Blogs The iPad: I finally understand it

+1 spot on

It's for people who like shiney shiney and people who dont know how to use anything better properly.

 

Yeah it's great for people who don't know how, or can't be bothered to maintain a PC. Personally though I'm not like that, so that is pretty meaningless to me. It's also not like a modern PC is that hard to maintain these days anyway.

My uncle has an iPad and it's great. I really like it because it's great looking, very simple, extremely usable, and it's a bit easier to manipulate than a laptop. It's nice to slouch back in a couch and just flick your way though web pages or books with your finger tip.

The problem for me is that a laptop isn't a whole lot different. You might have to sit slightly differently to keep it on your lap, but it's not a big deal. It's still great on the couch and great to browse and stuff while lying in bed, and you still manipulate it with your finger tip..

The clincher for me, is that there are some incredibly good Flash games out there. I have a good PC with an HD 5870 graphics card, so I'm able to play pretty much anything and crank it, and yet I still spend a lot of my time playing Flash games. There are hundreds of thousands of them and many of them are surprisingly brilliant. So with a laptop, you can browse, read books, and listen to music, just as easily as the iPad, but you can also play these great Flash games while lying in bed too. I love my iPhone but having to spend money on games, 99% of which, are second rate copies of Flash games, is something that really bugs me. So for that reason alone, I wouldn't get an iPad. The icing on the cake is as other people have mentioned, typing documents and FTP'ing files, a bit of web design or video editing etc... with a laptop you can do anything. With an iPad you can't even do half of all that. So to me it boils down to an iPad giving you about 10% improved comfort and usability over a laptop, but losing about 85% of it's scope.

And in the next several months there are going to be a lot of Windows based tablets coming to the market. That is what I would buy. I remember seeing one of them which was like a laptop but you can just yank the screen off and the screen becomes a tablet. Then just re-attach it to the base when you want more power and the keyboard. I would buy something like that.

Personally though, I have very little need for any portable device. If I'm out and about, then my iPhone is perfectly fine. I can browse, do emails, listen to music and watch films, so all is great. And if I'm at home, then I would rather just sit in my big comfy chair at my uber PC. And that's another clincher. There is a bit of a pointlessness about the iPad in that if you are outside then you aren't going to achieve anything more than you could with a far more portable phone (or iPhone). And if you are at home or at work, then you have your far superior desktop PC to use anyway.

 

Ahhh so you like it cuz your girlfriend can use it.....

I still can't justify it

 

Swiss Army knives - You wouldnt want to build a house with one, because the tools are very basic...but they're useful because you can just drop it in your pocket and not be inconvenienced by it until you need to perform a basic task.

But if some company decided that they were going to make a GIANT Swiss Army knife with the same, but slightly bigger tools, that needed its own carrying case you'd tell them that was stupid, right?

 

Interesting analogy.

For me, there would be no reason to buy one, I don't get out much so I use my PC for just about everything. However, if someone gave me one or I won it in a competition, I'm sure I'd find a use for it.

One question a bit off-topic, can they be Jailbroken?

 

When i first heard news of the Ipad, i thought oh joy a technical proof of a concept that works, but doesn't offer anything really. My argument being that music playback on such a device on the move would be daft as it doesn't fit in ones pocket.

Ebook's, well e-ink is a far better system, so give me a kindle and as for interwebz and such, the ipod touch and iphone do that rather well.


HOWEVER,

Then it hit me, fantastic touch screen tech, nice size.... Portable digital sketch pad, almost wacom cintiq cheesecake.

But the downfall, its expensive, and requires power something a sketch pad for £5 including the price of a decent pencil or biro depending on my mood, it once again falls into the ifail group for now.

Don't get me wrong, sitting in a comfortable chair in an office with that in hand and stylus in the other, headphones in listening to grooveshark across the wireless network internet cheesecake, Sounds very appealing.

Also a device to present ideas in a coffee shop to clients sounds like a life saver, anyone trying to present a concept in a busy place would know my pain, no matter how well planned it was.

So until I get rich the ipad is still a no no for me, just looking to get an iphone to start my mac ownership, and possibly hate myself afterwards.

 

Why does "less tech-savvy" equal "stupid?" Can you design, build, and install functional and attractive kitchen cabinetry that will withstand decades of use? OK then.

Isn't this the third or fourth thread dedicated to debating pros and cons of the iPad/Mac OS? What surprised me is that after reading through many pages in the other threads, I looked here to see the same ignorant ranting about brainwashed masses. Really, it shouldn't be that difficult for highly educated geeks to understand that the majority of the population is not at all interested in the techie bits. We just want a device that works out of the box, is easy to use, and has good build quality.

