OK. So, I've had my iPad Wi-Fi+3G for less than a week, and I've already decided not to keep it. There is so much of a euphoric glow on some of the lists about the wonderfulness of this device. I'm the type of person that is always eager to investigate new technologies and ways of working, and so expected that I'd agree with the generally positive reception. I don't.
I have experience with the iPhone, and, other than the fact that it is slower to operate than a device with buttons, and that the battery life is terrible when compared to most mobile phones, I thought that it was an impressive piece of tech with an advanced approach to user interaction. I was excited about the iPad, and expected it to bring everything from an iPhone, only improved. First, the iPad would have a larger screen, so it should be possible to more easily move my finger directly to the position of known controls in order to speed up the operation. Also, the iPad would have a significantly larger battery than the iPhone, so I could spend hours using apps, even wireless apps, without having to worry about draining the power away. The only universally great thing that I can say about the iPad is that the battery is spectacular. With the screen brightness set to low, it runs for a very long time. I've spent hours streaming movies via Netflix over 3G, and the battery just keeps on going. Unfortunately, that's where it all ends. It isn't that I think that the tech behind the iPad is necessarily bad. If you want this experience, though, as a blind person, you're better off with an iPhone. Why? Well, let's compare the iPad to the iPhone 3GS. The iPad has a larger screen. If you're sighted, this is great for watching video. Watching movies on a tiny phone screen has got to be an eye strain. Blind people don't watch movies, and we can listen to them just fine on an iPad or iPhone speaker. I thought that the larger screen would help with VoiceOver, but, actually, it makes things worse. When you work an iPhone, placing your finger at different positions on the screen only requires wrist movement. The iPad screen is huge when compared to the iPhone, and you must move your entire arm in order to navigate the screen. This can become tiring after hours of computing, because your arm can rarely rest on anything. If you don't hold your arm up, with your fingers angled down, you're likely to bump the screen with part of your wrist or forearm, causing VoiceOver's focus to jump to some random position on the screen. This is particularly frustrating because there is so much content on an iPad screen. If you navigate through controls by swiping, you'll be swiping and swiping and swiping and swiping to get to where you'd like. Of course, you can directly explore with your finger, but I've noticed that, in several places (like the App Store and Safari), tapping somewhere doesn't necessarily mean that swiping will continue from that point. In many places, I'll tap at a point on the screen, but, when I start swiping, VoiceOver will always start from the top of the screen. So, in those situations, if you accidentally touch the screen with some other skin while swiping, or if VoiceOver mistakenly interprets a swipe as a tap, then you'll lose your place, and need to start from the top of the screen. In the App Store in particular, I've swiped myself to frustration. The size of the screen is also not convenient for holding the iPad like you would the iPhone. It must rest on your lap or a table. And, with me pushing and tapping on it with both hands, I've had some situations where it has nearly slid off of my lap. With the screen being made of glass, that is not a great thought to ponder. So, I think that the screen size is not only wasted on blind users, but is also a drawback. The on-screen keyboard is a bit nicer to use on a large screen. However, the touch-typing mode makes even one-handed typing on a small screen a breeze. Besides that, the larger screen meant that a lot more arm motion was required to type on an iPad. I tried the two-handed typing approach in landscape mode, but find that, no matter how well you place your hands, typing is very mistake prone. For anyone that finds it hard to type for extended periods of time on the iPhone, you can use the iPad keyboard dock with it when the next iPhone OS comes out. VoiceOver is worse on the iPad. I'll just put my flame retardant suit on right now for the hordes of people that will respond and tell me how I'm wrong, how wonderful it is, and how it must be me. Well, I've used an iPhone extensively, and I've used the touch gestures on my MacBook Pro a lot, so I think that I'm pretty familiar with how everything is supposed to work. On the iPad, for gestures to work, I must over-act them. On my MacBook or iPhone, a little flick of my finger is enough to indicate that I'd like to move to the next item. On the iPad, I must make a huge swipe, extending