When I was in Boston for An Event Apart back in May, I bought an iPad.
That makes it sound like a very casual act. Back then, iPads were in very short supply. When I asked an employee at the Apple Store in Boston if they had any iPads in stock, he didn’t answer Hmm… let me check,
or Not at the moment.
He answered Oh, God no!
Fortunately, Malarkey was far more persistent than I and managed, through means fair or foul, to track down the only two iPads for sale in all of Beantown.
I used the device for two months and then, as predicted, I gave it to my mother. It was definitely the right decision. She loves it. She’s using it all the time, surfing the web wherever she pleases.
I liked using the iPad, but I didn’t love it. Once the novelty wore off, I found I had few good reasons to use it rather than use my Macbook.
Some observations from a Summer spent in the company of the iPad…
The iPad is almost exactly the wrong weight. It’s just that little bit too heavy to comfortably hold in one hand. It’s no coincidence that all of iPad demonstrations show it resting on a raised leg. I found that if I was using the iPad for any length of time, I would adopt a more and more relaxed, nay… slouchy position. Before I knew it, I was supine on the sofa, one leg raised with the iPad resting against it, like a Roman emperor waiting to be fed individually-peeled grapes.
The iPad is a great device for reading. I rediscovered the power of RSS. The iPad is also a great device for browsing the web. The problem is, I don’t really browse the web that much. Instead, I browse, I bookmark, I quote, I huffduff, I copy, I paste, I tweet, I share. Using an iPad made me realise that the web is very much a read/write medium for me. While it’s possible to do all those things on the iPad, it isn’t easy.
The tell-tale moment came when I was reading something on the iPad—supine on the sofa, of course—that I wanted to post to Delicious. Rather than fill in a form using the iPad’s on-screen keyboard, I found myself putting the iPad down and reaching for my Macbook just to accomplish that one little task. That’s when I knew it wasn’t the ideal device for me.
Don’t get me wrong: I’m not joining in the chorus of those silly enough to say that the iPad can’t be used for creating, editing and updating. That conclusion would be far too absolute and Boolean. But I think the iPad favours consumption more than creation. And that’s okay. That still makes it a great device for many people—such as my mother.
There’s one big fly in the ointment of the iPad as a device for non-geeks—such as my mother—and that’s the out-of-the-box experience. John Gruber pointed this out in his review of the iPad:
One thing that is very iPhone-like about iPad is that when you first take it out of the box, it wants to be plugged into your Mac or PC via USB and sync with iTunes. … It creates an impression that the iPad does not stand on its own. It’s a child that still needs a parent. But it’s not a young child. It’s more like a teenager. It’s close. So close that it feels like it ought to be able to stand on its own.
My mother has an old G3 Ruby iMac which doesn’t have USB 2, so I had to set up the iPad on my machine before giving it to her. It’s such a shame that this step is even necessary. I love the idea of a portable touchscreen device that you can simply turn on for the first time, connect to a WiFi network, and start surfing the web.
Perhaps later versions of the iPad will support account synching via MobileMe. Perhaps later versions of the iPad will support multiple accounts, which would make it a great family household device. Perhaps later versions of the iPad will have a front-facing camera and support FaceTime. Perhaps later versions of the iPad will be slimmer and lighter.
Perhaps I will get a later version of the iPad.