The iPAD

by Leigh Lundin

Before friends Sharon and Steve flew off to California, Sharon begged me to set up her new iPad, akin to asking a teenage garage mechanic if he’d mind test driving your new Lamborghini. I sighed mightily and allowed that after my many other duties, I might reluctantly glance at it.

Naturally, I spent the next several hours playing, er, upgrading and testing the slick little machine.

iPadding the Imagination

It didn’t happen immediately, but I get it, I really do get it now. That’s a stretch because geeks don’t understand it (with the possible exception of Gizmodo) because of their own expectations. Geo-geeks gripe it doesn’t have true GPS and phone phanz whine it doesn’t have a built-in camera and ‘puter punks complain it doesn’t multitask and business users bitch it doesn’t sport investment tools.

They don’t get it. For the moment at least, the iPad is none of the above. It’s like buying a mule and complaining you can’t milk it, race it, or breed it.

Unless developers change it, the iPad’s all about entertainment. But why would anyone pay $500-800 for a color Kindle?

Love/Slate Affair

The problem with eBook readers is they’re considerably overpriced. Amazon recently reduced the acquisition of a Kindle to $140, which drew a big yawn. They should be looking closer to $40. Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Sony could stand an economic lesson. Ever wonder why fancy computer printers are so cheap? They sell the ink for $800 a liter, more than $3000 a gallon. Razor manufacturers sometimes give away the razors knowing they make more money selling the blades.

eBook retailers want it both ways. They not only sell you an overpriced machine, they want to charge a dismayingly huge mark-up for the digital books themselves. So, after I complain about eReader prices higher than $40, why would I grok the iPad? Because you get a lot more for your money.

Comparing an iPad to a Kindle is like comparing a Lamborghini to a bicycle. It’s a full entertainment centre versus a paperback, accounting for a hefty difference in price. (But isn’t the Kindle reading-under-a-tree icon great!)

The iPad is not a Nook, Kindle, or Sony eReader; it just happens to contain eBook readers, including the Kindle and others. It’s no more a computer than an iPod, which can confuse customers. You can’t see folders or data storage. You can’t willy-nilly download programs from the web. The software hood is sealed– no user-serviceable components inside.

It’s also not a word processor. Yes, AbiWord, Microsoft Office and NeoOffice are available for the iPad, as are notepads and a pretty little writer’s aid called Manuscriptus. Yes, Zoho and Google Docs work on the iPad. Yes, you can connect an Apple keyboard or any wireless keyboard. But… use the iPad to read novels, not write them.

PADD

It’s also not a slate computer. The Apple shiny thing is more like (and perhaps better than) the Star Trek PADD, the Personal Access Display Device. You know, the gadget Captain Picard uses to read CVs, the ship’s counselor uses to peruse patient notes, and everyone uses to twitter.

@Troi: Leaving Rigel VII; Riker was like so all hands on deck 😉 Where’s my iPenicillin?

@Captain: Secret mission to Alpha Centauri to kick Klingon butt. Don’t tell Worf! LOL

Unlike the PADD, the iPad has no upside down, no right or wrong way to hold it. Most programs allow you to read in portrait or landscape mode. A few programs insist upon one or the other, and you can lock in a preference. If you want to always view The New York Times in wide mode, you can make it so.

And, at least one Star Trek developer is assembling a PADD iPad interface. Already, fans call it ‘retro’.

Size Matters

After reading about the iPad, the only real surprise was how light and small it is. Think of a recent issue of Ellery Queen or Alfred Hitchcock with a picture frame around it, and you’ll be close. Apple designers use an illusion to make it seem thinner than it already is, even with the addition of a protective hard shell like Sharon uses.

