I have been making a point to really use the iPad that my father got while I have been visiting the Bay Area. To really understand a new device you have to use it. Not just play with it in the store, look at it on the web, make assumptions based on blog reports or tech details gleamed off the Apple website, but really use the damned thing. To be absolutely clear, this goes for any new device; sorry iPad, you aren’t special in this department.
I have been surfing the web, poking at applications, writing a bit (as I did in my initial review of the iPad), reading books on it and the real test: Taking it to bed.
It did not call me back in the morning.*
“It is as if typing on a real keyboard has released my mental sphincter so that my mental flatulence is able to throttle the screen.”
iPad + Keyboard
For this follow-up review, I am again using the iPad to write the review with the WordPress iPad native application, but with a key difference: I am typing on the small Apple bluetooth keyboard tethered to it. I just finished tethering it and am testing this use case by writing this review. I can tell you right off the bat that my voice is different than when I was using the on screen keyboard. It is as if typing on a real keyboard has released my mental sphincter so that my mental flatulence is able to throttle the screen.
What I have come to realize is that the iPad is a wonderful Content Consumption Device™.
(Yay! It understands special characters fed in via option+clicks! I can now actually type things like the following: © Copyright A. Tobias Tenney 2010. And the coup de grace: Ü!)
Ebay iPad App
Browsing the web (ignoring the huge problem of not having Flash that many people merely think is Apple acting like a guerilla and throwing luggage of Adobe around) is absolutely wonderful. Notice that I said browsing the web and not engaging the web. The difference is huge. I am not using many of the web apps with iPad Safari, although I do occasionally dabble. It is mostly things like reading Engadget.com, mucking about on Flickr, reading the news, etc. When it comes to things on the web that we truly want to engage, iPad users will more than likely search the App Store with hopes that the web app has ported their functionality to this new device. For example, I spent some time shopping on Ebay on the iPad. I didn’t use their website. I browsed, shopped and paid all within the Ebay iPad app [link to app]. With Apple’s announced clenching of their thumbs around the developers’ stomachs, I can hear the cry of, “Developing for another format, the iPhone was enough, now we have another to add to the list?” but I don’t care.
I actually feel that Apple’s intention to inhibit developers to use Flash and other “middle men” of coding to, in the end, keep the red door closed and be good for The Rain Forest, as Moss would have mimed. The App Store is flooded by mediocre applications completely unoptimized for the platform. I hope that this clenching of the thumbs causes a decline in obesity.
As I digressed into a tirade on the body mass index of the App Store, I continued to type on the bluetooth tethered keyboard on the iPad realizing something: I wanted to link to something about The IT Crowd in the above paragraph noting my little inside joke. Know what? I couldn’t hop swap to Safari, do a search for an article, image or YouTube video to link†. Another nod to the fact that the lack of multitasking is no invisible chain keeping this elephant from leaving the boundaries of “inhibited mobile device”. (Even with the “multitasking” announce for OS 4, I do not believe that this platform allows for the commanding presence of quickly swapping searching and inserting that I would have done on my laptop.) I can save this draft, click the home button, click on the Safari button on the home screen, open up a new window, assuming I still have a free page available, do a search, find something, copy a portion of it, click the home button, open the WordPress icon, then open this draft and insert the content, but that is a lot of work.
User Interaction Distortion
Using this bluetooth keyboard has also shown me another very interesting interaction distortion. When you are typing on the screen, no matter how poorly, you are engaged with your fingers on the screen. Once you have disengaged your fingers from the screen, you must not alter modes to do anything “mouse-like”. For example, I mid paragraph wanted to edit the first sentence. I had to take my hands off the keyboard (disengage) then reach up to the screen (which is in an Apple iPad case sort of leaning back on the flap) and used my finger to gesture on the screen (engage). Once I had done that, I had to then come back down and placed my fingers back on the keyboard.
This may seem trivial, and to some extent it is, but it is a real distortion in the user interaction flow of a touch screen interface. I wish that I were able to tether a mouse to the iPad. Reaching for a mouse while typing would sometimes make more sense than reaching up to the screen. I feel that somewhere down the line we will end up with a real mixture of touch screens and physical objects depending on our use cases.
This brings me to another point; I always ask one thing before I give advice:
“What is your use case?”
The use case makes all the difference in the world. I was talking with a non-tech musician friend today who wanted to know what I thought of the iPad.
“It depends.”
If you want to browse the web, watch movies, read books, etc. i.e., Content Consumption, then it is a wonderful device. If you want to record music in a DAW [Digital Audio Workstation, e.g., MOUT Digital Performer, ProTools, or Logic], edit videos, design logos, shop photos, etc., then this is not the device to use. The iPad makes a great companion to such devices, but does not replace them.
Which leaves people like me in an odd position. I own a work horse desktop (I need as many cores as I can get, let alone RAIDs, shit loads of disk space, RAM, and whatever else I can get to do video editing/render in Final Cut Pro and Motion let alone multi-track recording when I have limiters, compressors, megaphone simulators, synthesizers, and more all running in real time), a laptop that does most of what my desktop can do (with more limitations, slower speeds and more headaches), and an iPhone.
“…the iPad is just dithering up my device resolution.”
Where does an iPad fit in for me?
This is why I ask what your use case is. There is a high probability that you won’t get a phone call while you are out of town asking you to “throw together a business card really quick” or “Hey, can you give me those tracks, but with a click track…oh and can you take out the guitar because I want to replace it.” Me, on the other hand, might get that call. At that point, the iPad is just dithering up my device resolution.
Would I like to own one? Yes. I would probably read more books and there would be some trips where I would either know I would not need the extended abilities or force myself into a situation where I would not allow myself to use them. On the other hand, if I did own one right now, I would still be brining my laptop in my carry on luggage next Wednesday for my flight to Dulles.
On the other hand, I might put my iPad in my carry on bag instead of my laptop bag.
*The iPad lacks phone capabilities.
†I have since updated this entry on my laptop, if you didn’t notice with all the dynamic text, images and other things I have complained about not being able to do while actually on the iPad.
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