Essential Guide to Apple iPads
Apple’s popular iPads are new generation tablet computing devices that combine the convenience of their iPhone and iPod touch with the user friendly big-screen experience of laptops. They are known for impressive display capabilities and ease-of-use when browsing, listening to music or watching movi,es.
The following guide will explore the need-to-know facts about iPads, so you can understand what all the fuss is about.
The Two Types of Apple iPad
Original iPad
The first iPad, introduced to the public in January 2010, was Apple’s first tablet computer release. It was also the first Apple product to utilise their new processor, called the A4.
The iPad proved to be a major success – 300,000 units were sold on their first day alone, and nearly 19 million units were snapped up by consumers before the next generation iPad 2 was unveiled.
The original iPad is identified by being a sleek, rectangular tablet with a large 9.7-inch touchscreen as its display and a home button at the bottom centre of its face. It allows for excellent interactivity since items onscreen can be selected by tapping, dragging and zooming in and out of content by a pinch of the fingers.
Because the iPad runs a version of the iPhone operating system, it can run programs from the App Store. It also enhances the app experience because it upscales their size to fill the entire screen.
iPad 2
Released in March of this year (2011), while Apple’s iPad 2 has the same crystal clear 9.7 inch display screen as its original predecessor, it has a marked difference in appearance by being 33% thinner and 15% lighter. It also has a faster processor (the A5) and in contrast to the first iPad, it includes two digital cameras (one in the front and one in the back). Both cameras can take still images as well as video, with the video being 720p HD quality.
The 6 iPad Models
Both the iPad and iPad 2 are available in a range of six models, although their main difference lies merely in networking abilities.
In fact, there are three main types of iPad: 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB, all of which come complete with Wi-Fi. Then there are these same three GB categories with an additional always-on 3G feature for faster data transmission to round off the six models in total.
The iPad 3G models have a slightly different back than their Wi-Fi only counterparts to make room for the 3G antenna.
Key iPad Features
As mentioned above, both iPads sport a 9.7-inch touchscreen that utilises multi-touch technology (meaning you can use more than one finger to manipulate items onscreen) for the fun interactive user experience that has made Apple products so popular.
iPads use solid state Flash memory to store music. They have a dock connector where they can be plug,ged in to sync with your computer, as well as to connect accessories.
Key Software Features
Both types of iPad are built on Apple’s iPhone OS, so they offer many of the same features as the iPhone and iPod touch. These include:
- Web browsing – iPads are known to offer an extremely user friendly mobile browsing experience. The only downside is that as with the iPhone, they don’t support the standard Flash browser plug-in for the type of graphic sophistication you would get from a laptop.
- Email – iPads have strong email features and can even sync to corporate email servers running Exchange.
- Apps – as mentioned above, since they have the same OS as iPhones, they can access Apple’s App Store to download all kinds of helpful and fun programs, from games and social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter to restaurant and location finders.
- Calendar/PDA – these tablets sport a personal information manager that comes complete with a useful calendar, address book, notepad, maps and related features.
- iPod music – as with all iPhone OS devices, the iPad’s music player provides all the trendy benefits of the hugely successful iPod.
- Video – iPads offer a range of impressive video choices, from mobile video playback and the built-in YouTube application to buying or renting content from the iTunes Store or from other platforms such as Netflix.
- eBook Reader – Apple’s iBooks app plus other third-party apps such as those from Amazon allow you to read from a large database of digital books.
Conclusion
The above article describes some of the important functions that iPads can perform, as well as explaining the different models that are currently available. If you’re looking to get your hands on one of these impressive tablets, also have a look at the iPad reviews online as reading what other users have to say will give you a good idea of which model will suit your needs best.
About the Author: Michael Dehomme: electronics repair shop owner and iPad fan.
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