Jon Crawford Has Something To Say

2 Days With the iPad

I recently stumbled upon this Tumblr draft post that I never published in April 2010 when the iPad was first released. It’s pretty interesting to compare my reaction then to the last 2 years of progress. Interesting detail: This post was written in a world where Steve Jobs was still in his prime as the CEO of Apple.

Original Post - April 5th, 2010

After two days with the iPad, I’ve got some feedback.

I wasn’t foaming at the mouth when the iPad was announced. It was interesting, but it didn’t feel like a “must have”. Then I began to think instances of digital, interactive paper that I’d seen on TV and as well as things like the displays in Minority Report and then I finally stopped and thought, “Wow, we’re, like, totally living in the future.”

I didn’t know if I was going to buy an iPad on the day it was released. The lines, the possible price drops (I got burned on the original iPhone pricedrop), but I succumbed. The Apple siren song is too much for this early adopter to resist. The following is my impression after 2 days.

It’s incredibly fun. I don’t think I spent this much time with my iPhone when I first got it. (Well, that’s not fair to say because the iPhone didn’t have apps for a full year. But just pretend.) I’ve had a blast exploring news in the NPR app is a great way to consume little tidbits of news with the audio clip playing as you look at pictures and read story. The Marvel Comics app makes me want to start reading comic books again. Tap Tap Radiation is probably the most beautiful thing I’ve seen on an LCD screen. And Adobe Ideas makes expressing your idea to someone as easy as finger painting. I basically didn’t put the thing down for the first 24 hours.

I also have a few gripes. First, it’s heavier than I (and everyone else) thought it was going to be. Too heavy, in fact to really stand up and use. You’ll want to set it down most of the time before you start in. This then presents another problem. Where do you set it? If you’re going to be typing anything, you’ll need a surface that will prop it up without needing you to keep a hand on it. It works when you’ve got your legs crossed in an easy chair, but not so well laying straight down on the kitchen table. Typing while it’s laying flat on a table is awkward to say the least. I opted for the official iPad case by Apple which folds into a wedge to prop the unit up into two different positions. Highly recommended just for typing. Even then though, you’ll have height issues depending on what table you’re sitting at. If you’re thinking about using an iPad as a laptop replacement to type out anything substantial, get a Bluetooth keyboard and a dock or the combo iPad keyboard dock.

My next gripe is that it’s so different from normal computing that you have think quite a bit when you use it. It doesn’t work like your Mac. At all. It doesn’t even work like your iPhone. Not to say that I don’t absolutely love the way it works, but it’s different. No multitasking. One window at a time. You can’t, for instance, drag an email message that you’re composing out of the way in order to read another message. You’d have to save the message to drafts and close it to read another message. It’s actually much slower for any kind of productivity task. After 2 days of only using the iPad, my brain finally rewired itself and I was using it quickly and thoughtlessly. Then once I returned to my Macbook Pro, I was immediately struck by the fact that I was trying to use my Mac like an iPad now. I was double-tapping the track pad to enlarge text. I was scrolling the wrong direction. My email looks different. My RSS reader looks different. It took me few moments to get reoriented. This isn’t a failing of the iPad as much as it is a problem to be solved going forward — the platforms shouldn’t be so drastically different. Apple’s mobile and desktop operating systems need to come together into a single platform, which I’m sure we’ll see start to happen over time.

Every site gets an app?

On stage, Steve Jobs talked about how awesome the web is when you can interact with it with your hands. The strange part is that the best part of using the iPad is the native apps, not the web itself. As I mentioned, I really like the NPR app. The New York Times app is pretty smooth as well. But the truth is that the iPad’s native online content, in many cases, doesn’t look anything like the web as we know it. Content creators have taken this opportunity to create an experience that is catered directly to their content. We’ve seen this with the YouTube app on the iPhone — the app is formatted better for the iPhone’s tiny screen. Well, just imagine every website with their own app that works its own way. You’re guaranteed to get more engaged with the content, but you’re going to have to learn how to use every app. Not to mention that every site owner is going to have to create an app and then have to try to get people to download it (much like we’re already seeing with the iPhone).

This is the future

The striking part of the iPad’s release is that nobody understands it. Is it a computer? Is it a big iPod Touch? Nobody knows yet, but we know we want to get to know it. I’ve always dreamed of being able to look around and think to myself “Wow, this is the future now”. With the release of the iPad, I think we’re finally there.