9/27/11

Me & My iPad


Back in May I acquired an iPad. I'd like to share with you my impressions of this new device in my life.

In short, I love it. I've done so much with it that I don't want to go back to the days when I didn't have one. Let me tell you all the uses I'm getting out of it.

Take the three cons I've been to. I was able to record my books sales and sync them when I got home; before I wrote them in a little notebook then had to enter the sales by hand onto my Mac. I could show people the book trailer for Expert Assistance. I was able to check my email and surf the web without using one of the hotel computers. I listened to podcasts in the morning before the cons started. I could show off my book catalog. I could show people the Smashwords website to encourage them to find more ebooks. I edited a few of the stories I'll be posting over the next several months.

In addition, I have some good photo editing tools on the iPad. I used one of them to create the cover of True Friends. I have plenty of games to occupy my time. I do most of my home web surfing on my iPad. I've read several books (mainly classics, and mainly free). I can even put my ebooks on the iPad for show or to see how the files look before final approval.

Surfing the web on my iPad has been very interesting. For one thing, it's faster than on my desktop iMac! I've noticed that seeing web pages slightly smaller isn't a problem. I can enlarge the page, but often pages are crowded with junk. The only thing I'm not getting is Flash, and I've found Flash to be buggy. I can watch YouTube videos, as there's a YouTube app. Overall I miss very little while surfing on my iPad.

One criticism is the lack of features that Pages (my word processor) for iPad has. Namely the program lacks smart quotes. This means I can't really write in it. I would have to change the quotation marks in my desktop version of Pages if I wrote anything with dialogue.

My other criticism is one shared by many: the iPad's less-than-stellar still camera. I haven't tried to take still pictures because I know how weak the camera is. That weakness means I still have to take a digital camera with me on the road to take pictures. I'm probably not alone in hoping that Apple with include a much better camera in a future version of the iPad.

In short, my iPad has become my computer of choice for most of what I do. I'm not going to give up my desktop iMac anytime soon, but I won't be using it as much as my iPad.

3 comments:

  1. I have the older version, and I love it, but I can't type in it very well, either, unless I have the keyboard attached. I won't even try "writing writing" with it.

    ReplyDelete
  2. If it handled smart quotes, and I had an external keyboard, I could write with it. As to the first, there might be news soon; the new iOS is supposed to be announced at noon CT.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hello! I have yet to own a tablet or a dedicated ereader and I think this will be the year. It's now between the Kindle Fire, the new touchscreen Kindle. The ipad may have to wait because my first want is a dedicated reader. I'm glad you're enjoying your ipad. I think it's very neat you created a cover from one of its photo editing tools.

    Thank you for taking part in Red’s Trick or Treat Bash. I'm discovering lots of new authors. RedTash.com, Red sent me.

    Cambonified (at) yahoo (dot) com

    ReplyDelete

Blog Archive