Well, the contract has been delayed. The iPad is still getting much use though, but hasn’t moved into its intended position of my primary computing device yet. But all is not lost.I was at a workshop on Friday, and had the chance to talk to a HP rep about the upcoming Slate they are releasing & how interested I was in both versions (Personal version running WebOS from Palm due out Nov 2010; Enterprise version running Windows 7 due March 2011). He laughed in recounting a conversation he had with someone about an iPad: “Here, can I share this file with you on USB? No?! What about these photos on SD card? No?! Can I plug my USB keyboard in to type with it? No?! Oh, so many things it can’t do…”. Oh how he chortled. He’s right too, you can’t interface any of those things with an iPad. That said – you wanna give me files? E-mail them to me or point me at your SkyDrive/DropBox/iDisk/Public online storage space. Do we really still share files by USB & SD card?! Really?? I mean, sure, it’s no stone… but I digress…
I’ve been using it a lot at home – it’s now my primary tweeting device when watching TV not in front of my PC among other things – and have been using it a bit at work too. The biggest win at work has been using an app called SoundNote which allows you to take notes & drawings in a meeting while recording the conversation using the inbuilt microphone. The output is pretty good quality, and you can then e-mail the notes with a link to the audio dumped in your DropBox to share with others. The best thing: In app, you can press on a note and it jumps in the audio playback timeline to what was being discussed at that time. The integration with DropBox to allow uploading of the audio & embedding the link into the e-mail of notes is great too. It would be spectacular if future versions of this great app came with integration to iDisk also for MobileMe users. Complete awesome.
I will be getting a Bluetooth keyboard for it. While I can type on it OK in short/ad-hoc bursts, I find it too difficult to use the onscreen keyboard for any extended period of time. I’ve also been finding that while it will open every Word document you present to it, trying to edit them within Pages without the Bluetooth keyboard is difficult – I miss arrow keys (among other things). Also if you present even a mildly complex *.Doc/Docx document to Pages it really doesn’t cope well. Makes interoperability hard. I have found that the iPad does work pretty well with SharePoint 2007, though.
I’m a little disappointed with the lack of apps for iPad that the iPhone has in spades. A simple example like SpeedTest.net is a good app on both platforms, however it’s only iPhone size (compatible does not mean suitable in iPad land). Surely it wouldn’t have been hard to update that to make it a little more functional (or at least resized!) to suit the iPad. That FaceBook doesn’t have an app for iPad is most likely because the web experience quite good, and you wouldn’t want to lock it down to a dysfunctional app on the iPad like they have on the iPhone. There are a few apps that I’ve found I prefer as the web experience direct on the iPad rather than their iPhone counterparts. It’s a weird methodology change after being beaten into so being so app centric on the iPhone, but I’m coming around. I am disappointed in the functionality of the Twitter for iPad iteration too – I like the look and feel, but there’s too many inconsistencies in operation between the iPhone & iPad versions (quote tweet for a start, user management, integration of geolocation info, etc) for me to be totally sold. I find I jump between the app and the webpage for a few different things; other things simply annoy me but I stick with them.
This app disparity extends to some game ports, too. Angry Birds HD & Plants vs Zombies HD (two of my faves at the moment) are just that – ports. Everything is bigger & cleaner, but no additional anything. In fact (again) the iPhone versions provide slightly more detail and benefit than the iPad versions. It’s also frustrating that when I sync my iPhone and iPad with the same PC that I can’t sync my progress within the games between the devices (or using Game Center, although I am making an assumption on that given it’s not hitting the iPad until November). That said, Firemint’s Real Racing HD & Flight Control HD are superb – large & pretty, as well as extra content & functionality. They are both well worth the coin asked for them.
I’m also missing some of the features of iOS4.1 from the iPhone on the iPad. I know iOS4.2 is coming to all iDevices around November, and I’ll welcome it with open arms. While the single task focus of the iPad is good for productivity, it is frustrating to have to ‘close’ the app to open another one that I may be using somewhat simultaneously to get some data from it to then swap back. That said, not being able to have the Twitter for iPad app open while I am working is probably a good thing.
It’s still an open book for me. I’m using it in a work context now that I wasn’t intending to so my difficulties in interoperability, while correct and accurate, aren’t necessarily in line with the scope of this test. These difficulties were to be expected. The iPad is *not* a laptop. But so far it’s doing a pretty good job of replacing one for me at home, at least.