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What Do You Use Your iPad For?

Last week, a co-worker spotted me in the hall and said, "I see you with your iPad all the time. What do you really use it for?"

As it turns out, my iPad and I had been the focus of a lunch table conversation. Beyond watching movies or reading books on it, people just couldn't imagine what my iPad and I do together all day long.

It's a fair question -- and one that many potential iPad owners might ask. So, in order of frequency, here's what I actually use my iPad for:

1. Reading books using the Amazon Kindle app. I also read Wired Magazine.

2. Surfing the web using Safari.

3. Tweeting tweets to Twitter (which are then automatically posted to Facebook as status updates) using Echofon.

4. Quickly browsing more than 50 web sites to find just the articles I want to read using the Reeder RSS feed reader. (And reading longer articles I've saved to read later using Instapaper.)

5. Checking and composing email. This includes blogging via email using Posterous.

6. Sharing photos with friends and family. People love looking at photos on the big, bright, iPad screen.

7. Taking meeting notes (and maintaing lists of books to read, movies to see, and music to download) using SimpleNote.

8. Drafting chapters of my next book using Simplenote (but soon switching to Chapters, once it has DropBox integration).

9. Researching vacation destinations and building a database of places to go and things to see using Evernote.

10. Keeping track of my ToDo list using Things.

11. Tracking my blood pressure, heart rate, and weight over time using HeartWise.

12. Browsing photos other friends have taken and shared using FlickPad.

13. Reading the news using the USAToday, Digital Post, and New York Times Editor's Choice apps.

14. Checking the weather using Weather HD.

15. Getting directions from Maps.

16. Reading and studying the Bible using BibleXPress.

17. Getting 50-60% off meals using ScoutMob coupons, plus finding nearby eateries with Urbanspoon.

18. Checking multiple gmail accounts with MailWrangler.

19. Doing Tarot readings with TarotHD.

20. Doing iChing readings with Yi Jing.

21. Playing Angry Birds, Osmos HD, or fiddling with Gravilux.

22. Listening to music on Pandora, generating ambient music using Somnium, playing music on the Air Harp, or interacting with music, light, and sound using Bloom HD.

23. Making phone calls via Skype.

24. Chatting with friends on multiple chat platforms using Meebo.

25. Streaming video from my desktop machine to my iPad using AirVideo.

26. Browsing YouTube video and downloading local copies of videos I like using MiTube. (Heh heh heh.)

27. Brainstorming with iMandalArt, Priority Matrix, Popplet, iThoughtsHD, or Oblique Strategies.

28. Tweaking photos with PhotoPal, PhotoFX Ultra, PhotoPad, PhotoForge, and Filterstorm.

29. Controlling the Mac Mini hooked up to our TV using TouchPad.

30. Browsing Craigslist for deals using CraigsPro.

Increasingly, the easier question to answer is, "What *don't* you use your iPad for?"

Unboxing and Review: CLEAR iSpot Mobile 4G Hotspot for iOS Devices

 

We’ve been curious about Clear’s 4G service for more than a year. We’ve also been looking for a fast mobile connectivity option for use around town.

So when Clear ran a special this week on the iSpot (their 4G mobile hotspot exclusively for iOS devices), we took the plunge. Here’s our Day 1 experience in the Atlanta market, featuring everything from unboxing photos to speed comparisons with the AT&T 3G network.

 

iPad: A Little "Light" Reading

Since purchasing my first Kindle more than two years ago, I have frequently indulged in the simple pleasure of reading while walking to work. (Not while crossing intersections. I'm not suicidal.)

Today, while walking home during the lunch hour, I fired up my new iPad, open Seth Godin's Lynchpin, and prepared to plow through a chapter or two. In short order, though, I gave up. At its very brightest, the iPad's backlit text could not compete with the glare of a sunny day. Worse, in full sunlight, the glossy, shiny screen of my iPad became a perfect mirror, directing sizzling bolts of brilliance directly into my eyes.

This did not happen with the humble Kindle. Its e-ink screen performs better in bright sunlight. It loves to be read on the beach.

