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Those doing development work can attest to the fact that products are coming out with really nasty bugs in them.  The race to get products out is causing a lot of trouble.

The stable products are Windows based PCs and the normal MAC operating system.  Microsoft's System 7 is very stable as is Vista with service pack 2.  MAC is also stable.

What is annoying is all the really terrible bugs in the browsers.  We have to test the Saugeen and Kincardine Times using Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome and Safari.  Chrome and Safari have annoying bugs in them that we've been able to code around.  We don't test using Opera.  It is used on a lot of mobile devices such as Nokia phones.  It's getting more popular, so we will test on it too in the future.  Also Android will be very important as it is running on a number of platforms..

Our latest gripe is on Safari for the iPAD.  Safari for the MAC does not exhibit the bug we will discuss that has been reported by thousands of users and developers testing on the iPAD.

The testing problems with the iPAD are threefold:

1. It's hard to test on the iPAD because it's a moving target with new versions coming out with some things fixed, but not others.  It's hard to tell what the firmware level is on a particular iPAD or what it means in the sequence.  They need to settle down and get the bugs fixed.
2. Most of the effort on the iPAD has been directed toward the software development kit that supports the popular user applications.
3. Apple does not seem to understand that a browsing session on the MAC should present the same images as the same browsing session on the iPAD.  We know that the device is smaller and it has touch, but come on Apple, you've got to start paying attention to function and not just form.

I spent yesterday testing the iPAD.  It's main good features are:

• It's small and looks good.
• It starts quickly.
• It has a lot of applications that can be downloaded for a fee.

What I don't like about it comes with a little prejudice born of coding around some bugs in MAC Safari, but here goes:

It is not intended for the power user

The lack of a real keyboard is crippling.  They have an option to add a real keyboard, but then why not buy a laptop with lots more power?  The on-screen keyboard it slow and too prone to errors.

Of course the touch screen is not new and has been implemented years ago for casual users.  For power users, the interface is way too slow.  This was true of former touch screens, light pens and digitizing pads too.

The iPAD is really slow

The iPAD's lack of 'punch' is evident when you try to browse big web sites that have a combination of graphics and normal text and pictures.  It takes too much time to download and start videos.  Even going direct to YouTube is slow.  Testing the iPAD beside a normal laptop on the same wireless network at the same time, shows this clearly.  The laptop is way, way faster.

Embedded videos lose their place and create an annoying new window display.  This seems to have been programmed in by the developers to get around the small screen size.  We know it's small, just display the videos as is.

The aforementioned touch interface is fine for small games for kids and the downloadable APPS, but it is not intended for a work computing platform.  Maybe then it is unfair to compare it to a laptop, but modern laptops are very powerful.

Safari has some crippling bugs and/or omissions on the iPAD.

Thousands of hours have been expended by developers to get around the refresh bug that both Safari and Chrome exhibit.  You can code around this, but what to do about Safari on the iPAD is another question. 

One annoying bug occurs when you want to save real estate and display updatable messages like the one shown below. This message can come from a remote device like a phone:

What is this?  It's a standard inline frame object with scrollable text appearing in it.   What are its features?

1.  It is well supported on Internet Explorer and Firefox which account for at least 90% of the world's viewers.  It is also supported by Chrome and Safari on the MAC.

2.  If the message gets too long to display, it automatically puts up scroll bars and you can scroll to the bottom and not increase the real estate that is used.  That is crucial. DO NOT increase the real estate used.

What does the iPAD do with this?  It does not display scroll bars at all and wants you to use your fingers to scroll down the message.  That would be ok, but here is what happens:

• The inline frame is displayed too big.  It no longer saves real estate. It makes a mess of the page. (see typical developer's gripe below)

• You can scroll it, but it has forced itself to be too big and scrolling on it messes up other things.  What should be shown, is not shown.

Ok, so the Saugeen and Kincardine Times are not the world standard setters, but this bug has really caused developers to get mad as it shows that the testing that Apple did is not good.  Could they be rushing things?  They ignored FLASH and multi-tasking early on too.

Shown below is an interchange on a development forum with two developers expressing their displeasure.  This is typical:

First Developer

Second Developer

Hi

We face similar annoyances.  The reason for not scrolling is IMHO (Editor: in my humble opinion) very simple.

The IFRAME Content is actually created to its full extent - even though you might have specified the width and height. 

This means even though you do only see a portion of the IFRAME it is actually there in full size but those portion that is not covered by your w/h is just not visible (BUT IT IS THERE).

Therefore it is very reasonable that it just CANNOT scroll. iPAD has become a very disenchanting experience - most of the software (Mail, Safari) is littered with Bugs of all sorts (crashing, not displaying, not willing to work etc.).
They (Apple) should react real quick and not wait till FALL to release patches.

Cheers
Dagett

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Wednesday, April 06, 2011