I bought an iPad. You probably already know this because the only people who see this are my Buzz followers, and all my Buzz followers already know I drank Steve Jobs’ flavor-aide. In fact I am writing this draft right now in HelvetiNote on it while lying in bed, and, surprisingly it is not yet uncomfortable and I can type reasonably fast on it. It’s weird, admittedly, but it’s less uncomfortable than sitting in bed with a laptop propped up on a pillow, or in your lap. That’s kind of what the iPad is all about for me: it’s less uncomfortable in those moments when you want to do lazy, comfortable computing.
Not me writing this post,but reading Buzz posts in the Mail app on the iPad
I decided to get an iPad pretty randomly. You might remember I wrote a piece on here back in February titled “on why we hate the iPad” shortly after when it was announced where I lambasted it for various reasons, all of which seem mostly irrelevant now and I won’t bother covering them one by one or anything because I am lazy. Let’s just say I was wrong in a few ways, and the above point is the first way.
Recently I set my laptop up as my “music server” that holds my iTunes, deals with my music torrent downloads, and hosts my subsonic server. I usually just access it via LogMeIn these days (truly a lovely experience on the iPad) and don’t even physically interact with it. It’s locked in place, basically, so if I go over to my friend’s garage I can’t take it with me and use it while we watch movies and smoke pot and shit—like I did all last summer, and summer is coming up. So what do I do? I can’t set my desktop up as the server, it’s too hot to run 24hr and I play games on it.
What could I do? Buy another laptop? But laptops are kind of unwieldy, I have to hunch over it usually no matter where I position it or how I prop it up. How about a netbook? No, the screens are too small and they just seem kind of silly. Now, an iPad on the other hand, I could just sit in a chair funny like I already do and plug away on it. When I’m single again, we can be watching television, smoking pot, and I can be tap tap tapping away answering OKCupid questions and sending messages to hot women. Straight up iPad playah…
Suddenly the iPad made sense to me. It wasn’t about having a full computer in my hands. Hell, even when I do have a full computer in my hands, what do I do with it? I check Buzz. I read email. I look at pictures of naked women. I browse Reddit. I watch YouTube videos. I listen to music. I write about shit. These are all things I can do with an iPad, too, and to be frank, they’re kind of more enjoyable to do on it than they are on a laptop. Haven’t mice always seemed kind of unwieldy from a mobile perspective? You need a flat hard platform for them. They need batteries, transceivers, then your arm gets tired. iPad fixes that. You just touch shit, and it’s not at all annoying.
The main thing about the iPad, though, is that it’s a major monetary commitment. Sure, you can get an iPad and then never buy any apps, nut what are you going to do with it then? And then how can you not buy a nice case for it, because such a nice looking device needs a nice case, right? It’s not just $670 (that’s after taxes) for the 32gb iPad, but also $53 for the case (an Eco-Vue which is quite lovely and awesome all at once), and then another $100 in sick ass Apps, and a couple bucks in accidental downloads you feel too much shame about because you’ve done it so many times that you don’t want to contact Apple support again and ask for another refund.
So let’s just say no matter what iPad you get, you’re really looking at a $800-$1000 investment. If you’re getting a 3G iPad, like I didn’t, then add another $200 to that. How do I mentally justify this? Well, I am a guy who has spent over $600 on a single unicycle, so I guess it isn’t that surprising. For the most part I enjoy the iPad so much that I’ve just committed myself to the fact that it’s going to cost me a bit of money, and what makes it a lot easier is that all the apps are really nice. Did I have to buy HelvetiNote so I could write this post, then copy it to WordPress, to then edit links into it on my desktop before I publish it? Nope. But HelvtiNote is pretty and I can set it to white text on black and that’s easy on the eyes.
Well, he is a shark, after all.
That’s the other thing, of course, and it’s that the iPad is easy on the eyes. Everything is smooth, runs pretty good, and has a damn nice interface. Everything is well polished, but the few apps that are clearly nicer than the others are VERY nice. Flight Control HD is ridiculously smooth looking; the menu system alone is gorgeous. There’s just something about slick graphic design that makes dropping $5 or even $10 on an app feel like a good idea before and even after the purchase. It really says a lot that I paid $30 for the LogMeIn Ignition app and I feel no remorse over it. I kind of regretted every Android app purchase I ever made, all $50 or so dollars of them.
What about Flash? Do I miss Flash? Not very much. Having Flash on my Nexus One is enough to know that Flash isn’t really a necessity. Most YouTube videos work on the iPad, and eventually all of them will. Other sites have HTML5 players already or will eventually. That’s the thing: even with all the nonsense going on fighting over shit, the truth of the matter is that the iPad is going to motivate change. Techies can vote with their dollar all they want but the only real outcome will be co-existing technologies. One will be easy to use, and the other will be more difficult but will run on all the same platforms as the other plus another select group of devices. I’ve already updated staires.org to insert an HTML5 MP3 player for people, like me, who visit on iPads. Looks good, works fine.
Games wise, it’s pretty amazing. That RealRacing HD game, or whatever it’s called, is fun as hell. My buddy and I have spent hours playing Touch Hockey (an incredibly fun air hockey simulation that makes people spooge when they see it) and Dominion HD (a Risk clone with Wargames styled 80′s graphics). I’ve really enjoyed Angry Birds HD and several other games that have all been worth their purchase price.
Am I supporting Steve Jobs’ megalomaniacal (not sure if that’s the right word but it’s what the iPad wants) desire to control the world’s content? Maybe, but that guy is going to die eventually, probably soon, and then whoever is going to take over after him is going to seriously fuck everything up and it won’t matter any more because Apple will nose dive. Whatever ecosystem Apple sets up right now will implode eventually, so I guess I don’t give a shit about Steve Jobs and his boohoo anti-Android anti-porn juvenile censorship circle jerk. He can have my money. Someone else will spend it when he’s dead. I’m just another drop in the bucket. A wasted vote.
Overall, it should be obvious that I love my iPad. I think it is awesome. I sometimes feel like the world would be a better place if everyone got a $1000 Apple store gift card specifically for buying an iPad and a bunch of apps and shit. This thing brings me joy. I can’t wait to see what the future ones will be like, because this shit is dope.
Now… What about the bad things?
I already have more games than I want to play, but luckily that motivational wallpaper will inspire me to do something with my life.
I have one issue with the keyboard and it’s that I seem to have a weird problem with hitting the n or m key instead of the space bar on certain word combos, so things come out likenthis. Not sure why it happens. All physical keyboard should have Apple’s auto-correction built in because it’s pretty sick.
The Wifi issue is insanely annoying and it blows my mind that an issue of this magnitude could slip out and still be shipping to people. Sometimes I put my wifi passcode in over ten times a day. Sometimes I wonder if it’s worse than just a software bug and maybe Apple will have to do a recall. That would be pretty damn crazy.
For the most part the iPad isn’t about what it can’t do, because all that stuff it can’t do isn’t stuff I’d really do with it anyway.
Any typos in this post are the fault of the iPad and the fact that I don’t proof read. Edit: went back and edited out typos and fixed stuff. There were a few. Oh, and I typed all this on the iPad and it wasn’t at all uncomfortable.