Photo: Courtesy of Apple.
When the iPad Air hit store shelves last week, we rounded up a handful of reviews that almost overwhelmingly praised the new Apple tablet. Dave Smith at the International Business Times, however, is not on board with them. As opposed to the reviewers, who likely got free goodies from the company to review, Smith explains that he stood in a long line at the Apple store in Grand Central in order to get his own iPad Air. Does that make his review less biased? Possibly. It is, in any case, a radically different perspective than we've seen elsewhere. Here's what Smith hates about it, with our emphasis added throughout:
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1. It still weighs more than nothing. "Apple labeled its newest iPad with the 'Air' moniker," Smith writes, "which is almost a misnomer, considering the device is 'lighter' but certainly not surprisingly light."
2. Smith's already formed muscle memories with iPhone 5S technology less than two months old. "I was disappointed Apple opted not to include Touch ID, but I figured I'd give iPad Air a try anyway," he says. "But within minutes of unboxing and setting up my iPad Air, my thumb instinctually went to the home button and stayed there, as if it was expecting the tablet to magically unlock. When it didn’t, I realized Apple actually had a missing feature for a change. I missed Touch ID....Its absence feels like a major slap in the face."
3. The iPad Air is not speedy enough to meet Smith's expectations. "It’s fast, but not a leaps-and-bounds improvement over its predecessors....Apple advertises the iPad Air as having up to 2x the CPU and 2x the graphics performance of the previous iPad 4, but you barely feel the difference."
And, to sum up: "Advertising this device as an 'Air' feels like false advertising, and its lack of 'newness,' which was a concern for me going into this review, turned out to be totally justified, as its speed changes are barely noticeable and its lack of Touch ID is bewildering and mildly upsetting." (IBTimes)