On vacation in New York just after the iPad launch weekend, I was amazed at how quickly I was able to get it. I was therefore able to have it in my hands and use it during my vacation and back in Montreal to better understand the impact of this product on our Web habits, information and media consumption as well as their output.
FIRST FEELINGS
My first fear, like many others, was to find myself with an object too heavy and cumbersome to be able to enjoy it. On this point, I was amazed at the speed with which I tamed the beast!
So, I didn't hesitate to take it out in fast food queues to check information or even to download my latest emails and RSS feeds when a wifi terminal was available. I also took advantage of my mother's shopping moments, who was discovering New York for the first time, and rest times in the parks to read ebooks or news offline. The ignition time being almost instantaneous, I was able to optimize each moment of waiting (even going to the toilet) which would have been impossible for me with a laptop while maintaining a reading and immersion comfort that cannot be give me an iPhone!
Very quickly, I found myself wanting to reduce the amount of paper I carried with me in favor of the iPad. So my reading book, the guide to New York and my sketchbook found themselves enthroned on my bedside table while I desperately searched for the pencil that works with Apple touch screens for drawing and free wifi hotspots which are not as frequent as I would have thought. Despite everything, after a period of adaptation, I learned to plan my movements by going from one wifi island to another in order to launch my "Mail" and News applications to retrieve content for my offline moments. That's when I realized how dependent I am on an internet connection and even more with this type of device!
AFTER TWO WEEKS OF USE
Being quite busy, I haven't yet been able to configure and organize my media to take advantage of all the options of my iPad (calendar, etc.). However, I realized, observing myself with an outside eye, that the iPad is not a replacement for the computer. It is another device which enters our environment and which comes to meet other needs by its design, its speed of ignition, its limits of use and the interaction which one can have with. As John Gruber says in his (long) article on the iPad :
The iPad was designed with an entirely different set of priorities than Macs or PCs. Someone may well produce a worthy iPad rival in the next year, but it's not going to be something like HP's Slate that runs Windows 7, an operating system that epitomizes the traditional set of computer design priorities.
Thus, it became quite quickly and naturally another object of my daily life in the ecology of the devices that surround me.
Also, looking at attempts to use the iPad in the office, I could notice that it was primarily a personal device, or at least a family device , and not a desktop device. In addition, if you want to use it in a work setting, it will take a little time to find its place there due to the novelty effect and its experiential side. Indeed, we are more likely to want to play with the device, in our first uses, than to want to use it in a productive way. However, I realize that over time it becomes commonplace in my home and that I use it in a much more effective way than before and less and less just to play with it (except when I want to relax and I start a game).
It is also interesting to note how everyone is attracted to the device and uses it naturally without having to, or wanting, to try to understand how it works. Even “ordiphobes” are attracted and marvel at the interaction and its ease of use! This is the real genius of Apple, as Jürgen puts it well in his article An empty canvas :
Steve Jobs said about the iPod that “it is all about the music”. With the iPad, Apple has done the same for personal computing as it has done before with the iPod: it made technology go away.
Over time, I also realized that even if the iPad becomes our “personal television”, it will never replace the television in the living room. First, because the support of the device, and the positions it generates for us, is not as pleasant as watching a television placed on a table or hung on the wall. Second, because as gregarious beings, we appreciate being able to share a movie with other people and not just lock ourselves in our personal audiovisual bubble.
I use the term personal TV because, in my experience, that's what it's becoming. It won't replace the family TV, but it will replace the family computer. Why? Because the computer is associated with work, production tasks that we carry out all day, while the iPad is like a television whose remote control we must not share with others and which allows us to access and consume all the media and information in our current environment.
When I get home, I no longer turn on the television to find out what's on and to rest a bit before making supper, but I turn on my iPad, which gives me direct access to information, videos and others and which allows me to act by answering my emails or any other online actions.
NOW THE THINGS THAT HURT
I suspect that my impression: "the iPad cannot replace the computer" comes from some lack on its part. Indeed, the impossibility (until the fall) of doing multitasking, the problems with flash sites and the impossibility of being able to connect my external hard drive to access my music and my films are currently the points real ones that make me turn my computer back on, as well as Apple shutting down file formats other than its own.
However, by using key applications, I still manage to keep some freedom in turning on or off my laptop.
