There’s no getting away from the fact that the iPad is just fantastic.

There. I’ve said it.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m no Mac fanatic. I started on PC’s. Moved onto Macs when I was doing print work and went back to PC’s when I moved to games and VFX. We have three PC’s at home (two are mine for work) and I’ve no plans to buy a Mac. All the graphics work done for this game will be done on a PC and I expect all the rest in the future will be.

But Apple’s hardware is absolutely up there and the iPad is no exception.

The simplicity and intuitiveness of the UI belies just how clever and well thought out it is. I won’t say it’s a joy to use because you don’t realise you’re using it. You just do.

(Actually thats not true. It IS a joy to use when you have something to compare it to like an Android tablet. I was shocked at how poor it (the Android) was in comparrison, but at least I wasn’t as dissappointed as its owner. Google really needs to get a handle on whats going on there.)

With regards to the UI I think the pinch-zoom is the stand-out feature for a board game conversion (though Bulge is a new game rather than a conversion).

When your average board/war game has table filling components, being able to zoom in to the point of interest or zoom out to see the bigger picture is essential. Many people worry that the small size of the tablet will make it difficult but I personally think it works really well. What is more it is not tedious or fiddly. As you zoom and pan about you don’t even think about doing it. It’s fast, fluid and instinctive.

Yet there are still relatively few games using it. This worries me a bit and I wonder whether there is a basic lack of power or whether it is just too difficult to implement with lots of layered graphics. We’ll have to see.

If you’ve any thoughts, opinions or experience of any of this I’d really be interested to hear them. If I knew everything I’d be unfeasibly rich and extremely bored so I’m open to any suggestions, opinions or advice.