On my way back to the office, seeking respite from the sun, I slipped into a dark Thai restaurant. To save money, the owner refuses to turn on the overhead lights, but on hot days, this transforms the place into a dark, cool retreat. I took a seat at a corner booth, opened my iPad, and began reading.

Had I been reading a Kindle -- or even an old-fashioned book -- this wouldn't have been possible; in such a gloomy environment, reflective surfaces (like paper, or e-ink screens) fail. But because I had my iPad, I enjoyed a side order of Seth Godin with my tofu fried rice.

The verdict? Indoors, in bed, or in virtually any artificially-lit environment, the iPad makes for a very pleasant reading tool. If you're a beachy person, though, or someone who reads, most of the time, under the glare of the noonday sun, you'll do better to invest in a Kindle.

iPad - Indistinguishable from Magic

My iPad arrived (really) on Saturday, and I've been licking it working with it ever since. Many, many other websites will post detailed reviews of the hardware and software. Me? I just want to tell you some stories.

Sunday Morning. I haven't been a newspaper person for years. My morning routine involves a cup of coffee and reading the news -- but I read that news online, and, up until now, that's meant sitting in the office, in front of my Mac.

Sunday morning, though, I joined Clyde and The Animals on the couch, perched my coffee mug on a window sill, and read USA Today, BBC news, and a dozen news feeds on the iPad. As we read together, we shared bits and pieces of favorite items. The Animals played. The sun rose slowly, painting the Mayfair Towers and the W Hotel varying shades of pink and purple. 

Information on a screen in front of you is one thing; that same information in your lap, on a device you can touch, is something else entirely. Reading is effortless -- and because the device is a comfortable size and shape, you can interact with it without abandoning the world around you.

At the Nursing Home. Mom's hospitalization has isolated her from Josiah, her canine companion. We've brought Josiah in to visit her, but that's just not the same as having him there constantly. Yesterday, I loaded the iPad with photos and videos taken of Josiah's most recent walk in Piedmont Park and took it with me to the rehab center.

Mom snatched the iPad, and, without any coaching or instruction, excitedly flipped from photo to photo. When a nurse came in, she sped back through the collection to show off her favorite photos. "I want one of these," Mom kept saying. "I want one!"

A high-tech device a seventy-eight year old woman can use without training or anxiety -- wow.

Old Friends in a New Light. I loved my Kindle, which remains an excellent device for reading a text sequentially from beginning to end. But the Kindle's e-ink display chokes on tables, diagrams, maps, and photos, most of which either don't display ... or display in a compressed or distorted format, rendering them useless.

What a pleasure it's been to load those books into the Kindle app on the iPad and discover that the maps in my travel books are not only visible -- they're zoomable, with details I can actually read. Tables, charts, and quizzes in the books I've been reading for work are crystal clear. Books on photography include crisp images that I can expand and reorient at will, just by rotating the iPad in my hands.

Verdict. The iPad isn't just a good device for interacting with text, photos, videos, games, email, and the web -- it's the *perfect* device for interacting with text, photos, videos, games, email, and the web. While I still want a physical keyboard for heavy-duty text entry -- for writing novels and reports, for example -- the removal of a keyboard and mouse lends a sense of intimacy to browsing media (from news to ebooks to photos) unlike anything you've ever experienced before.

With the iPad in your hands, there is also a sense that this is a little device that someone, somewhere, has stolen from our future. It is a little slice of magic, the sort of technology that Dr. Who or Captain Kirk would carry, whisked back in time to the present day. 

Or, put more simply: the iPad is a joy to use. Think about that: here's a piece of technology ... that generates a sense of wonder and awe.

How long since you've said that about a computer?

Kindle Reader for the Mac

Amazon.com very quietly released Kindle Reader for the Mac yesterday. I’m glad to be able to read my Kindle books (and highlighted passages and the reading notes I’ve taken) on my Mac. That said: this is a very ugly, very basic, quickly-cobbled-together piece of software.

There’s a nice library of full-color book covers. And the software compensates well for one of the Kindle’s short-comings, allowing me to actually see the maps and read the tables and enjoy the illustrations that my trusty Kindle simply can’t display. 

