The iPad Mini Review...

Since every blog that even has the remotest whiff of a technical bent will be wall-to-wall iPad for the next several days, I thought I’d go ahead and get my pontificating out of the way. Since I’m not suckling the teat of the technocrats by going on the Rachael Maddow Show and being all breathless and shit like Xeni Jardin, I don’t get a freebie from Apple. (Man, that shit was embarrassing to watch. Aside from her scary hair and as-last-seen-on-Barbarella outfit, she went on and basically said the exact opposite of Cory Doctorow. Really fucking weird.)

So, anyhow, the UPS guy stumbled to my door at 9:30AM; I was the first of several hundred iPad deliveries he had to make that day, according to him, and he was less than amused by the whole thing. The packaging is typical Apple: 50% “oh, that’s nice” and 50% “how the hell do I get this fucking thing open?” Sync it just like an iPhone or iPod Touch, and you’re off to the races. It put all my app purchases from the iPhone right in there, and they all worked out of the chute, no problems at all.

The Good: This thing is so obviously the Future of casual computing it’s not even funny. It has a nice heft to it, typical construction of Apple’s higher-end gear. Same bezel size and overall coloration as my MacBook Pro. All the buttons feel nice and firm, a little tougher to the touch than the ones in the iPod Touch. As a computer (i.e. Mail, Safari, Contacts, all the usual jank) it feels much slower than my MacBook Pro, but faster than the average Netbook. Definitely faster than the iPhone or the iPod Touch. I think they might have juked the animation speeds on app opening and such a bit in order to make it seem faster, but it has the desired effect.

The keyboard is easy to type on, once you adjust your style to match its mechanical abilities. The on-board speaker, which is actually stereo, sounds not terrible. Somewhere between the iPhone’s built-in and the MacBook Pro in terms of overall range and quality. It is what it is. The battery life is exceptional, but it’s brand new, so like all Apple products, I don’t expect that to last.

The Bad: Obviously, I’ll have to spend some time with it to really come up with bad things, just like I’d have to spend some time with it to come up with truly good things. My initial impressions are thus: the screen gets greasy really easy. Gotta keep a microfiber cloth handy. It weighs about the same as a normal sized hardback book (think “Difference Engine”) but since its weight is concentrated in the middle, and it has kind of sharp edges, it isn’t incredibly comfortable to hold. We’ll see how that works out.

The Apps: I haven’t had time to check out more than a few music apps, and I just did a cursory examination of those. The Korg iElectribe is just as awesome as you think it is. It is basically an ER-1 (w/ Toobz), lock, stock, and barrel. This will be fun as fuck. No sync, so limited usefulness, but nonetheless. I also gave TouchOSC iPad a quick whirl; it works exactly as you’d expect, only bigger. I fooled with Bleep! a little bit, but I found the big one even less penetrable than the little one. I’d like to like that app, but it just doesn’t do it for me.

So, once I have something more interesting to say than what everyone else is saying, or everyone else plans to say, I’ll put it up, but this will be the limit of my iPad posting. My initial verdict is that this little cocksucker is perfect in every way. It’s exactly as advertised, and just feels right. Many people have aped the Apple Party Line that the iPad is for content consumers, not content creators. While that is true, the same could be said for many of the things we, as musicians, co-opt in to our daily work environment. Hell, using computers to make pop music would have been laughable in 1980, yet here we are.

If anyone has any specific questions about it that only I can answer, I’ll be happy to field them.