First of all let me say if you have an android, windows, mac, linux, commodore 64 go app you are completely happy with I have no problem with that, I am measuring on an absolute, not relative scale.

I have had my iPad for a month now and it has pretty much met my expectations as a go study machine. For the main two purposes I purchased it I am quite pleased. I have a large go book library and whenever I get a new book I always scan it to pdf. My iPod touch screen was not large enough to view pdf’s, the ipad is and I am quite pleased with my go book pdf reading experience. The other main purpose was to view recorded go lessons. This took a bit more work but the end product again I am very happy with. This means whenever I take the kid to gym class or other errand I have my entire go library with me.

Next on my list is using it as a game recorder. I have used a palm and my ipod touch in the past and screen size led to many errors and was quite distracting. Game recording on the bigger iPad is much nicer. I recorded several games at a recent tournament and my error rate was much lower and it took less focus to do it.

For playing go it has some promise but not perfect. Obviously it doesn’t play KGS natively. I have tried a remote vnc connection to my desktop and while workable the slight delays took something away. Tengen Go is a nice app for IGS, now that they appear to have fixed a massive error when playing white. It is still missing some features but the developers seem active.

Smartgo Kifu is a good program for recording games and viewing professional games. Unfortunately the main reason I use Smartgo is to run through my personal problem sets which Kifu does not allow yet. This will be a 5 star app if/when that feature is implemented. There does not appear to be any app out there that does go problems where you can import your own problem sets. If I weren’t a parent I would be tempted to write one myself.

In the end I give it 4 out of 5. No java/flash is an issue but everything else is great.

Do you use GoodReader for reading PDFs? It's the best I've found so far.

How are your problems set up that they don't work? Do you just mean that SmartGo Kifu doesn't allow you to import problems? (I haven't tried, so I wouldn't know.)

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My blog about Macs and more: Kirkville

Yes I do use Good Reader.

SmartGo does not allow importing of problems. I guess it is the most requested feature but it must not be that easy to implement or I'm sure it would have been done by now.

Yertle,

Thank you very much for the review of the iPad. Have been on the fence about getting one myself. Couple questions, if I may. What software do you use to scan books into PDF ? What software do you use to record games ?

I don't know, you can import games, so why not problems. Unless, as I said, it's a different format.

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My blog about Macs and more: Kirkville

I am very disappointed with SmartGo business idea, to sold SmartGo Pro for iPhone and SmartGo Kifu for iPad as two independent applications.

The scanning software I use is Paperport version 9 which is quite old now. I was going to upgrade it at some point but I had heard the company had been bought out and the new company ruined the product. If you have a scanner there are some open source ways to print to PDF after you have scanned. I have found that 300 dpi in black and white (not greyscale) gives pretty good results for most books while keeping the file size reasonable.

I use Smartgo Kifu to record my games. It is pretty easy to email them after recording. I think Tengen Go also allows recording but I'm not sure of save/export features.

I was not happy myself with having to pay full price for the app when I already had the iTouch version. I guess the excuse is that Apple doesn't have a mechanism for discounting upgrades and that the iPad version will in the end be dramatically different that the iPhone version.

In Anders' defense, I will say that I am happy to pay $19.99 for such a polished product. Granted there are currently a lot of similarities between the two apps, but the differences are pretty significant. And as you say Yertle, he has promised the differences will only grow. As yet, he has not charged for any updates within a given app (afaik). So I just look at it as funding future development
I think the opening months and years of the iTunes app store has spoiled us all. We are used to paying 99 cents or less for apps, so $19.99 seems high. For other computers, software priced at $19.99 wouldn't turn a single head.

@Yertle: You are true Yertle. I bought SmartGo Kifu and it is great.