My iPad was delivered via UPS this afternoon, and I’ve been exploring it for a couple hours. I am impressed with it in many ways – it’s a very nice media, game, and browsing device, for example, and the multi-touch user experience is interesting.
The Kindle iPad client is also nice, although I need to find some documentation to determine, for example, if it’s possible to capture annotations beyond simple bookmarks.
Aspects with which I was less impressed:
- The iPad is a brick until you plug it into a PC or Mac with iTunes installed, and of course you need to have a credit card in your Apple profile, since Apple controls every detail of the iPad commerce story.
- The browsing experience is nice, but I haven’t been able to find a way to add the Blogger Blog This! shortcut to Safari, and the mostly-serial-multitasking nature of the iPad means I can’t use an app similar to Windows Live Writer, which I routinely use on my Windows devices.
- I’m guessing the guidance for anyone who wants to print content is to email it to themselves on another device, and print it there.
I don’t think these limitations are going to slow iPad market momentum, but I also believe there is now a very significant market opportunity for hardware vendors that find a better balance among Zen slate device, general-purpose computing (e.g., with true multitasking), and open platforms – e.g., vendors building tablet/slate devices running Windows 7.
Overall, I don’t expect the iPad will significantly alter my laptop or Kindle usage routines. It’ll be handy to have another client option for reading/annotating Kindle information resources, and with which to explore OneNote Web App, Evernote, etc., but it’s going to be more of a complement than a competitor to the tools I’m already using.
I acknowledge that my profile is probably a bit unusual, in that Web browsing without the ability to easily blog is of limited utility to me, and since I haven’t been an Apple customer before (unless you count a borrowed Apple II for college class work c1982…) – so, e.g., I haven’t already purchased gigabytes of content from iTunes. No doubt many Mac and iPhone users will find the iPad more “magical” and “revolutionary” than I currently do.
For now, in any case, I expect the iPad will mostly be used by my kids, for games and other apps, and that they will be pleased with it. More impressions to follow…
1 comment:
Thanks for the write-up - very useful... I've heard that emailing yourself notes and forwarded content is necessary for the iPad experience, for printing and other tasks. Annotation on Kindle, in my experience, has been limited to the Kindle itself, which is very awkward. It's great to have Kindle for PC or Mac, but you can't highlight or annotate there, which is very frustrating. I assume that will change, as with the iPad, soon enough.
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