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3 Weeks of iPad: Some observations

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Re: 3 Weeks of iPad: Some observations

#21

Post by swernli »

papa wrote: post #6
jamesjyu wrote: post #3

"In fact, I am trying to migrate as much of my communications applications (twitter, mail, social web) to the iPad and leave my computer for actual, productive work." +1 on that. At home, I basically use my iPad to do all my consumption and "light" communication. For development and highly intensive typing, I'll switch over to my laptop. When I'm relaxing on a weekend, I find that the iPad is about 80% of my computer…

Totally agree. The iPad is my "couch-surfing" computer of choice these days. You really can curl up with this sucker or lie on your back comfortably while reading. I've been using it for most of my reading (newspapers, books, magazines). A lot of my surfing and a lot more video consumption than I had expected. The sketching apps are great. I bought a little stylus to help out where fingers fall short. I'm doing a lot…

Makes perfect sense to me, as that is my use as well. I find myself very rarely turning to my laptop at home. iPad for web browsing, video watching when I'm not in front of the netflix enabled xbox 360, and pretty much all communication, with my iPhone picking up the slack in the text messaging department.

For me, it's definitely not a complete laptop replacement, but at home I wasn't really fully utilizing my laptop anyway, so this ends up being more than perfect.

Re: 3 Weeks of iPad: Some observations

#23

Post by tjogin »

jamesjyu wrote: post #3

"In fact, I am trying to migrate as much of my communications applications (twitter, mail, social web) to the iPad and leave my computer for actual, productive work." +1 on that. At home, I basically use my iPad to do all my consumption and "light" communication. For development and highly intensive typing, I'll switch over to my laptop. When I'm relaxing on a weekend, I find that the iPad is about 80% of my computer…

Maybe with a stylus (they exist) you could take handwritten notes, basically treating it just like a paper notepad.

Re: 3 Weeks of iPad: Some observations

#24

Post by derefr »

zzzmarcus wrote: post #15
thought_alarm wrote: post #5

I haven't had an iPad for very long, but I love, love, love it for web browsing. It's like you're flying over your web pages. However, I don't like how iPad Safari handles "tabs". I would much prefer traditional tabs where I could select or close a tab in only a single tap, instead of the three taps that are required now. Regardless, it looks like I can finally retire my Newton.

Really? I try to love mine for browsing (on it now) but the silly thumbnail tab screen that feels like a clumsy iPhone leftover kills me. I almost feel like I'm going back to IE pre-tabs. Copy/paste is also so much slower than a laptop... I don't know how to improve it, but it is relatively tedious. I don't care about the lack of Flash, but broken iframes, no drag/drop, no way of bringing up the keyboard for things l…

> Copy/paste is also so much slower than a laptop... I don't know how to improve it, but it is relatively tedious.

On the iPhone, screen space is precious; there's pretty much no other way to do copy/paste than the way they're doing it. However, there's a lot of room on the iPad screen—it would be pretty simple to have a "fine selection input mode" where part of the screen gets overlayed with a "touchpad" and an actual selection (vertical bar or crosshair, depending on the activity) cursor moves around on the rest, controlled by it. I imagine they're only doing it the iPhone way for consistency.

Re: 3 Weeks of iPad: Some observations

#25

Post by derefr »

elblanco wrote: post #17
grinich wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have about 20 total tabs open right now. What are you doing? How focused are you on reading any one of those tabs?

I'm surprised he only has 20. I use tabs as a reading queue...usually from news aggregators like HN. If I waited till I had time to read everything that looked interesting, I'd miss most of the stuff that looked interesting. If I just queue it up, it can sit quietly in the background and wait for me to take a break from work. I use different browsers to logically separate my groups of viewing habits. One is open for…

Wouldn't it be relatively easy to create an alternative iPad browser using the Webkit component, but with the chrome more aimed at this style of surfing? It would only take a few alterations from the default: Pages wouldn't be loaded until you actually switch to them, and so all non-active tabs are really just quick, forced-order bookmarks; clicking on links would always push them onto the queue (with the option to push-front if something is important); and the primary interaction mechanism would be an "I'm done with this one, give me another" button, which deletes the current bookmark and opens the next one.

It could be called WikiWalker: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WikiWalk (Yes, I have, in fact, linked to the most degenerate case of the need for such a browser.)

Actually, upon further reflection—why doesn't this browser exist for PCs yet? This is an itch that has needed scratching for a long while now; I'm surprised in its apparent non-existence (Tree Tabs doesn't count.)

Re: 3 Weeks of iPad: Some observations

#26

Post by [deleted] »

jarek wrote: post #19
jazzychad wrote: post #16

The screen in gorgeous. It’s the first thing that strikes people when they see the device. I am not so impressed with the screen. The dpi is ~30 dpi less than an iPhone, but it is noticeable... especially since you have to hold it at less than arm's length away. If the new iPhone dpi is really 2x what it currently is, the iPad's lower resolution will become very noticeable. Edit: changed 4x to 2x. I wanted to convey…

The DPI on the 960x640 will be doubled compared to the 480x320; only the pixel count quadruples.

[deleted]

Re: 3 Weeks of iPad: Some observations

#28

Post by oscardelben »

orangecat wrote: post #14
oscardelben wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably not most people, but I try to. Having 20 tabs open means that your brain must keep track of all of them. Having only 1 or 2 instead is a different story.

Having 20 tabs open means that your brain must keep track of all of them. That seems backwards. If I have 20 tabs open, the browser is keeping track of them, not me. If I can only have one page open at a time, I have to actively remember other pages that are relevant to what I'm doing.

You have to keep track of what each tab contains every time you need something. We have seen this at work and it's always fun to see certain people who keeps clicking on tabs in order to find out where their stuff is.

Re: 3 Weeks of iPad: Some observations

#29

Post by randallsquared »

Digital comics on this are awesome. I think the medium is going to change for devices like this - the idea of a page feels like an artificial constraint when reading digital comics on a larger screen device.

I guess he meant "smaller screen device"? Virtually every computer monitor is larger than the iPad, after all.

Re: 3 Weeks of iPad: Some observations

#30

Post by randallsquared »

oscardelben wrote: post #28
orangecat wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having 20 tabs open means that your brain must keep track of all of them. That seems backwards. If I have 20 tabs open, the browser is keeping track of them, not me. If I can only have one page open at a time, I have to actively remember other pages that are relevant to what I'm doing.

You have to keep track of what each tab contains every time you need something. We have seen this at work and it's always fun to see certain people who keeps clicking on tabs in order to find out where their stuff is.

...and how much longer would it take them if they had to keep track of the info in those tabs some other way?

Anyway, is the iPad really that different from the simulator? It was pretty easy to open "new" windows in the sim, so it had about 80% of the functionality of tabs built in.

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