IPad, Therefore I Am
Wednesday, June 2nd, 2010
How good is the IPad?
Looking at it purely from the point of view of a casual user, I can answer that question. If I bought an Ipad, it would be to read Ebooks, type up documents and surf the net while watching TV (because it seems so lazy watching TV when I could be on the Internet at the same time).
The IPad looks stunning. Swiping and pinching the screen is as great as it is on the IPod Touch or the Iphone, with the added advantage that clicking on links is easier because everything’s larger. This also makes typing on the touch panel easier. In short, it feels and looks cool, and it could indeed be extremely useful - not to mention fun. The thought of having Twitter, Facebook and my e-mail account readily accessible on the IPad is mightily tempting.
Reading: It’s too heavy to be held comfortably with one hand, which would grow increasingly annoying as time goes on (not to mention tiring). This would probably prevent me from using it as often as I’d like to read books on.
Web Surfing: Not really being all THAT much of an Internet surfer, I didn’t expect the lack of Flash to be a problem. But it wouldn’t play news items on the BBC website, one of the sites I use most.
Typing: The touchpad keyboard, while an awful lot easier to use than on the IPod Touch, is still not easy. In short, to use the IPad for typing longer documents, I would have to buy a separate keyboard (at £55!).
Price: I wouldn’t resent the cost of the keyboard so much if the IPad wasn’t so expensive, but at £699 for the model I’d want, Steve Jobs is asking for a lot of my money. Too much. I’ll wait, because there are bound to be other tablets coming out soon that iron out most of the problems that concern me - the weight, the cost and the lack of Flash.
One more thing. I know Apple is the trendy company, and Bill Gates, is the old fuddy duddy grandad of the 21st Century Information Age - but I remain hopelessly attached to Windows. It’s what I know. So while I love ITunes for my music, for everything else I’d rather use a system that won’t make transferring all my photographs and Word documents into a technical minefield.
Tags: Apple, IPad, tablet, Windows
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