This is a bit of an experiment. I’m sitting in my local Starbucks and instead of taking my MacBook Air I’ve brought my iPad, along with my old Apple Bluetooth keyboard. Using Boingo to connect, I’m having no problems typing this post into WordPress directly. Given that the iPad can’t multi-task, there’s no way I can add an image and I’ll have to do that later when I get home.

But onto the purpose of this post. The acquisition of an iPad has underlined to me how brilliant Amazon’s Kindle software strategy is. I now have two MacBooks, an iPhone 3GS and an iPad. Kindle software is on all of them. Of course, I also have an actual hardware Kindle as well.

I’ll tell you what this means. I’m reading Brent Week’s Shadows Edge. Yesterday when I went to lunch at my local coffee shop I read it on my iPhone. When I get home I continued to read it on my iPad and, a bit later,  as it was sunny outside I continued reading it on my Kindle. Then I then came back in and after dinner continued on my iPad and as I was lying in bed that night I finished the day’s reading on the Kindle (the iPad’s a bit heavy to prop up in bed).

Now, IN EACH AND EVERY CASE the machine I was reading on synchronized with every other machine and I could just pick up where I left off. The whole thing was seamless – just like reading a pbook. Why would I ever consider moving to another platform when the Kindle ecology performs so brilliantly! I guess Amazon’s got me hooked.

However, the iPad, as a laptop substitute, does not have me hooked. It’s the lack of multi-tasking. My local Starbucks has a really lousy WiFi setup and often drops the connection. This is no problem on my laptop, I just start up the Boingo program and reconnect. But on the iPad it is a real pain. I have to quit Safari, start Boingo, and then reconnect to WordPress all over again and hope it saved my typing as a draft. With my laptop I can use a separate blog editor. Plus, without multi-tasking I can’t check anything else on the iPad without breaking my internet connection. Let’s hope that this improves when version 4.0 comes out. For now, back to my laptop when travelling – but then that’s not what the iPad was designed for, anyway.

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

6 COMMENTS

  2. re: “Plus, without multi-tasking I can’t check anything else on the iPad without breaking my internet connection”

    Whaaaaaaat the heck are you talking about?

    That’s just plain incorrect, on multiple levels. I go back and forth between multiple apps all the time without “breaking my Internet connection” or losing my place in them. If some PARTICULAR app such as WordPress loses your current work when you exit it….that’s just a badly written app, something to complain to the app’s maker about. Not to Apple.

  4. I am intrigued just now, reading reports by people who are actually using the iPad instead of the earlier hype that surrounded its introduction. The more I read about it, the less sense I see in the thing. I keep reading that things will be better when model # comes out. What an extraordinary way to go about things. Given that almost all the missers I read about it are extremely basic ones, I cant for the life of me understand why Apple didnt deal with them before releasing the beast on the world.
    I know that there will be thousands of Apps (that horrible word for software) coming along, well, ones that Jobs will allow on his creation at least, but still, to have to download an army of fixes in order to be able to use a machine with any degree of ease, or wait a while and then buy the next, improved version of the iPad seems insane to me.
    All very odd. Me, I shall stick to my simple collection of a basic mobilephone, which makes phone calls rather well, my EeePC and Sony eReader, they do everything I need, and well too. And probably in total didnt cost me much more than an iPad with enough software in it to work somewhat well.

  5. @Tony Cole: I keep reading that things will be better when model # comes out.

    People say that about every new product when it doesn’t meet their particular needs (but other people are fine with it.). People are still waiting for that “perfect” iPhone to appear (as they define it, not as it will ever truly exist.)

    An iPad isn’t going to “do it” for everyone for every task they dream of using it for. Fortunately, the technology ecosphere is large enough that SOMEONE/company will come out with a iPad-like device (might take a year or so) that “does it” for some of the people who don’t grok life with an iPad.

    Think of an iPad like it’s a model of car. Not everyone likes the same car (design, style, color, features) but there’s enough variety that eventually everyone finds something that works for them. It just takes time.

    We’re still early in the 1st Gen adoption phase for personal media tablets like the iPad.

    @Paul: Are you using the WordPress app or using Safari to interact with WordPress for posting purposes or some other app? The official WordPress app works but seems a bit crude to me.

  6. Andy, I couldnt agree with you more, and I had no thoughts that the iPad or any other device would or should be perfect or universal – two unattainable goals, obviously.
    I also feel strongly that there is room in the world for all manner of ingenious devices, among which the iPad obviously has a right to be numbered. My problem is that it is one expensive gadget, and given the price, I would expect any reputable company to ensure at least that it was sold with the basic attributes needed to make it function in a reasonable manner, which from all I read about the iPad is most certainly not the case.
    So, if they had put it on the market for, a price between 100 and 200 USD, I probably wouldnt have any problem with it, and would have regarded it as simply a new version of a tablet, and passed on to other matters.
    But thanks for calling me out on that, I should have made myself clearer in my original comment.

The TeleRead community values your civil and thoughtful comments. We use a cache, so expect a delay. Problems? E-mail newteleread@gmail.com.