The best way to talk about how well the iPad works for me is to cover the applications that I use on a regular basis.
I’m sure a comparable Android tablet will appear some day and eventually some comparable applications, but until then, the iPad is probably the coolest piece of hardware I’ve ever purchased. One rule of thought if you’re planning on an Android device. An Android phone is probably $600 or more without a cell contract, so don’t expect to get a good Android tablet device for under $400. Sure, they may come cheaper, but they’ll likely be crap.
Browsing the web
I usually start each day using “Perfect Browser” to read the daily edition of the Calgary Sun. Despite the web guy having a hard-on for IE, I am able to read all the articles and get around the site just fine. I can’t play any video, but I’ve never known the Calgary Sun to provide a useful video. After the Sun, I typically read Slashdot, Fark, and The Register. I’ll browse these last three occasionally throughout the day.
Perfect Browser is one of a couple alternative browsers on the iPad. The built-in Safari is a piece of junk, but Perfect Browser and/or Atomic Web Browser are much better. Both of these give a regular tab based browser which is easy to navigate around.
For even better access to news, I use the Reeder application which ties into my Google Reader account. All the RSS feeds that I subscribe to in Google Reader are available in the Reeder application. It performs it’s own synchronization with the sites to track which articles I haven’t read. It makes reading news from about 100 web sites nice as easy.
If I have any email, I can quickly read it with the built-in application. I can read email from both my gmail.com account and my personal domain and apps account on Google’s services.
Music
There’s enough storage on the iPad for me to keep about 20GB of music without worrying about needing space. We don’t get Pandora access up here so I can’t use that subscription service, but I have found a couple others.
WunderRadio provides access to Internet radio and all the real radio stations that broadcast over the internet in addition to their regular broadcasts. It also supports XM an Sirius if you have subscriptions.
Tunemark is another Internet radio application that gives access to all the radio stations that are on the ShoutCast network. Both applications provide sleep times so you can listen to some music while going to bed 🙂
Video Playback
This is where the iPad really shines. I use it for playing podcasts at night before bed, or movies and TV shows. The iPad video application handles the podcasts fine, but for other video, the best application is Air Video.
Air Video is an application that plays video that is streamed directly from your computer. It automatically converts the video from whatever format it is in to a streamed format that the iPad can play. I’ve been able to play any video I have without issues or pre-conversion.
If you want, you can even configure your router to pass through the port it needs and get access to your video files from over the internet. The application supports the setting of a password so that everyone else doesn’t get access.
Reference Tool
My primary reason for wanting a tablet device was so I could have all my information at my fingertips without hauling papers and books around the house. The iPad has filled this need.
The 9″ screen is the minimum screen size you can use for reading PDF files. You can easily read any of these files without having to zoom in or out. And there are a lot of applications that can read PDF’s so this helps a lot. I can read PDF documents in iBooks, Dropbox, GoodReader, Air Sharing HD, CloudReaders, and the best app – iAnnotate PDF. The last app allows you to mark-up the PDF files to have your own notes.
In addition to PDF files, I have a huge selection of files in CHM format. This is Microsoft’s compiled help format. I found CHMate which can read and display these documents very nicely.
For my own documents, I simply use Dropbox. My files are replicated to all my computers and I have access to them from my Android phone and the iPad. It will download any file I want and if it can’t display it by itself, I can tell it which application to load it into. I can directly view photos that I store within my Dropbox account.
I keep my entire book library of PDF and CHM documents in Dropbox. I can use the Dropbox app to download the document, then open it in either iAnnotate PDF or CHMate.
Another app I just discovered is FileBrowser. I’ve been wanting this application for a long time. It lets me get at the file shares on my PC’s directly without having to put the files in Dropbox first. Sometimes I don’t want a file in Dropbox.
Note Taking
This probably falls under reference, but I thought it important enough to list separately. I use Microsoft’s OneNote application in a major way for storing information of my own. Any important notes I collect from work, any programming ideas I come up with, any informative articles I find on the net, etc.
I’ve forever have been searching for a way to have my notes on the iPad. I played with re-storing them all as word documents so I could use Dropbox. I tried using another online service called EverNote. Using documents was a real pain. Using EverNote is a horrible experience when you’ve already seen how nice OneNote is.
I just discovered MobileNoter the other day 🙂 This great application uses a companion application on my PC to synchronize my MS OneNote files with the application on the iPad! I can now view every thing that I’ve been recording for the last couple years. The application even lets you edit the notes and save them back at this time. Apparently you can’t create new sections or pages yet, but I’m sure that will be coming.
It’s now got a permanent spot reserved on the application bar at the bottom of the iPad screen.
As for general note taking on the iPad. Give it up. I’ve tried notebook apps, sketching apps, drawing apps, they all suck. There’s an application for taking notes while in class. I watched demo video of this app and knew it would be useless. You would never keep up with the teacher. Just use a pen and paper. Then scan or photograph the pages if you want them online later.
Productivity
Google support on the iPad is a little less than stellar other than the Mail client. You need to go to extremes to get the calendar working. Contacts will sync with Google if you set it up through iTunes. I did find CalenGoo which is an application the specifically connects with my Google calendar.
Document support is better and more useful. Again, Dropbox is the hero here. I can view any of my MS Office 2003/7/10 documents within the Dropbox application. I can also send those documents to other applications if I want.
Documents To Go is a long time supporter of editing MS documents on mobile devices. They also have Dropbox support built directly within their application so I can get at the files there as well. I can also push my changes back to Dropbox so they’re available to my other computers again. None of that stupid iTunes file sharing crap.
Where Am I?
I don’t have a GPS so I’m a little disappointed with that. But I did send my WiFi MAC address to the guys who track those for Google. For mapping, you get the built-in Google maps application which works real nicely when you’re online.
I also have Google Earth which is better for browsing around the world without leaving your house. Another application called World Atlas is based on Bing maps and is a piece of junk. It has to redraw the whole screen everytime you zoom in or out.
I was also pointed to OffMaps which uses the OpenStreetMap.org data for a map application. They allow you to actually download all the map data directly onto the iPad so you can use it while offline. They also provide Guide data for many cities which provide the roads, stores, restaurants, etc. You get two of these guides free, and the rest are 3 for a buck.
Fun Reading
There are numerous applications for reading books. These are iBooks, eReader, Kindle, Kobo, Free Books, Stanza, CloudReaders, etc. Kindle and Kobo are pretty dedicated to their retail chains but the others are useful for reading almost any public epub file. I think for novels, I’ll probably stick with my Sony eReader since it is more portable. I couldn’t imagine pulling out a 9″ device to read a book on the train or bus. The Sony is a lot more convenient to use for fiction.
CloudReaders is one app I’ve been playing with lately. It is primarily for reading comic books though it doesn’t have those special features in the Marvel application. The advantage it does have though is that it supports the CBR and CBZ (just zip and rar) files that comic books are distributed in on the Internet. These files just contain a set of JPG files which are numbered in order (00 through xx).
If you look on Usenet, there’s practically an infinite supply of comics available for downloading and reading. I was just reading the very first Spider-man comic in the Amazing Fantasy #15 comic the other day. Practically every comic ever published has been scanned in by someone and posted.
Other Fun
One of the other main strong points behind the iOS devices is the gaming world. I’ve collected quite a few, though I don’t actually play them very often. I typically have to be in a gaming mood which usually falls behind being in a reading mood. But when you do want to play a game, the iPad provides excellent graphics and sound. It’s amazing what can be done on this device.