I am not a techie but I am definitely a long-term user of Apple products, going back to the so-called Fat Mac aka the Macintosh 512K which was the first update to the original Macintosh 128K. It came out almost twenty-six years ago! Effectively the Fat Mac has a half a megabyte of memory which at the time seemed positively roomy. This iPad, which is the smallest in memory of the models available, has sixteen gigabytes of memory which is more than enough to hold hundreds of ePubs, whole films in stunning definition, music, and my working files.
In 1984 dollars, this iPad cost $3195. Adjusted for inflation that is equal to over $10,000 today. My iPad cost just $499. That’s right—an Apple iPad which allows me to do ninety percent of what I do on a MacBook cost about the same as Apple’s high-end iPods do. Keep in mind that it also weighs, even with the Apple case, well under two pounds or what a reasonably thick hardcover weighs.
Did I mention it runs roughly fourteen hours in my experience after being fully charged?
Which brings me to the real reason I truly adore my iPad.
Remember the meme of ubiquitous computing? It is, more or less, a post-desktop model of computing access in which information access and processing has been thoroughly integrated into everyday objects and activities. In the course of ordinary activities, anyone using information technology engages simultaneously with numerous devices without really noticing the devices themselves. On the Apple side of tech, one can move from working on a MacBook, to looking at that same file on an iPhone, to editing that file on an iPad without ever really taking into account the different devices involved!
The iPad as I’ve used it over the past three months has made the idea of ubiquitous computing a reality for me.
First thing is the morning over breakfast I read the local paper online, having given up on the dead tree version years ago; I
also read a number of other news sources using a mix of apps from the BBC, New York Times, and even an English language Turkish newspaper! I also use the shortcut function to add bookmarks to the main screen for the Red Sox page on the Boston Globe site, the New York Times technology news page, and the Portland, Maine Food Map site which links to all reviews of eateries in this city.
After those tasks are out of the way, I take a look at the blogs I operate and check my LiveJournal to see what the folks on my friends list are up to. I positively hated the look of most blogs ’till the iPad came along as they look much better here than they do on a MacBook.
Of course, I check email anywhere I am using WiFi — WiFi being damn near everywhere in the downtown area. The address book function is quite good but I long for having more customizable mailboxes as these are not apparently at all customizable! Nonetheless, it works just fine. And email never looked better than it does on the iPad — formatting of graphics and text are simply brilliant.
The Pages app from Apple, which I’m using to write this, is fine as a writing tool using the on-screen virtual keyboard, the iPad keyboard, or a Bluetooth keyboard. With the iPad keyboard, it looks like a conventional Mac computer is sitting there waiting to be used and it functions that way as well.
Want to check the weather? It takes seconds to click the Weather Bug app!
Need to update the HTML on an Website file? Download FTP on The Go which makes editing HTML a snap.
Twitterrific makes posting and reading twitters easy and also lets you easily track what your Twitter followers and their tweets.
Interested in live coverage of every major League Baseball game during the spring training season and regular season, as I am? For a mere $25 a month, it’s yours via the MLB app. Even local to you games that are in blackout status can be heard on the radio via this app. It is worth noting that the iPad has quite superb sound for a device with really small speakers and the video quality is simply stunning.
Let’s see. Tired of high cable bills? Try the Netflix app for $10 dollars a month as it’s the ultimate smorgasbord of TV and movie programming! Oh, and iTunes itself has an amazing amount of programming as well as a higher cost per season. Of course, you can rip anything to an iPad compatible movie format using several handy Mac applications.
The iPad is a better than merely fine digital book reader for both ePubs and pdfs using Apple’s free iBooks app. Don’t get me wrong — I love books in printed form but find I’m reading more and more books digitally such as William Gibson’s Sprawl trilogy as I read a chapter or two when I have time. Bliss! Offerings of a legal nature are slimmer that one would like on iTunes and some of the prices are higher that one would reasonably expect but I expect both of these caveats to go away with time.
Like games? There’s an authorized Scrabble game that allows solo plays against the computer, pass and play, and various online play formats. There are chess games that do the same, not to mention video games and strategy games.
Look, here’s the bottom line — the iPad is, as Steve Jobs said, a blank slate. When using it, I don’t notice the device itself but rather am only aware of what I am doing now. It become a baseball game being shown live, it is a newspaper displayed perfectly, it is a writing tool, it is an email app, and so forth. Whatever you are doing, it is that thing now.
Go buy one now. You’ll never regret it. At a minimum, visit your local Apple store and play (yes, play) with it. I’ll bet you’ll go home with one!
Now excuse me as I want to see if Cleveland can once again trounce the despised NY Yankees! And that is made possible using the MLB app.
- Cat Eldridge
The iPad will be even more interesting once it gets the camera for video-chat and skyping. I for one welcome our new iOverlords.
That would be cool.
I am likely going to get the 3G version of the iPad as it would be really nice to have net access when the winter storms here in this coastal city knock the wireless offline as they are prone to do from time to time.