tablet

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Last week, at Walmart no less, I was staring at a Kindle Fire . I had just returned the iPad2 to my former employer and, as I had intended before they leased the iPad2, I was in the market for a Kindle Fire. As I stood there, a gentleman perhaps my age or older (you're in trouble when you can no longer tell) was looking at all the tablets on display. He assiduously started with the iPad2 on the left and worked his way all over to the Kindle Fire on the right, asking the Walmart employee fairly solid questions about each one. It became apparent that he had done some research and was making a decision. As he pondered the Kindle Fire with the low price, a gentleman fitted into an Army Reserve shirt started pressing him back to the iPad2.

He, of course, swore by the iPad2 and thought it was the greatest thing since MREs. To a large extent, he was right but it was clear that he had a dedicated use case. Despite my interest in cheap movies, I stepped in on the side of the Kindle Fire. For every application that he called out for the iPad2, I was able to call out an equivalent on the Android ¹. My Army friend's familiarity with the iPad2 was really what it was boiling down to, and then I tossed up the browser that Amazon uses uses the cloud itself to process things and thus speeding the browser on the Kindle Fire - at a lower price. He stared at me, and I balanced that with the fact that Congress had been looking into the browser itself as related to privacy.

It was clear that I had my new Army buddy in uncharted water, and he was nice enough to respect that. We agreed that it was basically about user experience - and the iPad2, hands down, still has a better user experience than most tablets. (Having had a Kindle Fire for about a week now, you can expect a post coming on that as well) However, I pointed out that Apple's app store was sometimes used to block competitors - and that when one looked at the stores available from Apple and Amazon, Amazon was the clear winner. Amazon, frankly, has more stuff and if you're intent on buying stuff, Amazon was an orgasm of consumption.

At this point, we started talking about a lot of different things, agreeing to disagree on platforms - he religiously defended the iPad2 while I was trying to be balanced between the two.

Treehouse Agency, where I work, was kind enough to lease an iPad2 for me so that I would be able to work on files types that are exclusive to Apple - such as Keynote. I've spent some time with it and have come to find it... OK. It's not a computer, of course, and it is very good at what it does. But what, really, does it do?

The answer to that varies from person to person. To me, it seems more of a toy than anything - useful in some regards so that I don't lose Twitter and other social media while I'm working in browsers; while tabbed browsing is nice it doesn't allow filing of the tabs (there's an innovation that would be nice) to keep track of what is going on where. In my daily use of a browser, it's easy for me to have 12 to 20 tabs open during the course of the day. That is an improvement over having multiple windows open, I know, but there is room for improvement in that regard. Thus the iPad2 has been very helpful in notifying me of updates in social media on a separate piece of equipment. Its portability, too, allows me to move around with it.

But what I've said there could be done with my Android phone, too.

The touch keyboard is good for all the one handed typists out there but it's a bit frustrating for someone who is used to 2 handed, 10 finger typing without having to look at the keyboard. So I bought a bluetooth keyboard that is amazingly small and almost feels like a keyboard to assist me in that regard - but now the power of portability has been decreased significantly with that. The 'cool' of a multitouch screen wore off within minutes for me - but then I'm a jaded person when it comes to technology.

Most of all, to me, it's apparent that like Amazon's Kindle line, the Barnes & Noble Nook and other devices of the ilk have the same thing in common with the iPad2. They are consumer devices. They are intended for consuming content, not creating it - and they are all attached to their own sellers of content. In that regard, the iPad2 serves mainly as an umbilical cord to Apple's App store. That's what it is intended to be and in that regard it's brilliant.

It also might be useful as a mirror.

This, of course, is not intended to put off people from purchasing an iPad2. For some people I am sure that these are brilliant pieces of technology where they can conveniently consume content on the go. Not only do you pay for the machine, you pay for useful apps as you wish - some are free, but many are not. Developers do have to eat, this I know, and I've made sure a few have been paid through some of my experimentation on the iPad2. I will likely continue to do so.

It's quite likely that the entire market simply isn't for me. Maybe I am becoming an antique in an age trying to compete with Star Trek writing but not Star Trek context. Maybe I'm working too much on too many things to truly appreciate the iPad2. But to me, it's not the next big leap in getting technology to the masses. It's a manner of getting consumption to the masses who can afford an iPad2.

That said, what has impressed me most is the low battery usage of the iPad2 while it's in standby. I got it over a week ago and still haven't needed to charge it: At the time of this writing, the battery is at 70%. That's pretty amazing to me, really, considering the color display. But then, what do I really use it for?

Not that much.

So while there are many people in love with their iPad/iPad2s for various reasons, I'm not in love. It's a working relationship I have with this iPad2. If it were really useful to me I would have used it to write my impressions here. I didn't.

Should you get one? That's not the point of this post. The point of this post was to answer some people who had asked me my impressions of the iPad2. There is a world inside the iPad2, but the content of that world is largely decided by Apple - just as the world within Kindles are largely decided by Amazon.

Would I write an app for it? Maybe. There are a lot of people spending money in the App Store.

With all the buzz about the Kindle Fire yesterday, I almost got caught up into pre-ordering the little beastie because deep down I really do want a gadget that I can work and play with. When I looked at the tablet market before, I was dismayed in that while many wants would be fulfilled by almost any candidate, some of my major needs aren't. 

In the context of the Kindle Fire, it has the USB connection and it's running Android. On the page on Amazon.com it says I can read documents. That's awesome, but just about as awesome as any other tablet that does... the same thing. As an old school geek, the concept of the browser (Amazon Silk) using the cloud for shared processing is sexy.

When it comes down to brass tacks, though, I would demand a lot more of such a tablet. I would want to try out the interface to see how well I could edit and write documents; I type messages longer than 140 characters and would want an interface that could handle it. A lesson learned came from the Asus eeePC I had (and recently gave to a niece who is continuing college, allegedly). No matter what I did, and with the small hands that might have allowed me to be a surgeon, using the keyboards on those things to write anything was a masochistic act unless one plugged in a real keyboard. I'm not falling for that again.

Android and a keyboard is hit and miss., thus the Kindle Fire with a keyboard is hit and miss. If they'd fix that, I'd get one of the roll up keyboards and be happy - but I don't know which keyboard won't do something wonky when I'm using it. The last thing I need are apps opening when I'm in the middle of typing something up, and apparently that happens with some keyboards.