iPad for fun
Tuesday, April 17, 2012 at 2:59AM Nobody 'needs' a tablet. That is a fact which is undeniable. Take a look at what tablets do, especially the iPad, and productive work is not high on the list. I have tried to work with the iPad, but anything above basic writing is painful at times and even that can be troublesome. I would love to rant on about how the quite dreadful Docs To Go lost a 1,500 work article I was writing, but I won't because I will never trust the app again. I could mention how I cannot take screenshots on the iPad and rename them before sending them to my desktop. Of course I could just upload them to Dropbox when travelling and rename them, except that the iOS Dropbox app does not allow renaming of files. It is ironic that I tend to use an Android phone to deal with my recent Dropbox uploads away from home.
Pages is not great at exporting to formats that I need to use for freelance and doesn't do the deep level word and character counting I need. I can use text editors, but I haven't found one that deals with font colours. The iPad is so hamstrung when it comes to serious productivity outside of drawing and painting that it is, in my opinion, not a viable solution for the typw of work I need to do, even with a hardware keyboard accessory. There is simply too much work left over after the writing for it to be convenient.
Reading eBooks, watching movies and playing games are what the iPad is good at and I tend to do all of these on my iPad rather than the iPhone these days. I find myself in the bizarre position of not having liked almost every Android tablet made to date, but having to conceed that the good ones are 'much' better for the kind of productivity I, and many others, need. iOS is great on a phone and works perfectly for the tasks I need it to- GPS, Podcasts, calendering, email etc. Productivity tasks are not something I tend to associate with phone use anyway, but I don't mind too much because I recognise the obvious limitations. On a tablet, however, I am beginning to feel that I want mine to do more. I can be productive if only it would let me...
Reader Comments (6)
And all that is basically why I sold my iPad and bought a Macbook Air.
I don't *need* a smartphone, but I find it useful. Same for the iPad - it does what I need, and so I use it daily. I don't see it as a creative tool - for me, I still prefer a physical keyboard.
Unfortunately there are many tasks that require a big screen or are much easier. That said, whether you can use the iPad for "productive work" depends on what that means to you. It's an individual thing. Pages isn't too bad as a word processor but does lack some high end features. It can export as a Word document, at least by email. It's actually Word compatibility that I find surprisingly lacking. The 3 apps that purport to be able to handle Word docs, DocsToGo, Office HD, and Quickoffice, are all badly lacking in features. I have not been impressed with any of them. Simply for compatibility, I would like to see MS Office on the iPad.
It is too bad that people keep saying these things. For me, the iPad is a very productive tool. I use my iPad every day for work. I take notes, keep track of my schedule, create documents, and even database files occassionally. My office uses Word, and I don't try to do final formatting on the iPad; that I do on my work computer if necessary. I have a wifi only iPad, and can't use it on a network at work, so for me, the iPad is great as a standalone tool. Just for notetaking, I don't need to worry about formatting, and there are a lot of good tools for notetaking. When I'm not in the office, I use the iPad for creating sheet music and displaying sheet music .pdf files (much easier than carrying large music books around) and for recording rehearsals of my band, and of course the usual email and web use. It is an excellent tool for personal productivity. I typed large documents on the Palm using an external keyboard; I can do the same on the iPad. Remember the days with the Palm, when it would sync but wasn't always on the web? I find the iPad very useful in some of the the same ways (but better) than the Palm was. As was said above, it depends on what you need.
You can never replace the computer. A tablet is a light version of a computer. It's excellent for media, reading, etc, but for me as I do heavy graphics and webdesign it can never replace that. You need full power/resources for that. However it can be very handy in taking notes like Marc says to be later on used.
Transformer with ICS
(such a pity they mucked up the prime).