On the down side: the lack of a text search option is just lame. The fact that the software won’t let me highlight or annotate text as I read is annoying. 

But the MOST annoying thing about Kindle Reader for the Mac is the fact that it will not allow me to select and copy text. I take frequent notes as I read, and my strong preference is to store those notes in a personal database, where they can be indexed and summoned up when needed. Without the ability to highlight, copy text, and paste it elsewhere, the Kindle Reader is pretty much useless to me. 

(I did manage to get text into my database this way: using Skitch, I took a screenshot of the quote I liked. Using PDFPen, I converted that image to text. It’s not simple or easy, but it works.)

Here’s hoping that Kindle Reader for the Mac is so lame because all of Amazon’s programmers have been staying up late, creating an amazing iPad app for the Kindle. 

Telephones, Televisions, Desktop PCs, and the iPad

 

When I was a kid, we had one home phone: black, heavy, secured to the kitchen wall. When we wanted to talk on the phone, we sat in the kitchen. When we wanted to talk on the phone, we came to the phone. 

My nephews and their friends don’t even have home phones. For them, phones are (and always have been) personal, portable devices. What’s more, phones are less and less used for making slow, time-consuming voice calls and more and more for Skyping, typing, and texting.

When I was a kid, we had one family television: a wooden, heavy hunk of furniture with a bulky picture tube inside. When we wanted to watch t.v., we sat down in front of the television set on a schedule the network determined. 

With the exception of the occasional football game or special event, the nephew and his friends don’t watch much television, either. Downloaded movies and shows on their iPods? Yes. Hulu.com on a laptop? Yes. YouTube clips on a handheld device? Constantly. 

But network shows, on a network’s schedule, on a giant box at one end of the room? Rarely, if ever. That’s how old people do it.

The next victim of this “must be portable” mindset? Desktop PCs. 

For most of my life, PCs have been heavy, stationary boxes moored to heavy, stationary monitors. Most PCs at The Company are still desktop boxes — and even the laptops spend most of the day in docking stations, converting them to desktop PCs. 

All my nephew’s friends already carry laptops. And, not surprisingly, these kids can’t wait for the iPad, because it’s even more portable and even more personal than a heavy clamshell laptop ever will be.

When you read dire predictions about the iPad — it’s not powerful enough, it’s not big enough, it’s not got a keyboard, it’s not got a phone, it’s not got an HDMI port for playing HD video on a television screen — be sure to check the age of the prophets.

White guys over thirty-five, right? Yep. Thought so.

My Twelve Top iPhone Home Screen Apps

 What iPhone apps are on your iPhone's home screen?

In theory, these would be the apps you use most often and treasure most -- the apps you want to keep no more than a finger-tap away. The 16 apps on my home screen are an integral part of how I get things done, making the iPhone into a remote control for my life.

The Top 12

Messages (SMS). More and more people are realizing that the best way to get my attention is with a short text message. Frankly? It's my preferred method of communication. I don't route tweets here; instead, my SMS client is reserved for messages that deserve immediate attention … and appointment reminders from my Google calendar. 

Echofon. No question about it: Echofon is the *best* iPhone client for Twitter, making it easy to manage multiple accounts, view new tweets, and dig into background info (links, follower lists, user profiles). Adding photos and geo-location info to tweets takes just one tap!

Evernote. Evernote supplanted Together and Yojimbo as my "anything box," the place where I route random snippets of information. From trip itineraries to my library of .PDFs, everything I might want to have access to is at my fingertips thanks to Evernote.

Google Reader. While I'm testing Byline as an offline reader, I still find myself turning again and again to Google Reader (or, more specifically, the mobile version). The simple, flexible layout loads in seconds -- and even performs admirably on a miserable AT&T Edge network connection. 

Dropbox. Dropbox gives me instant, on-the-go access to any files I toss in. While Evernote is my repository of information snippets, I prefer to use Dropbox to store files, share them with friends and colleagues, and shuttle them between computers. I keep all files related to on-going projects here, so I can get to them from any Internet-connected computer, anywhere in the world. 

(True story: I recently purchased a PDF of Wil Wheaton's latest book, Memories of the Future, Vol. 1. It was easier to read it using DropBox's file viewer than it was to read the darn book on my Amazon.com Kindle!)

