The iPad as Gateway

Today, I’m not going to talk about what I’m working on (pssst, it was Ravaged Earth) or systems so much as one particular piece of technology which has impacted my productivity, to whit, the iPad.

My entry point was the NookColor and it was a large part of my life, but as my friends predicted, I have come to use it less and less. Getting into the intricacies of the NookColor was a lot of fun, yet I’ve grown a lot busier and I’ve learned through experience what many Apple folks have already known for a long time and that everything pretty much just works without any hassle and they are designed for folks who may not be tech heads and are, instead, folks who just want to get their work done.

Having had the device for about four months, it has become a constant companion. I write on it regularly (with the use of the Apple wireless keyboard). I read novels on it (with Stanza, my favorite e-reader app which I give major props to for its customizability, though it doesn’t quite approach Android’s MoonReader). And I play games on it. My friends had shown me a number of arcade style games on it before I got my iPad2. They didn’t sell me. I’d rather play those types of games with a controller in front of a much larger screen. Where I found the iPad2 to excel was its nice (and ever growing) selection of board games. And, I’ll admit, there are some old school style computer games which have ported over which I love. It’s nice to catch up on some shows and play a game. I used to do that with my laptop, though I never enjoyed the heat and noise of them (this was several decades ago).

The iPad has made me seriously take a look at Mac computers and I’m fairly certain my next desktop will be an Apple (especially with some recent news I’ve heard about Adobe’s subscription model that I still need to follow up on–from what I gather, the CS should be able to be run on both units with one license as long as I don’t have more than one seat in use at any given time. Yes, that’s huge news.) And my next phone (which is aways off) will be an iPhone. I dig Android stuff quite a lot, but it needs some growth in the maturation of software support before it can offer me what Apple already does. Additionally, I hope to do some development for iPad and look forward to explore development of the new interactivity offered in iBooks2 with the textbook structure. This last point is changing my thinking about Apple products–no longer are they luxury products, but are, instead, quality products which could further my overarching developmental goals for the company.

This comes from someone who’s been a longtime PC user since the beginning. We have to stay nimble or grow brittle. Where do you fall? Windows PC? Unix/Linux? Apple?

Until next time, I bid you, dear reader, adieu!