For the last couple of days, I’ve been in the company of masses of the technorati here at eComm. Many of them are carrying Apple’s latest gadget – the iPad. I won’t lie. iPad is very pretty. It has definitely caught my eye, and because of delays in delivering the iPad to Canada, I came down here intending to check it out and perhaps… buy one.
Not this trip, I’m afraid. I’ve seen the iPad, I’ve played with it, and I won’t be buying one… yet. It just doesn’t do enough for me to justify the expense.
The positives: I was blown away by its utility as a media consumption device. Books (Apples iBook, and Amazon’s Kindle) were fantastic. Video was equally incredible, although I was surprised to see that YouTube videos weren’t available in high definition. Music was wonderful as well, and the newspaper experience on USA Today and the Wall Street Journal was fabulous. Gaming was cool as well.
The negative (yes, there’s one overarching negative) was the keyboard. The on screen keyboard is a duplicate of the iPhone keyboard – four rows of keys, instead of five. It eliminates the number keys and many of the punctuation marks, moving them to a secondary pop-up activated by pressing a button like the shift key on the lower left side of the keyboard. That’s a great solution in the display constrained iPhone environment, which is designed around thumb typing, but a crappy solution on a device the size of the iPad which purports to be able to support touch typists. You can’t touch type on a non-standard keyboard!
Apple’s failure on the keyboard impacts every content creation application on iPad from email to word processing, presentations and spreadsheets. Unfortunately, I cannot justify spending $600 on a device solely for content consumption. Too much of my usage on a portable device is content creation, not consumption.
A big disappointment. I am glad I had a chance to play with it before making a decision to buy.
Alec Saunders is the Vice President of Developer Relations for BlackBerry maker Research in Motion. This is his personal blog, with his personal viewpoints. Prior to this Alec was the CEO and co-founder of Calliflower — the easiest way to hold a meeting, online, on a conference call, or on the go. A double-decade veteran of product management and marketing, he spent nine years at Microsoft where he helped launch Windows 95, the first two versions of Internet Explorer, the Universal Plug and Play initiative, the push into home markets, opt-in email marketing and what might well go down in history as the very first direct email list ever.
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Did you consider a bluetooth keyboard? (If the main reason you want to type is "back at the room" when you're travelling, or in meetings perhaps, then Apple's BT keyboard that they force you to take with their deskbound Macs might be small enough to be a travelling keyboard.)
I have a laptop with a fixed keyboard already. The tablet is interesting because… it doesn't have a keyboard.
True, I am sure there could be a lot more improvements in the upgrade version. It may take another year what it will be worth the wait.
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I pad is great for use as a map, book, newspaper etc. but I can't see myself using it to type much. If I need to type a lot on the go I'll just use a notebook. Now if the ipad comes out with a detached wi fi keyboard. I may be more tempted to buy. I'd also like Apple to reconsider Flash. Many websites us flash it'd be nice to have access to those.
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