4.2 impressions

A few first impressions:

1. The mute switch is ridiculous. It doesn't mute the ipod function or youtube or anything of that nature. It only mutes notifications. Great for an iphone, useless on an ipod. Ditch it and give us the orientation lock back, or something we would actually use.

2. Mail is much more streamlined for multiple mailboxes, but the beta is crashing updating POP mailboxes. I am sure they will fix this quick.

3. Multitasking rocks (of course). The lack of RAM doesn't seem to slow the machine, until you get in the area of 6 or 7 programs running.

4. Battery life doesn't seem hampered by leaving multiple programs running.

5. Folders are nice, but I wish you could choose to use just 1 icon as the primary.

6. There are new fonts introduced into notes. Great cause the old one sucked.

7. Game center is not up and running yet, but I did create my account and nickname.

8. Browsing seems much faster.

Overall it seems like a nice first beta. If they are still shooting for November, they shouldn't have trouble getting it rolled out by then. It is almost completely functional now. Developers still have a lot of work to do to prepare their apps for multitasking. Some of them will remain open, but when you switch back to them, they reset to the start. All the stock Apple apps are already behaving nicely though.

If you have any specific behavior questions inside 4.2, you can post them here and I will give it a go and report back the results.

brairden said:

A few first impressions:

1. The mute switch is ridiculous. It doesn't mute the ipod function or youtube or anything of that nature. It only mutes notifications. Great for an iphone, useless on an ipod. Ditch it and give us the orientation lock back, or something we would actually use.

Click to expand...

Agreed! Since it is software defined, I would like them see them give us the option of determining it's use like we used to be able to do by double clicking the Home button... which BTW is no longer an option since double clicking is now used for that pitiful excuse they call multi-tasking.

brairden said:

3. Multitasking rocks (of course). The lack of RAM doesn't seem to slow the machine, until you get in the area of 6 or 7 programs running.

Click to expand...

Are you using the same multi-tasking that I am using? Its not really multi-tasking, but more like it is keeping track of the apps you have opened.

If I power cycle my iPad, the apps that were opened when I shut down are still there when it starts back up. Unless you go into the multi-tasking option by double clicking the Home button, they will just continue to pile up and sooner or later, I imagine this will necessarily impact the memory unless it is storing the information on the drive in which case it will just use up more real estate on the drive.

Obviously I am not impressed with this "feature".

On the positive side, I do like being able to listen to a streaming audio app and continue using other apps. The downside of that is that if you open another app that has audio, it will shut off the original stream and take over. In order to go back to the original stream (or whatever you were listening to), you have to delete the newer app from the multi-tasking list and then restart the original app.

I know this isn't something that will take place very often, but one of the things on my "wish list" of future features might be to add some sort of volume mixer where you could have all audio sources open at once and mute the ones you don't want to hear although that might be stressing the already limited memory too much.

OK, rant off... for now!

pdf conversion

Has 4.2 fixed the problem that Pages conversion to pdf never converts the fonts properly and in many cases converts it to "dots" that make the pdg unreadable by the person receiving it?

1991-C4 said:

Are you using the same multi-tasking that I am using? Its not really multi-tasking, but more like it is keeping track of the apps you have opened.

Click to expand...

It solved my biggest problem with the iPad so far. I hated not being able to listen to Pandora while browsing or using an app. I agree that the UI, as far as multitasking is concerned, is a bit lacking. I would like to see a 2 button system that gives you a choice of either closing or minimizing an application. I also agree that the build up of open apps will eventually slow the tablet to a crawl. If there are no changes, I am sure that we will eventually see an influx of appkillers in the store (see android market).

I won't miss the double click option, because I used for the iPod function anyway, and that is still there.

GNR: Sorry...I don't have Pages installed, so I am unable to test this.