I think it's interesting that some of the same geeks who mouth off about getting a Win7 CULV laptop for less money are the same people who drool over expensive sports cars. Why spend so much more money on a shiny toy car when a cheaper used VW will get you from point A to point B more efficiently? Right? Or just maybe there is something to the whole "user experience" thing.

 

I think Apple missed out on alot things on purpose with the ipad.

They could have added a camera
They could haved added a SD card slot
They could have added a USB port

But then what reason would it give people to upgrade to the ipad 2 next year.

They add these into the ipad 2 next year, & again knowing they have people fallen over themselves to buy one.

 

But they did decide to make a GIANT Swiss Army Knife, the only thing is it has the same size tools- http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/tools/8b97/

 

i've been gathering fund to buy one for my granddad, he likes to play occasional solitaire, check emails and reading online articles. surely an iPad is much more suited for him than an old Pentium 4 PC he has.

the iPad isn't for us techies. but you cannot deny it will be excellent computer substitute for those occasional content consumers.

 

What would make the iPad great is if they took the little Mac desktop keyboard and bundled it with the iPad as an attachable/removable accessory.

As others have stated, it is a consumption device. it's not well equipped to create any sort of content, just to view it.

Most of the comments seem to be "Oh, well you can use it while lounging around on the couch" . My big ol' C2D laptop works fine for sitting on the couch to read the internets or whatever. It weighs probably five times as much as an iPad, and has probably a fifth of its battery life, but those don't matter because I can leave the charger on the end table, and I don't have to carry it anywhere.

That's my issue with the iPad. It's a bloated smartphone. It doesn't do anything the iPhone doesn't, except have a bigger screen.

It's big enough that you can't fit it in a pocket, so you need a backpack or some sort of bag to carry it. If you're going to have a backpack or some sort of bag, then you might as well just get a netbook, which is more versatile and much cheaper. And it's not like the versatility of a netbook only applies to hardcore users. My mom and girlfriend, neither of whom are tech-savvy, both have netbooks and love them. They use them exactly how most of the above posters claim an iPad should be used... to catch up on e-mails and news while on the couch or outside on the deck, to do simple computing tasks, to throw in an overnight bag for a short trip, etc. The only difference is, they can actually input information into it efficiently, using an interface they are familiar with.

I mean, a netbook is about 2 pounds. I can use it standing up. I can use it sitting down. I can use it while walking around. I can bring it on a train and use it there.

If carrying around a netbook in a small bag is inconvenient, then so is carrying around a similarly sized iPad.

The iPad has a nice feature set, but it is too big to be a smartphone alternative, and too stripped of features to be an alternative to a netbook unless you never type long documents on the go. Now, if only they made a smaller version of the iPad, maybe with phone capabilities, and an antenna that works, THAT would be one popular device.

 

My iPad experience the other day was as follows. I was with my dad (it's his iPad) trying to fix and old Nikon digital camera (circa 1999). We wanted to find a service manual, so grabbed the iPad and searched for one. It was nice to be able to just pick the thing up and use it, without waiting for it to boot. We found a download pretty quick, but then everything came undone for Apple. The iPad couldn't handle the download of a .rar archive from rapidshare. We had to boot up an XP laptop (then wait 15 minutes because of the iPad's previous failure counting as a "download") to get hold of the file.

Once we had the PDF, we then had to send it via email to the iPad because there is no USB interface and it doesn't support network transfers at the moment, it seems. This meant a further wait of several minutes while the large PDF was uploaded and then downloaded again.

All in all, it would have been quicker and easier to use the laptop from the start, not to mention £429 cheaper.

 

I've probably said it before, but the iPad's pretty close to desirable for me but doesn't quite tip the balance in terms of features.

I'd certainly not be against buying one, or a suitable Android or WebOS (or even Windows Phone 7, if they pulled their finger out and realised how well it'd work) alternative, but it really needs to have at least a webcam and some serious note-taking ability for me to justify trading £400 for one...if there's one thing Windows tablets could do reasonably well it was provide a suitable productivity environment in the form of OneNote and a digitizer, and using Evernote on a completely flat keyboard just doesn't cut it when I've got a laptop already.

 

I have to say typing on the iPad is far better than you would imagine. I like it far more than my old netbook. The only thing that is slower is when you need to use characters not in the main selection.

 

I've never owned a netbook, but I found typing on the iPad a real chore. My problem is that if I lay it on the table I can use both hands to type, but I have to crouch over it. Whereas if I hold it up, I only get to use one hand. All in all, I found it frustrating.

 

This is the 2010 Sony PSP! this years shiny shiny thingy and next year found scratched dusty behind the fridge and you didn't even remember you lost it.

 

that's why you don't go into the apple store with your girlfriend

 

Finally understand the iPad? Good. That took you guys long enough...