Ten reasons why the iPad is brilliant
By ourhero, 30th Jul 2011 | Follow this author
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Posted in WikinutReviewsTechnologyLaptops
Apple's touch screen tablet computer is one of the best products invented. Here's why this user feels it meets all his daily computing needs.
- As an e-reader alone, I can free up space from keeping books
- I can watch quality film and video wherever I want
- I can word process wherever I want to
- The battery lasts all day and more
- I can surf the internet in comfort
- The smart cover gives you an instant stand
- No flash - so what
- As in the iphone, Apple evolve their products annually
- Solid, reliable and not android
- Once iOS5 is released, you won’t even have to own a computer!
- And there's more
As an e-reader alone, I can free up space from keeping books
Most of my books comprise of the collected works of Stephen King, Dean Koontz and every single hardback or paperback published about the TV show Doctor Who. Some of them are out of print and have been collected over the last 35 years.
But they take up a lot of space and so an e-reader is one of the most useful devices to have been invented in the last 10 years or so. There are plenty of other gadgets out there which do much the same as the iPad but then you can also factor in illustrated books, interactive books, replica magazines, monthly subscriptions to best-selling titles as well as Marvel, DC and other comics.
In under six months, not only have I managed to collect every single title above as an e-book version but I can store them all at the same time on my iPad and it’s not even used up half the memory!
I can watch quality film and video wherever I want
I’ve found it’s a breeze to convert my bought DVDs and TV-recorded films and programmes to watch on my iPad. Not only can I take a good 20 hours of video with me but with a few simple connections, I can stream all my archived recordings off my computer’s hard drive and display them on my home TV via wifi. Which translates to almost instant access to hundreds of hours of material.
I can word process wherever I want to
Using the wonders of bluetooth, I no longer need to be chained to my desk at home on a sunny day. Now I can take my full-size bluetooth keyboard with my iPad and my camping table and chair and bask in the shade of a tree on a hot sunny day... and keep working on my writing projects. To be fair, any laptop computer could do the same but storing and carrying the equipment is so light and minimal
The battery lasts all day and more
The battery lasts all day and more
On a modern laptop, it would probably struggle to give you five or six hours on a single charge of the battery. On an iPad, it’s an average of 10 hours, which is considerable for a day’s writing or internet surfing.
I can surf the internet in comfort
Like watching films and video and reading on the iPad, internet surfing suddenly becomes far more comfortable. Not only do you see the whole page on screen but you can browse articles sprawled out on a comfy settee or even in your bed. Or outside. Or anywhere.
The smart cover gives you an instant stand
Although it’s marketed as an accessory, the optional Apple smart cover is almost essential. Using sophisticated magnets, the cover can fold up into either a jaunty angle for typing on or a handy stand for viewing. It’s even designed that when you fold the cover back over the screen, the iPad goes into standby mode.
No flash - so what
The iPad (along with it’s pioneering brother, the iPhone) does not allow flash video to be viewed and this has come in for a lot of criticism from some quarters. Although it is a valid point, this user has never, ever been in a situation where this has been a problem. Apple has explained that flash on the iPad would cripple the battery life of the device and they don’t see the point due to more modern video coding such as HTML5 which works just fine. For those obsessed by being able to run flash material on the iPad, there is a solution out there - just do a search on Skyfire and see what you get...
As in the iphone, Apple evolve their products annually
The iPad is the fastest selling tablet device in recent years - and even it’s closest rival hasn’t been able to sell a fraction of units. But the best thing about Apple products is that they never stand still - as soon as the competition catch up with the current specs of the iPad, Apple go and evolve the device again. The recent iPad 2 featured a faster processor for lightning speed and there will soon be a blistering software update for the device in the guise of iOS5 which will take the capabilities of the iPad and iPhone to a new level.
Solid, reliable and not android
Apple devices are not cheap and this user in particular opted for an iPad as the cost of buying an Apple notebook was unjustified for what I wanted to do with it (portable wordprocessing, internet browsing and watching films away from home). As I learn more about the capabilities of what this truly amazing device can do, the more I’m glad I didn’t buy a boring laptop, whatever the price or brand.
There will forever be the argument that the biggest rival platform - android - is better than iOS because their users aren't restricted to buying their apps through iTunes. That could be relevant if the Apple apps numbered a few hundred, thus offering a limited restrictive choice. The truth is the iPad can boast well over 100,000 specific apps - as well as being able to run all the iPhone apps which adds another 425,000 and that number is growing every day. The reason Apple vets its apps is to make sure all apps sold are in proper working order and promote quality.
Once iOS5 is released, you won’t even have to own a computer!
As mentioned above, Apple is on the verge of a major update of their iOS software. With this update, it will now be possible for anyone to buy an iPad and buy all their apps, music and videos without having to own any sort of computer to sync with it. This is partly due to the new iCloud feature Apple intend to bring to users. iCloud will make it possible for users to store their documents and files on-line rather than be tied to a hard drive or any external storage device. So books, magazines, comics, songs, albums, games, apps, articles, documents will truly be paperless. Even if you erase the content from your device, you’ll still be able to re-download it from your archives in the iCloud.
And there's more
That’s just ten good reasons but there are probably hundreds of others to justify buying an iPad depending what you want to use it for. For example, it now comes with two cameras, one on the front for Apple’s FaceTime feature which allows you to ‘see’ other people on i-devices and Apple computers as in a video conference. Even iPad games are coming into their own, so much so that gaming giants such as Nintendo and Sony feel genuinely threatened that iOS becomes a bigger gaming platform than their own efforts.
Comments
4th Aug 2011 (#)
Thank you dear brother Ourhero. I want to have you as my hero.
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