A320
Flight Crew Air Transport Pilot (ATP)
Flight Crew Last 90 Days 200; Flight Crew Total 25000; Flight Crew Type 6000
Other / Unknown; Human-Machine Interface
No Specific Anomaly Occurred All Types
General None Reported / Taken
Company Policy; Human Factors
I must report that in my opinion the iPAD is not ready for prime time. As a very experienced computer user (and iPAD owner from day one); I feel I have a pretty good grasp of the intended concept and can clearly use an iPAD to its fullest extent. Within minutes of testing the company iPAD I quickly determined the SEARCH feature to be useless and limiting when searching for key elements such as 'stabilized approach'. This only sent me to a chapter reference not to the page I needed to review. Searching is one of the most important features of any electronic document reader and when it is limited in capability as the current feature is; it becomes useless. In a time crunch one might find during an irregular procedure; this thing is useless IMO. The 'bookmark' feature does not allow any title to be assigned and therefore more than one bookmark simply appears as an unidentifiable mini icon that cannot be discerned from other bookmarks (icons) that may have been archived. You therefore loose the purpose of quickly referencing a bookmark for quick resource. I also lost my position several times; as the iPAD software would randomly go to some other chapter when I touched the left arrow on the screen designed to hide the menu and open a full page view. I can reproduce this anytime for those who doubt me. It appears to me that the Company has again chosen the CHEAPEST proprietary version of some textual software that only mimics the capability of Adobe.pdf presentations. Simply putting the downloadable company Adobe files (FOM or FM) on my PERSONAL iPAD provides a quicker; better and SAFER reference than the pathetic software used on the Company iPAD application. I would not even hand these things out until they get a little more serious about the use of this product in flight. As far as I am concerned it sits on the shelf at home until they want it back or fix the issues. There is also no functional training on how to use the iPAD document reader. I can only imagine someone trying to find the support information in flight and then losing the page or not knowing how to restore the page while distracted.
A320 Captain laments the search ability of his Company issued iPAD flight manual.