So I’ve had the iPad for a little more than three weeks now. I posted my initial experiences with it here, but that was only after a day or two of use immediately after I got it. I wanted to follow up after the initial holy-crap-I-got-me-a-new-shiny! excitement wore off to provide a better idea of how it holds up over time.
In a nutshell, pretty well.
iBooks
I love iBooks. I’ve read a complete novel (Kim Harrison’s Dead Witch Walking), and some of Charlie Stross’s short stories from Wireless. I lock the iPad into portrait mode and just read away. I’ve read for hours with no eye fatigue. I love the variable backlighting that I can brighten or dim depending on external conditions.
I never thought I would love an e-reader, but I do. I’m not saying I’ll never buy another physical book (that would be silly), but I always thought e-reading would have been a second rate experience. It’s not. The size of the iPad helps. It feels like holding a hardback book, although with no spine or need to hold the book open, it’s actually more convenient than a physical hardback.
The glass does make reading in sunlight problematic, but since I almost never read in direct sunlight anyway, it’s a moot point for me. If you do a lot of outdoor reading this may be an issue, but it’s about the only negative on the e-reading experience I can come up with.
Web browsing
Steve Jobs said the iPad is “the best web browsing experience you’ll ever have,” and I have to agree. Really. The responsiveness of the iPad and the multitouch interface, coupled with the large screen, is fantastic. I didn’t realize how fantastic until I returned to my desktop and browsed some of the same sites. Yuck. Yeah, my desktop screen is physically larger, but I can’t zoom into a section I want to read or scroll up and down the page with a flick of my finger. And holding it comfortably in your lap is a convenience that’s not to be underestimated.
I haven’t noticed the absence of Flash, though if you use Hulu a lot I guess you might. But considering Adobe still doesn’t have a mobile Flash player ready to go I’m thinking this is basically a non-issue for most people. After all, there are about 70 million iPhones and iPod touches out in the wild, and so far I haven’t heard a great gnashing of teeth over Flash’s absence.
Productivity
The iPad has been promoted by Apple as largely a consumptive device and not a productivity device. I was hoping to prove them wrong, but alas, it seems Apple once again knows more than I do.
Don’t get me wrong — you can work on the iPad. I like the little included Notes app for, well, taking notes about story ideas. It’s quick and easy and there’s no saving of anything (I keep trying to “control-S” to save out of habit). Just quit the app and everything you’ve typed is saved. That’s how all the applications work, and I like it a lot.
I decided to try something a little longer than notes, so I started a short story in Pages, Apple’s iPad word processor.
In a nutshell, I hated it. I don’t yet have a physical keyboard (I’ll be getting Apple’s bluetooth keyboard at some point), so I was typing on the virtual keyboard. I just couldn’t do it. I need arrow keys to move around, which are on the physical keyboard but not the virtual one. Formatting the story was also more of a chore than it should have been.
Now some of this was certainly my lack of familiarity with Pages, but some of it was definitely the virtual keyboard. Things may change once I get the bluetooth keyboard, but for now I’m doing any heavy writing on my laptop or desktop.
I haven’t tried editing anything on the iPad yet, though I think that might be a much better task for it than lots of original writing.
Final Verdict
It’s still an incredible machine, and I don’t regret it one eentsy little bit. Should you get one? That’s really not for me to say. If you’re a hacker type and like to tinker with your gadgets, then no (Cory Doctorow I’m talking to you). But if you want a new and pretty unique experience in browsing, an all-in-one place to get your email and be able to read books and use apps and play games, then yeah, this might be something you’ll really enjoy.
