mostly writing

You Saw This Coming

It’s been one year since I unloaded my iPad. Three blog posts, many conversations, and tinge of personal analysis later I find myself writing this epilogue… on an iPad 2.

Yes, of course I’m using a Bluetooth keyboard.

My incredibly gracious wife only gave me about a week of heckling after I asked her for an iPad for my birthday. Oh, I knew I was in for it well before I verbalized the request. Long story short, she surprised me with exactly what I asked for. I think she likes me quite a bit.

I’ve had this iPad 2 for just under weeks and I’m really enjoying using it. Even though the screen is just as glossy and the same resolution as the first iPad this time around my overall experience has been much better. A lot of it has been personal changes and how I’m using it. I also think the OS upgrade has made a big difference. Multitasking – quickly swapping between applications that retain their state – really makes the iPad feel a lot less like a toy.¹

It’s been particularly good for writing. No explicit distraction free writing app for me. Simplenote is my current editor of choice. I used the free version for awhile and then paid² to support the app, drop the ads, and backup my notes onto Dropbox. I get around a need for a rich text editor by using markdown, which I’m liking more than WYSIWYG editors anyway.

So what has changed? On the hardware side the iPad is now faster, a little bit thinner & lighter, and it has cameras. Sure, the cameras aren’t all that great, but they’re plenty good for video chatting and snapping quick pictures or videos to share. The speaker has definitely changed. Not only is it louder, but it’s now located on the back side of the iPad. This makes it really good for reflecting audio off hard surfaces. I think Apple took a note from their iMac speaker design here. They’re plenty good for listening to music or watching videos in a quiet room.

I went with the Verizon, 32 GB model this time around. I’m really starting to wonder if 32 GB is even too much. I stream almost all of my music from Rdio. (with ~5 GB of offline sync’d audio) I didn’t even both syncing my iTunes music or iPhoto libraries this time around. Why bother when I’m creating all of my playlists and adding all my new music on Rdio?³

As far as the Verizon (over AT&T) choice. I got caught up in hype of this one. So far I have found Verizon’s data network in DC to be worse than AT&T’s data network here. My hope is that it will be better in other places that I visit. I do like that their cheapest plan (1 GB @ $20/mo) is less than AT&T’s lowest (2 GB @ $25 I think). I’ll check back on this in a few months, but I doubt I’ll go over 1 GB with mobile data in a world of near ubiquitous WiFi⁴.

The really big change has been the software. iOS 4 and the number of useful iPad apps has changed how I previously used the device. One of my big issues was that it was too heavy a consumption device. With this external keyboard it’s very much a creation device. No, you can’t run quite as many tabs and multitask as easily as you can on PC, but it’s great for composing thoughtful emails and blog posts.

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So yes, I’m pro-iPad once again. Maybe I needed to give it up for awhile to realize that I actually wanted it. I think I knew this as far back as October last year when I wrote about my seller’s remorse and what-was-really-going-on-with-me.

Distractions will always exist. I thought cutting the cord would lead to better focus. While getting rid of my iPad wasn’t a direct fix, it reminded me that I need to make some changes. I’m getting ready to make a significant career shift. That was one of those issues going on last year.

Here’s to realizing mistakes, owning them, and moving on.