Test, photos, videos done yesterday, Tuesday October 28, 2014. Click photos to enlarge.
Ah! Finally. The iPad Air 2. The most powerful mobile device Apple has yet produced (more powerful than even the new pair of iPhone 6!).
First, establish that it is an iPad Air 2, because the frikkin back only says “iPad.” So a trip to Settings and About reveals:
And look at that disgusting irony. Just as someone on Twitter said. The demo iPad Air 2 is a 32GB model — which Apple doesn’t sell. Is that a slap in the face or what?
I was very eager to see if Mobile Safari could finally download the full 290MB version of The American Magazine without crashing. So that was first:
But there was to be no joy. The progress bar never moved after reaching this point:
And then:
And then this:
I tried more than once but had to give up.
As I learned later with trying the 5K iMac (separate post), the Apple Store SOHO was having issues with its WiFi. It was overloaded and download speeds were horrible.
While I was waiting for one iPad Air 2 to do that, I commandeered a second one to peek at Chinese websites.
It was a trip seeing IMP3Net …
… and ifanr:
So, anyway, I had to settle for the smaller Google Books PDF test files, and here are those videos:
The People of the Abyss 1:
American Magazine iOS Edition in Mobile Safari:
American Magazine iOS Edition in iBooks:
Surface Japan in Mobile Safari:
No Surface Japan in iBooks due to WiFi issues. It wouldn’t download.
The surprise — and proof that the iPad Air 2 is crazy powerful — was the final test: Fairy Tales from the Far North in iBooks.
Here it is on the prior-generation iPad Mini 2 (basically equivalent to the original iPad Air) in iBooks:
And here it is on the new iPad Air 2 in iBooks:
There’s just no comparison there. The iPad Air 2 is kick-ass fast.
I’m also amused that iBooks has increased the maximum pinch-zoom magnification. That’s something I never asked for or ever thought was needed. Yet it’s in there!
This is the kind of performance with Google Books PDFs I expected from the original iPad. I had to wait all these years and generations to finally get it.
The Nexus 9 is really going to have to be a huge shock to beat the iPad Air 2 with Google Books PDFs.
I need to note that I also went to a Best Buy to see if their WiFi was full-throttle. It was. The only problem was that they still had the original iPad Air on display, not the Air 2! So, no full version of The American Magazine test was possible on that device (but it was possible on the Samsung Galaxy Tab S 8.4, which is a separate post).
Previously here:
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