I’ve had my iPad for about a month now and it’s about time I write a balance of how I feel about it since many of my friends keep asking me to let them know. I’m sure you realized by now that the only reason I have a blog these days is so I don’t have to type the same information twice – next time I get an email from a friend, he/she will get a link to this post.This is by no means a comprehensive review. There are many of those on the web from people way more qualified than I am.
First impressions
There’s definitely a wow factor as soon as you turn the device on. The bright screen and speed with which you can move from screen to screen is very captivating. This first impression is quickly followed by the realization that the screen gets dirty very fast. A screen protector to reduce glare and minimize finger prints is a must. The interface is certainly very intuitive
For some reason, although tablet pcs have been around for quite some time, I was never that attracted to them. They seemed too heavy and cumbersome I guess. I was also not attracted to e-book readers. For a while I tended to say “never! I love my books! why would I want to read everything on screen?” The iPad changed that completely. I quickly realized how much easier it could make my life. Each day before I leave home, I have to decide which books/articles I’m going to take with me to campus/coffee shop. There’s always something I need to read and that something is not always at my fingertips. Sure, I can scan articles and upload them to my laptop. But I also don’t want to have to take my laptop everywhere. With the iPad I can not only read books and articles but also, and this is the important part, annotate them and have these notes searcheable (is that a word?), exportable via email, and even shareable on social media. There is one drawback, however. The iPad can be very distracting when you are trying to work. There are too many cool apps in it. It also doesn’t work so well under bright sunlight. So, funnily enough, the iPad made me order a Kindle, which should be arriving this week. I have to say that although I still love the book as an object and still buy lots of books (unfortunately, academic books are not all available in an ebook format yet), I feel a bit frustrated when reading a paper book these days. I keep wanting to add electronic notes just by highlighting a passage…
Apps
Applications I quickly fell in love with:
- Penultimate – Designed by Cocoa Box, this amazing app allows me to convert my iPad into a notebook where I can take handwritten notes. I’ll be using it to keep notes in tutorials this term. With a Pogo Stylus it is even better.
- Mailboxes – For quick access to my gmail without having to type in a long password. It allows you to generate a four-number password, making logging in much quicker.
- Evernote – I love the interface on the iPad! The only problem is that so far, it doesn’t allow editing rich text format notes. But taking notes in it is a breeze.
- iAnnotate PDF – As the name suggests, it allows for annotating pdfs. Once a file is annotated, one can either email only the notes or email the annotated pdf itself.
- GoodReader – Very good for reading pdfs, word docs, or even viewing images. Connects to Dropbox and Google Docs.
- iBooks and Kindle – Both ebook readers are very good. My only wish is that Google Books would come up with an app to make reading its books and excerpts easier and also that the ebook industry would find a way of including page numbers in ebooks.
- Read It Later – I already used it on my iPod Touch and it is even better on the iPad because of the larger screen. It basically allows you to save webpages you come across to… read it later… get it? Once the page is bookmarked with Read It Later, you can access the page offline as well.
- Flipboard – My favourite app. How to describe Flipboard? Well, just watch this short video.
- Weather HD – Nothing like checking the weather in very dramatic HD multimedia…
- Epicurious – If you like cooking, the Epicurious app is very well done.
- Office2 HD – As far as I know, there isn’t an official MS Office app for the iPad (yet). Office2 HD does a very good job in allowing creating and editing Word and Excel files.
- Echofon – My Twitter app of choice. I loved the interface of TweetDeck but found the app a bit buggy. It kept crashing. Echofon is very good and supports multiple accounts.
Does the iPad do everything my laptop does? Certainly not. Does it do some things better than a laptop? It certainly does. The whole web browsing experience is much more organic and tactile. Who knew that navigating the web on a touch screen could be this much fun? I also find it much nicer for taking notes in meetings or in class. I’ll probably use for taking attendance and keeping notes in my tutorials this year. I’m definitely very pleased.
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I’m planning to get an iPhone and very tempted to get an Ipad, but do I NEED them? I might need a phone from where I can browse while when I’m not in front of my computer, but getting both just seems to me so consumerist and not green. Again, do I need them? No. Do I want them? Absolutely!
According to Alan, the only things we *need* are water, air, and food. No, you don’t need either of them
Keep in mind that they are different devices, for different purposes. I got the iPod Touch instead of the iPhone. I simply don’t use a cell phone enough to warrant the expensive data plans and I don’t know if I’ll be in Toronto for more than a year, so can’t get the plans that would make the phone cost much cheaper. I currently pay less than $10/month on my phone.