Things. Things for the Mac is the best to-do and project manager for people who want to spend less time tweaking a to-do list and more time getting things done. Things for the IPhone keeps my to-do list in synch and lets me add to-do's on the go. Works like a charm … and has saved my bacon more times than I can count.

UrbanSpoon. What's for dinner? We're asking that less and less, and turning to UrbanSpoon more and more. Here in Atlanta or on the road, UrbanSpoon's aggregated reviews and restaurant approval ratings have steered us to great meals, even helping me find my favorite pizza joint in the USA.

Skype. Using in-room WiFi, I called Mom on my Skype phone from Bangkok, Thailand, talked 30 minutes, and spent about twenty cents. Skype makes video, text, and voice chats with other users (and even calls to landline phones) as simple and straightforward as they can be. As WiFi becomes more and more ubiquitous, will anyone need traditional cell phone service?

Now Playing. There are lots of "When's the next showing of Avatar?" apps out there, but Now Playing is the best. It integrates the movie review and scoring system I trust most (MetaCritic) and gives me the facts I need (locations, sorted by what's closest to me, plus start times for all upcoming shows) without bogging me down with poster art or video clips (though previews and extended info are there, if you want them).

SimpleNote. I don't use SimpleNote to store random snippets (I use Evernote for that), but I do use SimpleNote as my "magic clipboard," allowing me to copy text on one machine and have it instantly available for pasting on another. It's also good for creating, managing, and archiving short lists -- and faster and more nimble for taking short notes on the fly than the iPhone's own Notes application (or even Evernote, for that matter). Anything I want to archive I just email to Evernote later.

Best Camera. Your best camera really is the one you have with you, and everywhere I go, I have my iPhone camera in tow. I use Best Camera to dress us iPhone shots for company, tweaking contrast and color just a bit before releasing shots into the wild. If you want to make the most of iPhone photos, Best Camera is a must-have app.

Pandora. I keep discovering new music as a result of creating custom radio stations with Pandora! The software does an uncanny job of predicting what I'll like -- while also serving up songs I've forgotten … or wouldn't have discovered otherwise. More and more, I depend on Pandora to generate soundtracks for my morning, for my walk to work, for changing my mood -- you name it. 

On the Bubble

I reserve the lowest row on my home screen for apps I'm evaluating. If they become a part of my day, they'll replace one of the Top Twelve. If not … they get filed away or deleted.

Outside. By the time Outside loads, you could walk outside and check the weather yourself … but I confess the candy-colored animated graphics almost make me happy enough to forgive all the sluggish performance.

Byline. Because Byline synchs with Google Reader, this offline RSS feed reader caught my eye. (That, and the well-thought-out interface, make it the king of iPhone newsreader apps.) It's nice to have news stories archived for off-line reading, but with 3G and WiFi access in abundance here in town, it remains to be seen whether Byline offers me anything of value beyond the Google Reader mobile interface.

Instapaper. With one click, you can send the full text (with no extraneous graphics) of a story you're reading in your laptop or desktop browser to Instapaper; later, you can access that story from any Internet-connected device, including your iPhone. With a shortcut for sending stories to Google Reader and Evernote for archiving pages and text I really like, I'm not sure I need Instapaper … but the idea is cool, so I'm tinkering with it -- and I do love the way Instapaper strips away distraction, leaving nothing but the text.

Google Buzz. Location-aware comments and reviews are an interesting idea, but, so far, I'm not finding much use for Buzz. Until it can serve as a clean front-end for all my social media interaction, I'm not sure it deserves a spot on the home page -- or my iPhone, for that matter.

Are there apps that ought to be on my home screen that aren't? Let me know in the comments!

That Third Device

 

When I'm writing a book or composing a longer email or blog post, I want the convenience and power of a full-sized keyboard. Despite all the promise of voice-dictation technology, nothing beats the speed and accuracy of a keyboard for funneling text out of my head and into the machine.

