I’ve finally ordered an iPad. It was done in anticipation of my vacation in Europe this August. I’ll be returning
to the south of France, where I spent about a year almost 15 years ago. When I moved to France in college, I went with only enough clothes for a week, a dozen books, toiletries, and a Sony Discman – not bad for a 10-month stay!
This time around, my needs are rather different, which really makes me hope that the iPad can deliver promised results. First, I must keep my 3-year-old son entertained on a 12+ hour flight. Yikes. If it fails, I’ll be a wanted man by the end of the flight; however, it does seem the iPad’s long battery life and library of children’s books and movies should be adequate firepower. Second, my first stop is in London, where my wife will do archival research for her doctoral dissertation at the British Library and the College of Arms. My question is whether I can stretch the iPad as a true replacement for a laptop, even for serious dissertation work? I sure hope so because I can’t imagine lugging a laptop around around Europe. I plan to use Dropbox, so that my wife can access her GBs of docs while in the library. I will buy the Pages app, so that she create new content that will convert to Word docs upon return. Alternatively, I’m considering Google Docs as an option; however, I don’t think she will have Wi-Fi access in the reading room, and I’m not totally sure it can work effectively offline. Lastly, I hesitantly plan to bring the wireless keyboard from my iMac. I’m hoping my wife finds the touch screen adequate, but there is no room for typos when you are transcribing texts from 700 year old manuscripts!
The reason I write this blog is because I’m going to only have a few days with my iPad before the trip since I’ve joined the backlog of online Apple store orders. Any Apple gurus that can recommend quality productivity tools or caution me in my approach are welcome to chime in. If the iPad meets my needs for this trip, I think it can meet almost any expectation related to netbooks.
John,
I get the feeling you could be a bit disappointed with productivity apps on the iPad overall, but then again, for you needs it could be just fine. My brother has come to the conclusion the iPad isn’t quite ready to replace his Table PC, mainly due to lack of apps.
It really seems that for now it’s mainly a great entertainment device. I can see a TON of opportunity in different segments. E.G. Medical. Not sexy, but the medical applications I’ve seen on the desktop are HORRIBLE and I can’t see them getting too many great iPad apps from the desktop vendors.
Rob Fahrni - 7/14/10 10:36 AM
Most people dont spend the time to search for all the apps that are iPad ready..so they have a limited knowledge of what is out there – let alone what is sweet!
Some great apps are:
– Things ( great for todo lists)
– Sketch pro ( great doodle app for kids)
– Netflix (for obvious reasons)
– Desktop connect (link to home computer)
– Fieldrunners ( sweet tower defense game)
and of course all the little things like: godfinger, gmail, twitteriffic, words with friends, chess with friends, etc…
you can even download omnigraffle for a little work on the road…
So Fresh - 7/14/10 2:04 PM
I love my iPad and like yourself, I use it when I travel. I know for domestic flights you don’t have to take it out of your bag through TSA, so that saves one step getting to your gate. Not sure about international. I also use it everyday instead of my laptop when I’m home on the couch or on the bed.
I still can’t call it my laptop replacement because I feel it’s still too dependent on iTunes. You still need to sync your music and videos through it, you can’t just download them directly. If there’s anything that goes wrong with it, you will need iTunes to fix it. The onscreen keyboard is fairly easy to use, but if your wife is faster on the keyboard, you should bring it just incase. Some people like the feel of actual keys pressed when writing long messages & letters. I also use all the Adobe products like Photoshop quite often, and I can only do that on my laptop, but that’s just me.
I do, however, find it valuable to have Mobile Me because it syncs my contacts/calendars/bookmarks data pretty well across all my Apple devices. If I ever lose my iPad I can GPS find it, or remote disable & erase it so all my information is safe from outsiders.
I’ve spent so much money on apps and books, so here are some of my favorites
- Dropbox – You already know the power of this one
- GoodReader – Save PDF, Doc, PPT to read offline, access to Dropbox, iDisk and others. You can also read attachments from e-mails and save them here
- FlightTrack Pro (great if you travel often – tracks all your flights and give you info/links about your destination cities)
- Pulse – a great RSS feed reader
- Netflix, ABC Player, Hulu+ for streaming video
- Kindle – I find Amazon have a better library of books vs iBooks, plus I already had some books here so I just use this
- Todo – great to-do & list manager. use it for checklists before you go travel + more
- Marvel or DC Comics – brings me back to my comic book collection days. Not sure if there’s a lot of content for your son though
- Wired or Popular Mechanics – These are by far the best magazines for the iPad. Great if you want to read these on the plane or airport. Very interactive and really great visuals
- 1Password – very secure password manager
- Twitterific – choice Twitter app for me
- Favorite games – Plants v Zombies, Pinball HD, Harbor Master, Real Racing HD
- Favorites for News – USA Today, NPR, Mashable, BBC News
Marvin - 7/15/10 9:59 AM
Gee, I don’t know about typing on the iPad. Just a little limited typing might be ok, but I’d take the keyboard if anyone needs to do any serious typing. A line or two here and there is ok but forget typing the disertation.
Here are apps I use. Keep in mind I’m a visual person, and prefer to do writing on a real keyboard, so these apps are chosen with that in mind:
Note taking and assembling ideas:
Keynote
Penultimate (Use this alot… like having a number of small notebooks to take quick notes and line drawing sketches of ideas)
Evernote
Wordpress (notes to start a post with intent to finish it later, or add a few thoughts to a draft in progress if I’m hanging out somewhere.)
Productivity and file management:
Dropbox is awesome of course
Instapaper (paid version if you want more than a dozen or so pages saved)
GoodReader for pdfs
WebEx
Drawing and image tools:
Layers Pro (nice colored drawings, the layers are a real asset)
Adobe Ideas (nicest line quality of any of the drawing apps unless you adapt your own settings in Layers Pro)
Best Camera (manipulates photos in your library)
FlickrStackr for your and others Flickr photos.
Reading and media:
Kindle app of course
NYT Editor’s Choice is the best online way to get news in a daily, consumable format. Imho.
EW weekly short list
Fun distractions while traveling:
Parachute panic is cute
Giving your mind a break hypnotic beauty: Gravilux
Amelia - 7/17/10 12:24 AM