Ars Technica reviews the iPad

Getting files onto the iPad

The process of getting your own files onto the iPad so that they can be used with specific apps is without a doubt one of our least favorite parts of the iPad experience. The device's focus—at least at launch—is so squarely on selling you files directly from content providers and developers, that official support for users actually putting their own data onto the device is extremely rudimentary and restricted.

You can't use your iPad as an external storage device (like you can with older, non-touch iPods), and you can't download files as e-mail attachments and make them visible to specific apps. So if you want to, say, edit a particular document in Pages, or read a particular PDF, there are two ways to match that document with the correct iPad app: 1) Apple's officially sanctioned method (i.e., with iTunes and a USB cable), and 2) whatever hacked-up technique that some app developer cobbled together to make some kind of syncing for his or her specific little app.

If you don't mind keeping your iPad tethered to iTunes and a desktop PC in order to manage it, you can use iTunes to transfer files to be used within certain applications. Apple has a helpful support doc on this topic: if you go into iTunes on your desktop and click on the Apps tab with your iPad plugged in, you'll be able to drag documents onto a specific app's document list that you want to transfer it to.

As for option number two, we'll just illustrate the current confusion by giving a three brief but representative examples:

1. Comic Zeal's sync feature involves loading a small "server" program
   onto your Mac, which can then sync data over the network with the Comic
   Zeal app on the iPad.
2. GoodReader, which is one of the most popular and most capable PDF
   readers for iPad, supports a similar "install this server program on your
   desktop, sync over WiFi" approach. But the app also can connect to and
   browse a number of file hosting services, including Dropbox, Box.net, and
   even IMAP accounts.
3. Apple's iWork apps are the only apps that you can actually use the
   e-mail method with. As we'll describe in a dedicated section below, the
   iWork apps can see and edit e-mail attachments. You can also transfer
   iWork apps via iTunes, or you can use iWork.com.

The upshot of all this is that if you want to move your own files onto the iPad by transferring them over the network, you're at the mercy of the app developer, and you may even have to install a special program onto your desktop Mac. If an app doesn't support your preferred transfer method, then you'll have to find a way to accommodate that app if you want to use it.

We'd like to think that Apple has a master plan to fix this situation, possibly by adding some sort of MobileMe and iDisk support. But even if that happens, it's not clear that a universal application sync method based on MobileMe—either via iDisk or through MobileMe's sync service—is that much of an improvement, at least in MobileMe's current incarnation. For the time being, more app developers should follow GoodReader's example and offer explicit support for a range of cloud- and server-based file repositories.

Typing: on screen and off

Let us say up front that we feel the iPad is primarily meant to be a browsing device—that is, for loading text, and not for loads of text entry. It's capable of taking plenty of text entry, but we think that using it for text input won't make for a very compelling experience. More on that soon.

That being said, the iPad's on-screen keyboard is similar to that of the iPhone, but bigger. This makes it both better and worse, depending on who you are, what you're doing, and what orientation you're doing it in (wash your mind out with soap—we're still talking about the iPad here). The on-screen keyboard in portrait mode is a bit too small to use two-handed like a regular keyboard, but a bit too big to type very quickly or easily with your thumbs. That doesn't make it useless, however; we think it's largely meant for entering short text snippets, like putting search terms into Google or entering name of the book you're trying to buy. Hunt-and-pecking this way isn't shameful, especially if you're only entering small bits of text at a time.

The on-screen keyboard in landscape mode is another matter. It takes some getting used to, but we found it much easier than expected to start typing appreciable amounts of text—and fast—using the keyboard this way.

The slowdown here (compared to a "normal" keyboard) is largely related to punctuation and, to a lesser extent numbers and symbols. When we're typing in full-on "I'm writing sentences" mode, it's our natural inclination to try to use apostrophes, question marks, exclamation points, etc. Depending on the app you're in, an Enter or Send key might be in place of where your apostrophe usually is, and you have to hit at least two buttons to get to an end-of-sentence marking.

Like we said, it's a slowdown—you aren't likely to crank out an essay at 130 words per minute using the on-screen keyboard, but you are likely to succeed at responding to some e-mail, sending some Twitter updates, or holding a conversation in IM for as long as your patience with your own typing will allow.