A laptop, though, is overkill when casually (okay, okay -- obsessively!) checking email in a restaurant, or when tweeting a 140-character movie review, or when checking on the status of my Facebook peeps, or when amusing myself during a boring sermon in church. For this, the iPhone -- a device I didn't even know I needed three years ago -- is absolutely perfect. For quick tasks and basic Internet access on the go, my iPhone is the perfect mobile device.

And now, there's the iPad -- a third device -- and since its introduction, everyone is asking the same question, ad nauseum: "Do we really need a third kind of device?"

So I've been thinking about that.

Must the iPad's Arrival Doom $9.99 eBooks?

The difference between Amazon and Apple is this: Amazon is very much in the ebook business to sell ebooks. They want you attached to their platform. That's why the Kindle Reader is on both PC and iPhone, as well as the eponymous e-ink device. Ebooks are huge for them. They sell six ebooks for every 10 physical books. That's why they want to own the market. Apple, on the other hand, sells content in order to sell hardware. The iTunes Store, the App Store and the brand-new iBooks Store exist so you'll buy iPods, iPhones and iPads, which is where Apple really makes money. iTunes revenue is just a bonus, though an ever fatter one with the explosion of the App Store.

via gizmodo.com

I've loved paying $9.99 or less for new release books, and Amazon's discounts have been very successful at driving ebook adoption. (I won't even buy hardback books anymore.) But as products like the iPad expand hardware options beyond Amazon's Kindle, publishers will leverage that variety to raise the price of ebooks by denying rights to deep discounters.

I still believe that an ebook edition of a book *should* cost less than a bound copy. In distributing ebooks, the publisher doesn't incur any printing, warehousing, or shipping costs. So the question remains: as publishers force higher ebook prices, will people like me continue to feel as good about ebook purchases?

For now, I'm not sure.

Posted via web from Mark's posterous

Thoughts on the Apple iPad

1. It's good that it runs iPhone apps. Sounds like I can just transfer 'em right over to the iPad. Nice!

2. It's weird that it doesn't have a camera. Many of my favorite apps -- The Best Camera, Le Petit Dummy, several "augmented reality" apps, and especially Evernote -- make clever use of the iPhone's camera. The lack of a camera means you can't make full use of these apps -- or have a Skype video chat -- on the iPad.

3. It may not be a good traveling companion for me. A part of me had hoped the iPad would let leave my laptop home when traveling. But when I travel, in addition to blogging, reading, listening to music, and surfing the web, I like taking and sharing photos with folks back home. But since the iPad has no card reader or USB ports, there's no way to move photos from my digital camera to the device. 

Update: Engadget is reporting that Apple will sell an optional kit allowing a card reader or digital camera to be connected to the device. Maybe I can leave that laptop home, after all. 

4. I'm not sure what this means for the Kindle. Apple says the iPad will run "most iPhone apps." Will the Kindle app be one of them? If so, it's possible that I could sell my Kindle and access my Kindle books solely through the iPad. Even then, I'd be stuck reading Kindle books through the Kindle app, and iPhone books through the iBook app. Messy!

5. I like the keyboard dock. They really should have made one of these for the iPhone. 

6. I'll believe the battery claims when I see 'em. Jobs claims a month "on standby" and ten hours of active video playback. My first thought: heavy 3G or GPS use can drain my iPhone battery in thirty to forty-five minutes. Will the iPad fare better? 

7. No 4G? I live in one of the very few cities in the US with 4G coverage ... and I still don't have a device that lets me make use of 4G's faster speeds. (And with no USB port, there's no way to hook an external 4G modem up to the iPad -- until Verizon makes a 4G MeFi card, of course.)

8. How hot will it get? My iPhone gets hot as a fireball when using 3G or GPS features for an extended period of time. If the iPad behaves the same way, it better come packaged with a lap-pad!

9. Do I even need an iPhone now? My iPhone is great for apps, but, as a phone, it sucks (mostly because of the expensive, unreliable AT&T service). If I have the iPad for running apps, maybe I could drop my iPhone for a much cheaper, much better basic phone (and cheaper, more reliable service from someone other than AT&T).

10. Predictions that this would be a "big iPhone" were wrong. With no support for Flash or multi-tasking, it's really just a big iPod Touch.