(This post is partly a response for the Webisztan post for iPad owners)

So, yes, I bought an iPad recently.

Why?

For some reasons, I cannot bring too much pack with me, and I had a half-vacation trip to Amsterdam. Four days, which means, you shouldn’t really bring your laptop with you (nearly 3 kilograms, how I regret that I switched to 15 cols, I don’t need the large display…), yet it’s definitely good to bring some computing power.

I looked at the Androids, and after holding an Android phone for 2 hours in my hand, I decided that this platform is underperforming for me.

I knew that webOSes are also slow, an I would have to wait for them until christmas shopping season at least anyway.

Average netbooks? I used one with linux (moblin, perhaps?), and brought one with me to Paris with windows (thanks again, Balazs), they’re awfully slow, and the reason we brought it with us - namely: calling parents on skypeout - didn’t work: you could skype-skype, but somehow, no skypeout on Atom…

So, why are they slow? Answer is: they have traditional multitasking.

So, this left me with the Apple option. I’m a mac user since 5 and a half years, and it took me just some googling to get an iPad a few days before the trip (they weren’t introduced then in the Netherlands). For the technically curious, it’s a 64-3G, just to make sure I don’t regret buying a smaller one - although 32GB would be also fine.

The thing is, I bought it for work, which it half-failed.

Especially in Amsterdam, when I had to create a homepage, and I couldn’t switch easily between the SSH terminal (vim - editor… ) and the safari browser. I planned to use VNC, but somehow, unusually my home computer was frozen (thanks for Kelt for checking that it wasn’t stolen), so I had to rely on the machine.

But guy, what an immersive platform it is!

The difference between a device with such form factor and a full-blown computer is simple: a computer is a computer; an iPad becomes the thing you’re running on it.

If you use it as a notetaker, it becomes your notepad. If you use it as a piano, it becomes a piano (although it’s easy to miss the keys). If you use it as a drawing board, it becomes your drawing board.

And it’s that easy. The window is the iPad.

Now, let’s get back on why on Earth people need multitasking?

Because they need to switch between things!

In fact, I don’t find it that hard: I can easily switch between mail, safari, and BeejiveIM (an MSN/Gtalk client), press the button, click. The reason of this is that every application stores its last state on flash, and opening it just reloads (we call this serialization, or using the name from the 90s: permanent computing).

So when you close an application, it doesn’t ask for saving the document you’re working on. The next time you open it, it will stay the same, so it will feel just like multitasking.

So, ‘perceived’ multitasking works, and things are blazingly fast - since the computer does only the one thing it became.

There are two things which cannot be handled this way.

The first obvious thing is an alarm clock: you cannot have a good alarm clock on iPad in the background. Also, you can’t play music, especially not youtube music videos in the background, not that it would be feasible for an ARM processor I believe, since streaming video needs the most power from such devices.

The second thing is about network connections (sockets) - although few things need it (my only example is SSH) it makes your life really hard if you can’t keep them.

Maybe it would be good if chats could be open like in GMail, but we’ll have to see how this works on the ChromeOS tablets, and it’s easy to see the limits of such an interface.

So, the iPad is a suitable device for on-the-go. I know it’s a bit heavy, but still I bring it with me to a lot of places. It’s more convenient to use than a phone, and you can solve a lot of things with it.

The most used apps so far:

  • Safari, of course (check timetables, or anything on-the-go)
  • BeejiveIM (talk with your friends in unusual places and situations)
  • iBooks (yes, you can read books on it - it has a brightness setting. Also, it eats .epub and PDFs)
  • OmniGraffle (it’s really immersive to draw on a drawing board, instead of a computer)
  • Virtuoso (a piano app - it’s much more fun creating music than to listening on it)

Disatvantages

First, the sound quality of iPad is below my expectations, so I still prefer to listen to music on computer, but for those who can’t hear the difference between the different qualities of bitrates, it could be fine.

Second, the Mobile Safari programming is harder then expected: For example, there’s no focus() function, so you can’t lead the user through a form easily; or there’s no contentEditable, which basically kills any WYSIWYG HTML-Editor support.

Also, the built-in apps are rather primitive: I’d laugh my ass off at anybody saying that iPad mail is full-featured; at least it could load pictures of people from the addressbook… Or maybe could I type bold text? (BTW, rich text editing is basically missing on the whole platform - except for the Pages app)

Oh, and you can’t attach a photo to a mail, but you can mail a photo. Cute, isn’t it?:)

Even the calendar app is strange: you cannot add new events by clicking (tapping) on their place: you have to press the plus button in the corner, set the date and time from a dropdown, and save it.

So, it does feel like I’m holding a prototype now; but hey, I haven’t seem too much prototypes this fast and usable.

Let’s see what the new OS brings. I hope they won’t ruin the speed of the device.