The iPad is a beautifully pitched complement the Apple’s suite of products, which we may consider as Desktop, Laptop, Mobile and media centre devices.
In my own use cases, there were clearly situations where the iPad would better perform than one of the other devices, and virtually all of these use cases are in the home. Here are the four use cases where we currently struggle with an appropriate device.
- Reading books: I am a read back sort of person, so I find the screen angle on a big monitor or laptop inappopriate. I have read more books on my iPhone than on my Kindle, and continue to read books on my iPhone. The iPhone’s limitation is it’s screen size (which results in fare to frequent page flicking, and in the case of PDFs annoying render times). The iPad should resolve that.
- Watching videos: We end up pushing our Air or Pro around the house for watching videos, in particular kids videos. This is as much a bore as it is annoying. Kung Fu Panda will run on my Pro when I need to catch up on some work. The iPad should resolve that as a far better video display device for kids movies and late night viewing (stand resolved).
- Controlling my media centre: Our Mac Mini drives our beautiful Samsung HD tv. Most DVDs are ripped and stored locally. Driving this via a wireless keyboard is a bit painful because font sizes at 1080p are tiny. Using the various iPhone remotes is marginally better (but not perfect, by any means). Boxee and Plesk choke on our 18 month old device. The iPad–and a simple app on it–should allow us easy control of device.
- Traditional browsing: Like many households, we often find ourselves with laptops open, researching furniture or something in the news. We end up hunching over these hunchable screens, although I do lean back and put the device on my knees (the odd angle probably explains the rate at which I torch hard drives). We do very little keyboard input during these times. The iPad should be perfect for domestic browsing–and possibly more important sharing with ones partner. (We tried doing this on the iPhone but the browsing experience isn’t good enough).
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