I love Pandora. I listen to it all day at work, and I’m happy to pay for it. I am disappointed with their Mac “client,” but thats a matter for another time. I love their iPhone client, it is simple and logical. But their iPad client leaves much to be desired.
The thing to understand about using the iPad for listening to music is that it’s standing up, portrait style, when you are doing so, most likely in a dock. That is how I listen to mine, and there are a lot of apps for the iPad that take advantage of this. Apple’s own iPod app does. Certainly, Pandora works fine in that layout, but demonstrates a decided lack of thought about what interface would be best for while your music is playing.
Specifically, the album art would be the best thing to be viewing, as the iPhone version does. But while the iPad version does show you your music, it shows the album art at about the same size as the iPhone. By far the largest portion of the screen is taken up by text. The history of the band, or whatever.
This is all fine and dandy, and I myself have been known to look this up on Wikipedia from time to time myself. But hey, that’s what multitasking is for. While I am listening to music, and my iPad is sitting passively in a dock, I want it to show me something attractive, and that thing is the album art.
Pandora needs to go back to the drawing board and rethink the design of their iPad app.
