The other factor in the size of the iPad is the Battery with Battery Life winning fans (~80% ‘totally satisfied’)

All credit for the stats go to Harry McCracken and his publication Technologizer

For example Powerpoint is a functional piece of software (fit for use) and is an acceptable presentation tool (fit for purpose). But some people attempt to use it as an image editing tool because that is all they have – that is a purpose it really isn’t fit for.

For all my talk of the iPad, there was a stated purpose that I had hung a large part of my purchase on. Can the iPad be my Electronic Flight Bag. Saturday, I finally tested that premise with a short but practical field test. A short sightseeing flight with a passenger in one of the club airplanes.

Now the actual in airplane usage is only part of the flight bag concept. Much of staying current as a recreational pilot is staying aware of the rules, regulations and changes in airspace. In Canada, that means dealing with Transport Canada and Nav Canada information.

Transport Canada has done a good job of getting the basic information out in the form of theTransport Canada Aeronautical Information Manual. While the basic rules don’t change that often the Information Circulars and the Supplements need to be reviewed regularly. For example Information Circular 11/10 lists changes to the airspace around Vancouver and Victoria that will affect my future flights which will show up in the new map I need to buy after July 19th. All this information used to be part of a tedious paper process that would fill a small garbage can every 56 days. These PDFs combined with GoodReader on my iPad is a more than capable substitute although I may end up using iBooks which now also does PDFs. The advantage of Goodreader is it will pull these right down from the website.

NavCanada data is a little harder to come by. They have put up basic information such as the Airport Diagrams but you still need the official documents in hard copy. Carrying the hard copies are going to be the rule for the foreseeable future but it would be nice to have a quick reference version (free or paid). I’m really hoping the folks at Foreflight can get a agreement for Canadian charts and info in there excellent iPhone and IPad application. I was able to use the moving map display as part of the US charts overlap Victoria, which is an awesome cross check to the printed charts, but less useful once I get near Naniamo (CYCD).

What Foreflight can provide in Canada is the Weather information I would have collected from the Flight Planning website. Long gone are the yellowing rolls of teletype paper that was the standard up to the 1990s. While I had this on the iPhone for the last year, the iPad takes it to a new level. The graphical forecasts such as the Graphical Area Forecast and the Surface Analysis. It does have NOTAMs but I still would rely on the NavCanada website for that. I printed out the local NOTAMs for last Saturday’s Flight. Foreflight does provide some airport data but not enough to replace the Canadian Flight Supplement (CFS).

I will admit that it was a little more of a reminder to read all this aviation information when those piles of ammendments were siting on my desk. However, The iPad combined with some reliable sources of PDFs and live information does give me a better chance of finding something when I do go looking for it. I’m counting on that making me a safer and more informed pilot, which in the end makes me more fit for my purpose – every time I get in the airplane.

PS – Canadian Owners and Pilot Association has an electronic version of their COPA Flight newspaper. Although it is a Flash version online, I was able to generate a PDF to sync to iBook on my iPad.

If you accept that multitasking is really a myth, then all you do when you attempt to work on multiple, divergent tasks at the same time is preform the PC equivalent of fast-swtiching. This is when computer theory and brain theory have a little in common. Task switching takes overhead, not a lot in some cases, but enough to reduce the efficiency of a person or a process. In my mind that isn’t the biggest risk. Lack of focus, leads to loss of ‘resolution’ meaning that little things can slip.

Eventually you discover the missed bit of info and loop back, voiding a large chunk of work, and do it over. Or worse, you accept a level of garbage in your output. In computer talk, this problem also occurs when you attempt parallel processing (failed branch prediction). For the rest of us, it amounts to “there’s never time to do it right but there’s always time to do it over…” If unitasking helps me focus, and it reduces the ‘do overs’ then I’m a happy guy.

There have been many technology efforts to control the way in which an individual may use content. DRM is the most obvious one but there have been many protocol and regulatory changes that have attempts to accomplish this. The Broadcast Flag is one that keeps rattling around in my head and may be coming back in another form.

In the end this is attempts to create a technology solution to a people problem. On this I complexly agree with Dave – people think content is free and it isn’t. Unfortunately it has been the content providers that have pushed this point and get offended when if bites them. On one had they have been unable to gain a direct revenue model (consumer pays) and rely on a secondary revenue market (consumer watches, brands pay for ads, ads bias consumer behaviour, brands earn revenue).