The iPad comes with a nifty 10w USB charger, one that should be included with all iPods. It’s designed to connect with your computer, Mac or Windows, and this led to my first (and thus far only) source of confusion.

iFondle

Like the iPod Touch, the iPhone, and Android, you can manipulate text and images with agile fingertip moves using one, two, or three fingers. You can touch, tap, drag, flip, rotate, slide, and squeeze or expand. Some of the inputs are used seriously and some, like tilting and shaking, can be used playfully.

To check out Apple’s eBooks (iBooks), I downloaded the free version of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. If I owned an iPad, I’d be tempted to buy the entire book. It uses John Tenniel’s illustrations, some of them tastefully touched with color in a style consistent with the era.

The book has a number of pages that allow a kid (me) to play with it. Tilt the iPad and the pocket watch on a page swings by its chain as if tugged by gravity. Snag the Drink Me bottle and twirl it or flip it out of the way. I’m touchy about treatments of favorite stories, but this approach to Alice sticks closely to the original intent and works for me.

iPaddy Chayefsky

I don’t have anything to go with this heading. I just liked the sound of it.

Well, not to be entirely gratuitous, did I mention the iPad offers novels, radio, television, and movies? Just like Paddy Chayefsky? Plus music. Plus games. Plus audiobooks. Plus podcasts. Plus Skype phone. Plus …

Switched on Back

The machine bears a minimum of physical buttons, mainly on/off/sleep/wake (one button), volume, and a Home button.

Sharon had the foresight to purchase a third party book, one of the Missing Manual series. It explains some of the less than obvious points, such as the device contains eleven ‘home screens’, meaning that as you load your beloved gadget with apps (application programs), you can fill eleven screens full of icons that you access by sliding screens left or right. There’s also sort of a ‘home home’, which contains a search facility.

Not only does the on-screen keyboard appear when you need it, it changes according to context. If you click in the URL address field of the Safari browser, the keyboard’s space bar goes away and other useful keys like ‘.com’ appear (which could have been even more useful if it inserted ‘.com/’).

iTuned Out

This is important: Working with the iPad involves two different iTunes programs, one that comes with the iPad itself and one that you’ll use on your Mac or PC. Because the Missing Manual contained a large section how to use iTunes, my ADD kicked in and I glossed over a critical point: the two programs are not the same.

• iTunes on your Windows or Mac computer is a major utility for handling backups, software updates, adding music, movies, and audio books, and keeping your address book and calendar in sync. That much I understood.
• iTunes on the iPad allows you to download music and movies from the iTunes store. That’s it. Apple should have called it iStore.

Because I was familiar with iTunes on computers, I confused myself when I opened iTunes on the iPad expecting to play music. Huh-uh. Instead, you must use a separate application, iPod. Likewise, there are separate applications to purchase… well… more applications (or obtain them free) and eBooks, which Apple calls iBooks.

Up in the Air

As Sharon flies to California, she doesn’t need to pack her iPod, her paperbacks, her laptop for eMail, a DVD player, or a Kindle. She carries all that and more in her iPad. She can access the internet from Orlando Airport’s free wifi or switch to 3G wireless (cell phone) mode at other nickel-n-dime-you-to-death airports.

If it weren’t for Steve, her iPad would be a good way of picking up guys. Steve reports he was so jammed in his airline seat, he couldn’t use his laptop. Meanwhile, Sharon blithely used her iPad as others enviously looked on.

I won’t be buying an iPad, but I now understand why aficionados love it. Guys, here’s a Christmas hint: If your wife says she wants something to read eBooks, start saving now– she’s not talking about a Nook or Kindle.

Another Tech Travel Tip

Steve packed his MacBook and a $99 Virgin Mobile gadget that looks like a USB flash drive. For a not unreasonable $40 monthly fee (or $10 a week for a fixed amount of data), the 3G network device allows him to connect to the internet when he can’t find a free wifi signal.

While the Mac setup is less tedious than under Windows (I did both), it requires understanding an undocumented trick: On a Mac, the device disguises itself as a Novatel telephone modem. Once you understand that and ignore the telephone number fields, it’s a quick installation.