My Problem With The iPad, I Guess, Is That I Just Like Laptops Too Much – The ‘Book Mystique

The headline of a recent blog by TechRepublic’s Jason Hiner’s struck a resonant chord with me: “Tablets Are For People Who Hate Computers.”

Now in my 8th week of iPad 2 ownership, I’m still not feeling the love. I don’t dislike the iPad — I just find it extremely limited and immensely frustrating at times. After all the hype, I had been expecting something really special —”magic” even — instead of, well… ho-hum.

I was one of the iPad skeptics back in late 2009 and early 2010 as rumors that Apple would release a tablet computer ramped up. I could conceive of tablets as a niche device, but anticipated that the new Apple tablet would never be a volume seller any more than its Newton PDA predecessor turned out to be back in the ’90s. Well, how wrong can one be?

I was mystified at the runaway sales success of the new device, and the extravagantly enthusiastic reviews it received more often than not, as well as glowing testimonials from friends and acquaintances who had iPads. Evidently, something about this phenomenon was eluding me vicariously.

I finally arrived at the conclusion that short intervals of experimentation on other people’s machines were not going to solve the mystery for me, and that as a writer specializing in Apple related matters, I really needed to be able to check out iPad applications for reviews and such.

After the iPad 2 was released in March, I decided to see if ownership and regular use would reveal the secret of the iPad’s magnetic attraction to many. In June my nearest Apple reseller finally laid in some stock and I was able to purchase a white, 16 GB Wi-Fi iPad 2. It’s a nice enough little device, and I use it regularly for informational Web surfing and quick email checks, but eight weeks on I’m still at a loss to explain the iPad’s rock star attraction. Indeed, I find its functional deficiencies and angularities exasperating whenever I attempt to use it as a serious work platform alternative to a laptop, even for relatively light-duty tasking.

Actually, it’s some of the simplest things that confound me about the iPad, an emblematic example being the incredible lameness and inconsistency of text selection for cutting, copying, and pasting, the fundamentals of text editing on a computer. I keep jonesing for a mouse and haven’t found that touchscreen manipulation is growing on me with greater familiarity and daily use.

Consequently, it was reassuring to learn that Jason Hiner, who has vastly greater experience with tablet PCs than I, draws pretty much the same conclusions about the iPad. Hiner says that with every tablet he’s tried to use for an extended period in place of a laptop, he gets frustrated because “it’s slow, clunky, or impossible” to do what he wants to do, and he always ends up wanting to put the tablet down and pick up a laptop to speed through the task.”

“If you’ve refined a way of doing things on a PC or Mac that enables you to speed through your most important tasks, then you’ll probably be frustrated that a tablet can’t do a lot of the things you’re used to doing with a computer, or at least can’t do them fast enough.”

Exactly! His observation that “tablets are for people who hate computers” says volumes. My problem with the iPad, I guess, boils down at least partly to my affection for computers as powerful and efficient creation tools rather than primarily as consumption devices.

“Magic?” My magic epiphany was my first encounters with Macintosh System 6 nineteen years ago as a revelation compared to the menu-driven word processor I’d been using, with another supplemental one following four years later when I got my first PowerBook laptop. Compared to those magical revelations, my iPad is a distant also-ran.

Well, different strokes for different folks, and I can conceive of a number of instances where the iPad would be a superior, albeit limited choice of hardware. Everything would be hunky-dory were it not for Apple’s full-court press to “iOSsify” OS X, while concurrently ushering us to its iCloud beginning a few weeks hence. Actually present reality with the ascendancy of the Mac App Store, and landscape altering changes like the download-only OS X 10.7 Lion install. It may be the post-PC era for Steve Jobs and Apple and legions of iPad fans, but it’s not for me, And I expect not for a fair few others.

As Inc.com’s Renee Oricchio observed in her Business Bytes blog last week, “it’s not a post-PC era as Steve Jobs calls it. The PC is not dead. It’s not even ailing. Try creating or managing a complicated spreadsheet on an iPad when you’ve been doing it on Wintel machines for 20 years. Try editing an industrial video for your business to post on YouTube on your not-that-smart phone.”

What she said. Indeed, aside from its logistical physical advantages of portability and handholdability, I can’t think of much of anything an iPad can do that a laptop can’t do better. A lot better. Instant wake-up? Even that base has been covered by the new MacBook Air. And a Mac can do so much more, easier, faster, and slicker than any iOS device.

Like me, Ms. Oricchio isn’t categorically negative about tablet computing. She cops to having a netbook, a smartphone, a tablet and a Kindle in addition to her laptop workhorse. However, she shares my skepticism that tablets represent the future of personal computing, and will eventually improve to the point that we won’t need laptops to get our work done.

Based on my short but critically analytical tenure as an iPad owner, I can’t envision that point being reached anytime in the near term, and I anticipate personally continuing to live and work in the PC era for the foreseeable future. The sobering question for this consummate Macintosh fan and user of nearly two decades standing: will Apple will still be there along with me?