You may remember I owned the Motorola Xoom for 2 weeks before returning it. Now, for the past 2 weeks, I've been in possession of the iPad2 and I can tell you right now, I will NOT return it.
The iPad2 is the first Apple product I have owned since I bought the original iPod in 2002, and had to purchase a Firewire PCI card for my desktop PC so I could load my songs. But enough with super nerdy stuff, lets just stick with the moderately nerdy stuff.
To be clear and direct from the start, I absolutely love the iPad2. I am not fixated on the things that everyone talks about, the screen, battery, speed, etc. We all know it's an outstanding product across the board. I'll just focus on the key differences between the Xoom and the iPad2 from a software standpoint.
As I mentioned in my first post, the one major advantage I noticed the Xoom (Honeycomb) had over the iPad was the ability to add widgets. I absolutely miss that feature in the iPad. It was awesome to be able to turn on my Xoom and see all my information right there front and center. Weather, tasks, email, photos, listed right on my home screen, without another click. I do wish the iPad had this feature.
The second feature the iPad is missing is the "Notifications Section" which is on the Xoom. This is the feature:
Basically you get all the notifications in the bottom right hand corner, new tweets, email, Facebook messages, etc. You simply touch the clock and you have everything listed right there for you, as shown above.
When you first open up your iPad, you need to go into each individual application to see the new messages, texts, voice mails, etc. You do not have a central place to easily see all your latest notifications. I find this interesting and ironic, because the iPad gives you the simplest way to adjust all of your notification settings in one central place, but not view all your notifications in one place.
For example, on the iPad if you want to adjust the notification settings of your email, or twitter, or chat, you simply go to the settings->notifications, and each application is listed for you, and you have the ability to turn each application's notifications on and off. With the Xoom, it's not so simple. You need to go to each individual application, launch it, click on the settings, and set up your notifications that way. This is cumbersome because each application has it's own settings and menu navigation. See below for how simple it is on the iPad, all centralized in one place.
In the iPad I love the feature for dragging apps on top of each other to automatically create a folder. Brilliant! I also love how if I double tap the button on the iPad2, then hold down on an icon, I can kill any App I want to preserve resources. With the Xoom, you either need to go into the settings area, or you need to download and App called "Task Killer". Seems like such an important feature to make it so difficult to kill Apps to preserve resources and battery power.
As I write this post, I am realizing that centralization is the most important thing for me. I like to have all my information related to specific functions in one place. Apple does this brilliantly with notification settings, and application management. Xoom does this well with the notifications bar, and those awesome widgets! Sad to say though, the iPad is so well done, that those 2 advantages the Xoom has does not even bring it close to approaching how well the iPad2 was done.
From a functionality standpoint, they both do the exact same thing. Overall, the iPad just seems to be more streamlined. The Xoom (Honeycomb) definitely has some catching up to do, but I do believe it's only a matter of time.
