71–80 of 115 posts
I have an iPhone 5, I have a MacBook Air (at work and at home) and I have a Kindle. They're each very very good at what I want them for, and I rarely find myself reaching for the iPad other than Netflix...
If you're able to put a serious OS on your tablet, you essentially just have a tiny portable computer.
My iPad mini is pretty useful for me. I use it for all kinds of random stuff, nothing too serious. It's not absolutely indispensable, but very nice -- and fun at that. Getting away from my cubicle to sit somewhere nicer with a cup of coffee and plan/brainstorm with SimpleMind+, a great little mindmapping tool whose touch interface is really slick. Calendar and mail works great. It's like a little secretary. Sitting i…
I totally agree. I like the idea of tablet very much and I own an iPad 3, but I don't use it at all. My MacBook Air is the same size and weight and gets 99% of my time.
The tablet is a gaming device for mu kids.
I have an iPad3 and a Nexus 7. They sit mostly unused. I'll pick up the iPad3 once in while just for fun. I've played a few games to completion (Sword and Sworcery, Groove Coaster) but that's about it. I don't find them good for consuming except for movies on a plane. Movies at home? The bigger the screen the better. I'd much rather watch movies on my 42 inch TV from my sofa than my tablets. Reading? I'd much rather…
- The cursor placement
- Copy&paste
- Lack of a file system
- Inability to choose which app to associate to various links and files
- Difficulty to switch from one app to another (compared to the laptop)
- Constrained web experience (as the parent post said)
It's a toy. It doesn't even come with Basic or some shitty scripting language to play with (unless you count the browser & javascript)
Now I edit iPad app code on it in "anywhere anytime" opportunities. Our app's users save hundreds of thousands of dollars (actual savings for mileage & enterprise data access "anywhere anytime").
If you can't find a productive use you're not trying very hard.
There's your first problem. (Okay it's not a big problem, and yay for sd slots, but the Nexus 7 and 10 are fantastic devices.) I have a Nexus 10, and got this case for it: http://www.amazon.com/Poetic-Removable-Bluetooth-Keyboard-Fu... The keyboard is just big enough that I can type more or less at full speed (the weird location of the right shift sometimes bugs me). I can understand the view that without being able to type quickly, productivity in a lot of areas isn't possible. But it's an easily solvable problem with a case, especially if you have a 10-incher and thus aren't too worried about trying to fit the thing in your pocket. (Though caseless my N10 fits in my rain jacket pocket.) I also can get that lacking a second monitor is a pain, though it helps to have a 2560x1600 resolution on the tablet.
Here's a sample of productive/useful things I use my tablet for: programming (Terminal IDE is a great help here, it has vim and ssh if I need something on my main machine), calculating, price checking, note taking with keyboard (if you can type, why write?), lecture recording, reading, testing Android apps I/friends have developed, fitness tracking, instantly satisfying my curiosity when only Google can do so, navigation, calling people over SIP, memorizing important things with Anki, taking pictures and never having to say "I wish I brought my camera", and buying stuff from vending machines that accept NFC-credit cards. All of these could be done with a good phone+keyboard+maybe screen-dock, but I don't want a phone.
I Now do almost all reading of technical books on a tablet simply because they're far lighter than most technical books.
I sold the tablet, but I still didn't want to go back to lugging my 15" MBP around. Solution? The Samsung Chromebook. This is the perfect cheap productivity device. The keyboard and trackpad are as good as a Macbook air, it's thin and light, and it lasts a long time on a charge. With a $5/month Digital Ocean VPS to SSH into when I need to do programming, it's absolutely perfect. Never been happier with any tech purchase than I am with my Chromebook. People tend to bash Chrome OS but they haven't tried it. For people who think they should buy an iPad for "work anywhere mode", what you really want is a Chromebook.