David's Blog

Do I want an iPad?

I think I do… I like Apple products they always come up with some great innovative ideas (like the magnetic Ethernet port) and don’t give people a choice to go buy crappy cheaper versions just sell one or two top end versions of a product range which I think is a good thing. The number of people that buy a cheap £400 PC (My Dad) and then moan its slow is unbelievable. What’s more is that they then hear Macs are faster go and buy a £2,500 Mac and can’t believe how fast it is compared to their old PC, well Duuh!

Also I better clarify that I have a bad habit of tending to lump both Windows and Linux into the PC corner of this as I have always dual booted both OS’s on the same custom built hardware and Mac used to define it’s self by using its own proprietary hardware. Now it uses PC hardware too, its really just down to the OS choice of Windows or a particular flavour of Linux (which is what OS X is) and the company that put your computer together (if you didn’t custom build)

My main issue with Mac is their attitude and the attitude of all the fan-boys. I have always spent quite a bit of time researching my gadgets before I buy them, and back when iPods where just coming on the scene, I went for a creative Zen instead and got a load of flak for it, but it was cheaper, had longer battery life, more storage and better sound quality, what it didn’t have was the nice circular navigation menu thingie, the marketing power of Apple and iTunes.

Fastforward to today… and then back up a week… there we go… And I bought an HTC Desire (crappy name btw) Android 2.1 phone instead of an iPhone 3GS and again have taken alot of flak for it from friends that are apple fans, but as a developer I love Java and open source so right there is my main reason for going Android but I also love the multitasking and the speed of the thing (Yes I know MT is coming in iPhone OS4) I went for a walk the other day and was able to listen to music, take video and photo’s and get tracks to track where I went on goggle maps via GPS, as for battery life, I find I need to charge it up every night the same as an iPhone. If I don’t then it can last a few days but then I find I forget to do it when it needs it and run out of power at inconvenient moments.

But anyway back on topic, I still want to get an iPad, I just love the idea of a large touch screen device for browsing the web, youtube, e-mail, blogging, etc.
I guess I like the idea of tablet PC’s in general ever since Stargate Atlantis.

But I tend to use my PC for listening to music while either programming, video editing, gaming, photo-shopping or 3D modelling and every so often will have MSN conversations whenever someone messages me which might cause me to go off and look at a blog or youtube video etc, but then I get back to doing what ever it was I was working on. What I would really like to do is to be able to do my creative stuff (I suppose you could call it work) on an iPad like device then I would be set for all the things I want to be-able to use my computer for… other than gaming but I think PC gaming will go in the direction of ‘On-Live’ thin client type gaming so would be fine for a tablet computer, well it would be fine with either a game-pad or just touch screen for your strategy games like the total war series, I am still not convinced by game pads for first person shooters though, I think a mouse is still the best control mechanism for that genre. I love my X-box 360 but just not for FPS games, that is the one area where I can’t seem to get away from the windows based PC.

Anyway it looks like there will be a number of slicker tablet PC’s coming out this year, so I think I will just keep an eye on them all just for now, rather than rushing ahead with the iPad but I love the direction its heading.

9 April 2010 ·