Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Pleasantly Surprised

I type this sitting on the couch in the call room at the hospital. On my new iPad...
For the last few weeks I've been saying that I wouldn't buy the first iteration of the iPad. I'd wait until they worked out all the kinks. There's not even a front-facing camera!
Then I held this amazing piece of technology in my hands, and the quiet realization that this was a new quantum state in computing. There's something familiar about the platform, even with its amazing innovations in small areas. Yes, the iPad looks like nothing more than a giant iPod touch. It's not. Scale matters.
Don't misunderstand. This isn't perfect. There are things I wish were different or better, but all in all, this is a new way to compute.

The design, while a little heavy, puts controls and inputs in easily accessed places. As I sit here, I'm typing with my right thumb, index and ring fingers while holding the iPad in my left (watch an old episode of Star Trek:TNG to get a visual...). It doesn't fatigue my hands, and I can type relatively fast. Taking advantage of the auto-complete feature increases the speed and accuracy.

When it come to apps, I'm not as app happy as I am with the iPhone. There aren't nearly the number of $.99 or $1.00 apps. This serves the dual purpose of limiting the app store to relatively useful apps for which people would be likely to pay more and making me more conscious of my app spending. A nice combination, free of Fart apps.

Several of the apps, like the iWorks trio, are well worth the added cost and I already completed a presentation (which I gave today) entirely on the iPad. Lying in bed typing, dragging photos, shifting slides, editing text styles. I can see where this will become my primary business device, even it's current iteration. While there are obvious changes (which will hopefully be announced on Thursday) that could make things easier and better, I can easily type papers, e-mails, create presentations, browse web references and hopefully textbooks. The device disappears, becoming merely a vector or a platform and allowing the software to really shine.

This is where my greatest expectations lie. Software could make this device awesome, instead of just amazing. The app store is a mere fraction of that for the iPhone, but already some amazing apps have surfaced. With the hardware now available for testing and tweaking, they should only continue to get better. Things like the Netflix app and the app Jump, which allows for remote desktop control, do a great job already. I'm already salivating while waiting for the ePocrates drug app and their recently announced EMR app.

All in all, this is an amazing device with a few bugs and a whole lot of potential.

//sidebar ramble
I ended up visiting the local Best Buy on Saturday to play with a demo iPad. I figured that there wouldn't be any stock left, and I could handle a demo model and leave. They had four demos, and after handling one for 10 minutes, I was not only impressed but sold that the potential for this device was huge. Then the guy next to me asked if there were any left. Apparently, this store got 15 or so of each model, and while the 15 GB was sold out, most of the 32 and 64 were left.
The rest, as they say, is history.
///end ramble


-- Post From My iPad



Location:Spring St,Greenwood,United States

2 comments:

  1. I think this is a great "premise" for a blog. I put that in quotes because it is really just you being you, but the idea of sharing specifically about medicine and technology is very interesting. Especially to me as I am currently battling a bit of a tech phobia- I've been reading too many Laura Ingalls Wilder books! Anyway, all that was just to say, I'm reading. Keep blogging, friend :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Papers is an amazing app for physicians.

    ReplyDelete