Try this thought experiment. Sit in front of your computer with your iPhone next to you. Now, go through all the major functions you use a computer for and try to imagine them on the iPad. It helps if you have the iPad pages from Apple up in your browser. I got so into this thought experiment yesterday that I wasted at least an hour or so and here is my assessment:
| Function | Rating | Comments |
| Watching Video | Much Better | One of the worst things about video on a computer is the keyboard. Try walking around with your computer to another room, its very awkward. Sitting on the couch to watch a TV show on your computer is uncomfortable (and hot on your legs) with a standard computer. The absence of a keyboard here will help tremendously. |
| Browsing the Web | Much Better | The mouse is the primary way we interact with the Web today (or some kind of integrated clicker on a laptop keyboard.) This is relatively artificial and only exists because we can’t actually touch the screen. Being able to click directly on items is one of the best things about the iPhone and now being able to do that with an almost full size screen will be even better. |
| Writing/Reading email | Better (probably) | I don’t write long emails, so the keyboard isn’t going to be much of an issue for me . . . in fact, I do about 75% of my email from my iPhone. The browsing capability of email on the iPad looks fantastic. I suspect it will be the best email device. |
| Playing games | Better | For those of us who are “casual” gamers, this might end up being the best gaming device out there. The screen is amazing and while I won’t be able to have the flexibility of an Xbox or a Wii, I don’t really play those game systems anymore anyway . . . but I have about a dozen iPhone games which will be even better on the iPad. |
| Slide Arranging | Much Better | I live in PowerPoint and the worst part about it is moving items around on a screen. You can never quite get them to line up correctly. You can’t quite select what you want. The new version of Keynote looks fantastic for slide creation. If it exports well to PowerPoint, then the iPad could take the place of the computer as the dominant slide creation tool. |
| Drawing | Much Better | Come on, this one is obvious. Drawing and whiteboarding will be much better on this thing. When developers start making applications that allow multiple people with multiple iPads to “whiteboard” together at the same time, there will be even fewer reasons to hop on airplanes for meetings. |
| Document editing | Even | I don’t think writing long emails, articles, blogs or books will likely transfer to the iPad, but what about editing? I spend a good deal of time editing documents and it may be that the ability to point and type in short comments beats the laptop. We’ll see. |
| Voice | Worse | But not much worse. Skype will almost certainly come to the iPad. Could it be that Apple is betting on not needing a phone number because audio conversations can be carried through the network? |
| Video | Much Worse | There is no ability to video conference on this device. For me, this seems to be the biggest gap, but one that I’m sure will be replaced in a future version. |
