The iPad Will Not Replace My Laptop

We have not touched base on the iPad for quite a while. When it was launched in January, I thought I would buy at least two. Eventually I bought one and I still have mixed feelings. Sometimes I like it. Today is one of these days. Sunday recovery session, with lazy time passing by, I have been sitting on a sofa by my big window overlooking the garden with yellow leaves already dancing in the wind. I have read two technology / investment forums I participate in, browsed through some 200 new items in the Google Reader and read some ten articles.

Content snicking. This is what can be done very well on the iPad.

But when I wanted to continue with my current book - The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century, I reached for the Kindle. One of the background tasks running in my head was still processing the puzzle I was offered on the Domino forum, when suddenly it interrupted my reading with the Eureka!

To offer the solution to the puzzle, I had to check some stuff on the Internet and then post the answer. I could reach for the iPad, but I got up instead and went to my desk. I instinctively judged the iPad as not suitable for the task.

Content creation and sharing. This is difficult on the iPad.

When I do usual research work on the Internet, I multitask. I have about twenty tabs opened in my Firefox, switching between them. It is much faster on a regular computer. The iPad has one very irritating issue with multiple web sessions. They are preempted when system runs low on memory. This happens when I have one session with Google Reader, from the Reader I click open the second session with the original article, and when it has YouTube video embedded, there seems to be not enough memory for the Google Reader window. So when I return to the Reader, the page reloads and the news item is gone (it was automatically marked as read before). And there is no way to get the gone item back... Frustrating...

Then to compose a piece of content, like a reply on an Internet forum, I do a lot of copy / paste operations. I use links for referrals, I insert pictures and drawings. Try to do that kind of stuff on the iPad. First, you cannot open multiple windows side by side. Of course this is the way iOS works. It was designed for a phone. Every application runs full screen. There is no way to have two, side by side. It feels exactly like pictured in the Microsoft Commercial of Windows Phone. One app at a time. In. And out. And in. And out to the next app. Sounds familiar? Working with multitasking computers since Windows 95 (it has been 15 years now), and with those gorgeous HD displays that are bigger today than our TV sets back in 1995, we love multitasking. Many windows opened, dragging and dropping between them or Ctrl-C / Ctrl-V. This is how we work today. But not on the iPad.

So in my case - it is good for content snicking. Browse the news while sipping the morning coffee. Just average at good content consumption. Oh how frustrating it is to realize the page you read has some embedded Flash that you really want to play (after all Flash is not only ads...), and you have to get up from the sofa and go to the desk to get that page on a real computer. And poor at content creation. This is why I will stick to my laptop. I value function over style.