if I do not use the iPod at all unless I switch it off using the slider
at the top. In this case the iPod will take about twenty times as long to
power up as a Newton normally would. I'm not sure yet, but I think the
reason is that for some stupid reason iOS4 will not switch WiFi off when the
iPod is turned off "the easy way", i. e. by pressing the power button only
for a short time.

These days I'm primarily using my Newton for text entry. Text entry on the
iPod is a pain. This will probably be better with an iPad since there's more
screen real estate, but I still prefer entering text using the Newton's
small on-screen keyboard and a pen.

Of course, the iOS devices can't do HWR. But I'm not missing this all that
much because I'm much faster with the keyboard.

Before you give a recommendation, you might want to ask the clumsy people
what they want to use the device for. We all know what a Newton can and
can't do. Most of this cannot be done even by the most recent iOS devices.
On the other hand, there are lots and lots of things that an iOS device will
do perfectly. I, for example, am still impressed by the Safari
implementation found on the iPod. This is about ten million times better
than anything available on Android devices, and of course it beats anything
the Newton can do hands-down. Having all your favourite music, video,
photos, audio books and podcasts with you all the time isn't that bad,
either.

Frank

-- Newton software and hardware at http://www.pda-soft.de