Some providers have already questioned this model like this article from ReadWriteWeb;  “Financial Times Expects Direct Payments” I already pay (voluntarily) for many of my ‘free’ podcasts.

So back to the original discussion, is accepting Ads prior/along with content something viewers should expect to ‘give up’ to keep content free? The existence of RSS feeds have already seen this battle of full versus excerpted feeds. The Vancouver Sun does that with their feeds that combined with a slow loading website caused me to drop them from my feeds and resort to a Google News Alerts instead. Most sources are prepared to provide an RSS feed which allows viewing of content without viewing the entire page.

I think part of my view is shaped by the fact that Advertising is just Voodoo to me. I really can’t get past the idea that if everyone stopped advertising the market wouldn’t be much different from the way it is today. Probably pretty niave but that is what is at the heart of my attitude toward it.

No matter what technology you try, you may get the Ads to me, but you can’t make me care….

The spelling and cut and paste issues are a real limitation of using an iPad as a portable writing tool. It’s like the iPad should be made for blogging (a Twitter or longer microblogging) but justdoesnt deliver – yet.

That gets me back to the concept of text entry and content creation on the iPad. The keyboard (especially in landscape) is awesome and the predictive text is better than ever but….

There are two issues I personally run into on a regular basis and they are above and below the keyboard itself. When trying to touch type the letters themselves are okay but the space bar is a pain. I frequently miss it on the low (bezel) side and my words run together. This is a particular problem with my WordPress posts where the spell checker doesn’t work. This would be insanely frustrating for the average user.

The other is missing the keyboard to the high side which encroaches on the text arrea. Cashing my cursor to to the bottom of what I’m editing. Also a little maddening. Again this is something that is unique to the idea of an on screen touch keyboard.

But in the interest of balance a short list of the things that really fall in the ‘you can’t get there from here’ category.

File Handling
For most of the things you want to do on the Internet from email to updating your blog, the iPad can get it done – until you hit the issue of files. Whether it is sending an attachment in email or uploading a picture to your blog there are some serious limits. Now I use Gmail for almost everything so saving a file locally and attaching it to another email really isn’t an issue for me. But if you are using a conventional mail service (POP/IMAP) I think the average person is going to run into problems. The limit I hit was taking some pictures off my iPad and post them to my blog. You can do it but forget even basic edits before you throw them up. In short, if the web enabled service can manipulate what you need, don’t count on the iPad doing it locally.

Per User support/Guest Mode
This sounds silly for a ‘personal’ device but unlike and iPod or an iPhone it is significantly more common for someone else to be using my iPad. I know many people share laptops and never think about multi-user set up. There are too many hard coded preferences in the iPad apps to just pass it around as is. At the very least a ‘guest mode’ with limited access to some Apps or their preferences (twitter clients, email, and facebook come to mind) would go a long way.

Multiple Clipboards/Scratch Space
I use multiple clipboards on my regular machines all the time and I love it. The ability to key the last 10 or 20 things you cut and drop it back in just saves so much hassle. In the iPad with no ‘drag and drop’ option there needs to be a way to keep the app switching to a minimum. Just the idea of taking a URL and a clip of text from webpage in Safari and get it into a email seems be a little more than I really want to do.

Browser Extensions
The issues with Flash on the iPad is well known. Not really something I worry much about as I run Flash blockers on my desktops as well. But there are many useful browser extensions that I would like to run. Not the least of which is my password manager 1Password. Since Safari 5 just recently got browser extensions, which allows for things we’ve seen in Firefox for years, you hope that a similar capability may exist on the iPad. In the interim, I’ve had luck running bookmarklets, 1Password has one that replaces some of the funcitionality of their extension but not all, the bit.ly sidebar tool works, and tools for Boxee and Pinboard do work.

The two features that keep coming through are speed and battery life. There are many more powerful computers but from zero to doing something the iPad is probably my fastest computer. Launching and switching apps is so much faster than my laptop or desktop that it is almost hard to go back. I use my iPad while I’m watching my Windows desktop login. Then the battery life Is better than my iPhone. Both of those means you never think about using it, it’s just there. That is truly compelling functionality.

After a week of loading apps I’m now getting to the rationalization phase. The apps I loaded on a whim early are starting to fall away. Likewise , I’m waiting on many of my iPhone favorites to come in with the expanded iPad version. Reeder App for RSS is one of those that seems to be caught up in the App store approval process.

