iPad!

Full disclosure: I'm an Apple fan. That said, I'm also a technology fan in general. I've been following the Apple tablet rumorfest for a few years now. Now that the iPad is out, I'm reasonably enthusiastic about it. In this note, I will lay out MY reasons for giving it some consideration.

Before I get into my reasoning, though, I want to be clear on something: the iPad is not for everyone. If you need a low-end general-purpose computer, don't buy an iPad. Buy a netbook or a small laptop of some sort. You'll be much happier. Ditto if you need serious multimedia capabilities, multitasking in a meaningful way, large-capacity storage, USB capability, videoconferencing/video chat, and the like. You will probably not like the iPad very much. If you want a full computer with a multi-touch interface, buy a slate PC (and enjoy using the UI that's designed for a mouse pointer rather than a finger or stylus).

Others have mentioned that the iPad is more of an information appliance. This is certainly the context in which I view it. Rich media seems to me to be its raison d'etre. The iPad occupies the space between my iPod/iPhone (when my Sprint contract is up, at any rate) and my MacBook Pro. For a person like me - a person who very carefully considers my interaction with technology and media and who is willing to spend money on good tech, the advent of any new personal tech is a great opportunity to consider that interaction.

On many occasions, I have found myself in bed or on the couch, reading the news and doing some general web browsing on my iPod, or trying to decide whether to print my course readings instead of reading them on my laptop. This is generally a good experience, but the screen is small. Similarly, many of my graduate school course readings are in PDF format. Though the iPod does a very good job of rendering the PDFs, the display is simply too small for extended reading, particularly if the PDF is a scanned image rather than a converted document. I also have made use of recipe web sites, like Allrecipe, while cooking. My laptop occupies too much space, and the iPod display is too small to prop up for reference.

The iPad hits the sweet spot in the middle. It is indeed too large to slip into my pocket and then go. It won't play World of Warcraft. Without the keyboard dock, it may well be awkward to type for any length of time; with the keyboard dock, it won't sit comfortably on my lap. It will, however, sit nicely on my lap for reading. The screen seems large enough to make reading (be it PDF, ebook, web site) comfortable. Similarly, watching video seems like it would be easier as well (for widescreen content, I'm not terribly worried about the letterboxing). Media that are fairly static and don't require substantial interaction, in other words. Casual email, check. With iWork, a bit of productivity? Check!

Including iWork is a good thing. While the iPad won't do for serious number crunching or heavy-duty document/spreadsheet creation and editing (for the former you need grunt, for the latter you really DO need to be able to multitask in order to work with resources), it will greatly simplify on-the-go document creation and editing. If you are working with a template (such as a sales order or contract, for example, requiring minimal input), the iPad will probably be your best friend on the road. In a similar vein, light-duty creation and editing may well be very pleasant even when using only the on-screen keyboard. I admit I'm a bit skeptical of the keyboard dock, mostly because it just looks awkward.

Something we often forget is that we are not wired up to conduct tasks in a massively parallel format. In other words, we're mostly single-tasking. We can definitely handle a few simultaneous tasks, but in general we can only do a small number of things at once. Too many, and we become frustrated and lose focus.

People may comment on how restrictive the iPad would be for content creation. I maintain that this is no bad thing. There are writing apps that give you only text on the screen, obscuring all other UI components. People pay good money for these! Similarly, pigment on a surface (encompassing everything from pencil to paint, paper to canvas, and things beyond) is a tremendously restricted (from a materials perspective) medium, and I don't have to tell you what we have achieved with that. Haiku, if done traditionally, draws exclusively from prescribed images. Working in a restricted medium allows us to achieve tremendous creativity.

Mind you, I'm not saying that whipping up a grocery list in Pages on the iPad will elevate you to literary genius status. There is, however, something psychically liberating to be found in a restricted medium. I know that I would do better in many cases, when writing, by not being ALLOWED the distraction of other applications. Even though I'm transitioning into a profession that requires analytical acumen, creativity is also necessary.

I am rather more ambivalent about the lack of Flash support. I agree that Flash can be abused, and it is unquestionably rather buggy as well as seriously CPU-intensive. Flash has given an entire generation of truly mediocre artists a means of inflicting their unique brands of awful on the greater Internet community. That said, when used well Flash is a tremendous platform for content delivery (I have Weebl and Bob in mind for some reason when I mention this - I really like Weebl and Bob...). The upside of no Flash support, for the moment, is that many of the most annoying web ads simply won't work. Once the ad creators cotton on to HTML 5, though... I will also miss watching Cosmos on Hulu.

As far as the audio functionality, I already have an iPod for music. If the iPad's speakers are good, it might be pleasant to listen to music without headphones. If you're not moving around much, music while reading or working would be nice via headphones. Watching video or movie content without disturbing others, check. Otherwise, the less-portable nature of the device would make using headphones a bit awkward. With my iPod, even if it's on my desk, I can put it in my pocket when I move around, so audio on the iPad? Probably not so much. I don't see that as a drawback, though.

The form factor also leads me to not mourn the lack of a camera overmuch. A camera on the back would of course be faintly ridiculous - the device is simply too big to use as a point-and-shoot. The slate form factor would be harder to hold properly for a good, stable picture were there a camera on the front. It would get tiring to conduct a videoconference or video chat of any duration unless you could prop the iPad up, and that may well require a table or something similar close to hand. A laptop or desktop with a webcam is probably better suited, even though the iPad likely has the grunt for camera video processing. Perhaps a later generation will include a camera if demand is there, but I would be very surprised if Apple didn't test a camera in early versions of the hardware. If they omitted a camera, they likely felt there was a good reason to do so.

Something I would like to see, and this would be anathema to the Lord High Steve, is a stylus that works with the touchscreen combined with an application that enables making handwritten annotations on documents including PDFs, even with a lack of handwriting recognition. Even I can't read my chicken-scratches on occasion after decades of training on it, so a computer would likely find it extra-difficult. I wouldn't expect the stylus to come WITH the iPad at all, but I believe a 3rd-party developer could find a happy niche. I would like to see a stylus simply because I find writing with my finger awkward. It's a matter of training and custom rather than any inherent superiority in a stylus so I'm sure I could learn to write with a fingertip. That said, I'm habituated to writing with ink- or graphite-laden styli - pens and pencils, in other words.

One factor that I do wonder about in this regard is tactile feedback. I have trouble signing my name on the electronic pads that UPS, 7-11, Wal-Mart, and the like use for signatures, so I can see it being difficult to write on the iPad. Granted, the screens and styli used in these applications are designed for heavy use and durability rather than fine accuracy, but the slickness of the stylus on the screen is something to consider. If the tactile feedback issue were addressed, though, it could find a fond pool of adopters.

Before I rush out and buy an iPad, I will definitely make a trip to the local Apple store to try one out. Apple puts a lot of thought into things, and I have high hopes. That said, Apple is bound to slip eventually. If this is a slip (I hope it's not!), I would rather find out BEFORE dropping several hundred bucks.

Your needs and preferences may well differ greatly from mine. As I said at the beginning of this note (and thanks for getting this far, by the way!), the iPad won't be for everyone. If it's not for you, then save yourself the money and don't buy one! Also, as Howard Tayler pointed out, the Wii was a similarly ill-considered name, and the Wii jokes died out reasonably quickly. I expect that the jokes about the iPad name will similarly stop being very funny fairly quickly. I do still snicker at the name 'Wii,' though, and I expect iPad to provide fond junior-high level giggles for years to come.