a few inches. Small flicks will work, sometimes, but VoiceOver is very likely to just interpret the flick as a tap, and jump my focus. As I've said before, given how huge the screen is, and how the control order is broken in several important places, this is extremely frustrating. Having to make huge swipes means that my whole arm is involved, and swiping and swiping and swiping with your whole arm will really make your forearm sore after a few hours. Sometimes, the screen won't even register that I touched or swiped. The iPhone screen seems much more sensitive. The speech glitches at high speed. At 90% or above, Samantha can't say "search", and other words, without chopping off the ends. And, my largest complaint about VoiceOver on the iPad. It doesn't recognize, in most cases, when the screen updates. This seems to be most noticeable on screens that use HTML/web content. Say that you are in the App Store, or Safari, and you tap a link. You know that a new page/screen must have loaded. Sometimes you'll hear the audio cue indicating that the load completed, sometimes not. However, most always, if you start swiping, you'll realize that you're reviewing material from the old page. You must tap somewhere on the screen for VoiceOver to realize that, in fact, the screen has changed. This is annoying for purposes of situation and orientation. Here is how it should work. You double-tap a control. You wait. You hear the completed audio cue, and VoiceOver speaks the first item on the screen (which now has focus). Now, you can either start swiping through controls, explore the screen with your finger, or two-finger-swipe down to start reading the screen. This is how it works, though. You double-tap a control. You wait, and wait and wait. You don't get any feedback about what is happening, so you start exploring the screen with your finger. If the screen hasn't finished loading yet, then VoiceOver will either repeatedly click at you, or else you'll hear absolutely nothing (because VoiceOver is frozen up). Once the screen finishes loading, all of that tapping and touching that you did while VoiceOver was frozen will be suddenly processed, and VoiceOver will start going crazy with clicking and speaking fragments. Now, you aren't sure where you are, so you must four-finger-swipe up to get to the beginning of the screen, then start exploring. Another way that this can work out is that you double-tap a control, and VoiceOver will say something (supposedly the first control on the new screen "cancel button selected", or similar). When you start swiping, though, you'll hear the contents from the last screen. So, you first tap somewhere on the screen to force VoiceOver to realize that the contents have changed, then four-finger-swipe up to go to the beginning of the screen, then, finally, start exploring. Honestly, this is ridiculous. It is hard to believe that Apple couldn't catch such a problem. I guess that web support had minimal testing. Lots of apps use imbedded web content, though, so this happens in all sorts of apps from Wonder Radio to Net Flix. As a final VoiceOver thought, I've noticed that the iPad is experiencing a problem that the iPhone had early on in its life. For those of you with an iPad, lock the screen. Now, put your ear up next to the speaker. Hear that hiss. Now, put your iPad down for 5 minutes and come back. Still hear that hiss? That is the sound of your iPad's audio hardware constantly running and draining your battery. So, while the iPad's battery life is impressive in a continuous run (like watching movies back to back), it sucks in a similar way to the iPhone where you'll go to sleep with a full battery, and wake up with 70% or less. There is no reason for that on an iPad, since the iPad isn't doing sync for Visual Voicemail and all of the other AT&T phone to tower chatter. That open speaker, though, is probably the cause of most of the drain. I'm further discouraged to hear that the iPad won't be receiving an OS update until the Fall. So, I suppose that these VoiceOver issues will stand for at least 4 or 5 months. There will be a new iPhone, and a new version of the OS for everyone else, in about a month. A major OS update almost certainly means an update of VoiceOver. So, in the final analysis, the larger screen makes the iPad harder to work for me, and VoiceOver has more problems than on an iPhone. The larger battery is nice, but that isn't enough. In my mind, the iPhone is all the iPad that a blind user needs. If you are thinking of returning yours, better decide fast. You only have 14 days after receiving your iPad to return it, and, even then, you must pay a 10% restocking fee. The iPad is an interesting device, but I'd just rather use an iPhone, I think. Bryan -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. To post to this group, send email to macvisionar...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en.