My app count was pushing 150 and I’m beating it back to under a 100 which is probably still a lot.

Here is how I’m organizing my Apps. The first page is my ‘frequently used’ page with all the main applications I use on a daily basis. This has changed a couple times and will likely change

Flying, Weather and GPS applications. One of the key reasons for the 3G iPad was all my GPS applications for on the ground and in the air.

Reference and “Wow” page

Various Remotes and Some Productivity Apps

Utility Page

Media and Entertainment page

Infrequently used page, some travel apps

Last Page is my Games page, Not a big gamer but do have a couple of things to keep me busy if things get slow.

I had one major need for a laptop last night when I was mixing a live blog with a IM Chat but even that I hung on to the iPad until the app switching just got silly. Any rational person would have switched about half and hour earlier. So there is your limiting case, can you replace your computer with an iPad – not exactly, can you massively downside your need for your computer – absolutely.

Things that are making it easier,
Online services such as Google, Flickr(Yahoo) are totally usable on the iPad, including YouTube. There are apps that can do that too, but not the same need as on an iPhone.

I’ll start posting some of my iPad screens and explaining what is on them in the coming days. I’ve got about 100 apps on there right now (overkill I know). I expect that number to drop a bit as I have 6 weather apps, 5 book readers and a few other duplicates. Once I decide on the ones I like the others go.

A couple apps to just call out:
First Dan Bricklin’s NoteTaker is the bomb for writing – finger is fine but I use my Pogo Sketch Stylus (Sorry Steve!). Massive improvements for the iPad form factor and v3 looks like it will make my VGA dongle useful in meeting rooms.
Next, Elements the massive Periodic Table reference app with all the Gee-Wiz graphics. But the update this morning was 1.6GB?? That’s 10% of you entry level iPad storage. Well the Tom Lehrer intro music made my Dad laugh and was almost worth the $13 by itself.

Take a look at the specs.

PowerBook 140
9.8″ 640×480 monochrome screen
8MB RAM (max)
80MB HD (max)
6.8lbs
2.25-11.25-9.3 inches
2-3 hrs battery

iPad
9.7″ 1024×768 touch screen
256MB RAM
64GB drive
1.6 lbs
0.5-9.56-7.47 inches
9-10 hrs battery

The screen size is the most obvious comparison and the reduced size is just a small sign of technology progress. If you split the PB140 in half to remove half of the laptops “clamshell” Then the are remarkably similar (20% less all the way around). Physical size changes are more limitedly by the users than the technology. Weight and battery life show the examples of technology progress. Like the iPad the Powerbook introduced a new form factor (maybe not a unique one). The PowerBook pushed the keyboard towards the back and added a palm rest and pointing device towards the front. Again, a change in the ergonomics for the user. Even the arguments over expandability is there; PCMCIA then and SD card slot today.

So I’m going cold turkey on Monday morning with an iPad only day at work.

First the walk to work was considerably more comfortable without the extra few pounds of a laptop and the associated bits and pieces.

I chose to do a fresh sync with iTunes to my iPad so I needed to reconfigure all my applications on the iPad. (a sync of my iPhone backup would have brought all this over) So the names and passwords takes a little work but typing is so much easier that it is not a big problem. Only a few forgotten passwords.

Other than the significantly lighter tote, an interesting thing is the fact that I forget that I have a web browser. I think after a couple years of iPhone use i got used to special purpose applications for most things. YouTube, gmail, Google Reader, and other web apps are totally useable on the iPad.

The on screen keyboard takes a couple minutes to get the rhythm goings but after that it is not that much slower than my laptop keyboard.

The one limitation is the lack of a multiuser mode for sharing a iPad with friend and that seems to happen regularly.

The battery life is epic. As a portable device it beats everything I’ve ever owned short of a couple non-smart PCS cell phones I had. All day connected to WiFi and trying to push it whenever I though about it. From 6 AM to almost 7 PM I’ve gone through about half the battery power. Awesome.

The real punchline for the day is the snappiness of the device itself. I don’t doubt that other devices are faster but this just FEELS fast. Compared to my iPhone 3G is no contest but it even starts to feel faster than bringing up a application on my desktop (Mac or PC) or my laptop (Macbook Pro). The release of iPhone OS 4 will give the ipad even better capabilities but they better not loose any of this zippy feel that really defines the experience.

PS all this was written and edited on my iPad.