I’ve only had the beast for a few days, so maybe the question is a little premature, but I think the answer is “probably it will end up being a life-changer”.
Yes, it’s just an overgrown iPod touch. But the iPod touch has been with us for so long now (how many years is so long?) that it’s easy to forget just how revolutionary it really is. Instead of a mass of fiddly little mechanical buttons and modifier (shift, control, alt, etc.) keys to change function, the interface changes shape as required, and you point directly at it. Before I had an iPhone, I had a Nokia – one of the few smartphones (and it wasn’t really that smart) available in Japan at the time. It did a lot, but the integration with the computer was weak. The iPhone actually got me to use my phone as a pocket computer – even a book reader.
So who needs an iPad? I was surprised by the quality of the display for photos. Who needs a digital photo frame? And I “have an app for that”™ for almost all the things I do on a regular basis outside the home (word-processing, spreadsheet, whatever).
But the big thing has been e-books. I have three book readers (all free) on the beast, and I’m impressed by all of them in their different ways.
First, Stanza is very customizable. Pinch and zoom to change text size. Takes ePubs, and it has a wide range of free (and paid) downloads available from inside it.
iBooks – as you might expect from Apple, it has the glitziest interface and is less customizable than Stanza. A little lacking in some areas, but very usable indeed. Allows me to read books that I haven’t bought from Apple, including free ones. Pictures in ebooks work well with this.
And Kindle – which I like much more than I expected now I’m using it on a large screen. The Whispersync technology is very cool, the purchasing from Amazon is dangerously easy, and the display, while undistinguished and not terribly imaginative, is perfectly readable.
I expect to be using the iPad more and more for books – not the books I want to keep, but the ones I want to read once for reference, or just as throwaway light reading. As someone mentioned on the Web the other day, the next rational step is to have a “Buy a paper copy of this book” button that will send a print order to a POD house to have the book shipped to your door in a day or so (with a slight discount as the result of having purchased the ebook copy earlier). I shall be delighted when that comes to pass.
In the meantime, I’d welcome other people’s comments on the ebook readers available on the iPad.
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