By Joe Wilcox, Betanews
While geekdom holds its collective breadth waiting for Apple's 1 p.m. ET "special event," presumably the iPad 2 launch, I thought it would be interesting to see how people use the original model. Yesterday I asked "Do you still own iPad?" because I keep meeting people who sold or passed along to family their Apple tablets. Betanews readers certainly had answers. Either you love or loathe iPad; there is little response between the extremes.
"Nope, gave it away after a couple of months," Anthony Scott answered in comments. "The size was nice, but the performance was poke out my eyes slow. Grabbing an old netbook, that has about the same weight/size and battery life and running Excel at 100x the performance of the iPad Spreadsheet, is sad how underpowered Apple made the iPad."
This is sweet (and I'm not being sarcastic): "I bought one for my mother and she uses it constantly," FalKirk writes in comment. "When the new one comes out, I'm almost sure to buy one for the kids. More important than the unreliable anecdotal evidence that you're soliciting is the polling data which shows that 95% of owners are satisfied with their iPads (72 percent very satisfied, 23 percent somewhat satisfied). The iPad is not going away, Joe, no matter how fervently you and some of your readership wish that it would."
Oh? Who said anything about iPad going away? The ridiculous number of iPad 2 rumors coming into today's Apple event shows there is huge interest in Apple's tablet(s). I asked sincere questions to iPad owners. What should go away: Overly zealous Mac defenders who assume anyone who doesn't agree with their point of view is anti-Apple.
"I still have mine and will be getting the iPad 2 when it comes out," writes Jack Brown in comments.
"I own it, but rarely use," Frank Wick writes in comments. "I played Angry Birds this morning at Starbucks so I guess I still use it sometimes. The iPad has become a babysitting device at my house. I NEVER NEVER NEVER do work on it. The mail client is a pain. Safari is a horrible browser. blah blah blah. I have buyer's remorse and I expensed the thing!"
Rick Favaloro writes via email: "What I love my iPad for: plopped on my sofa reading books, writing books (you'd see incoherent blathers, I see exactitude-challenged Pulitzers in progress), watching video, making video animations, playing games, viewing paintings, drawing my own big weird zoomable things and everything else."
Commenter littlecay called the original iPad "an expensive paperweight -- no USB connectivity, no SD slot, no undo, terrible cut/copy/paste interface, no video out. I thought it was weird when I learned that I could add a lot of missing functionality by jailbreaking it. What?"
Commenter Digital Sin writes:
I've had mine for a couple of months now. Interestingly, I use it for mostly different reasons than I thought I would when I bought it. I expected I'd watch movies on it and listen to music, but I do neither of those. I also thought I'd bring it to work, maybe to take out during a meeting to take notes. I don't do that either. I thought I'd use it to read during my 4 hours of commuting each day, but I don't...So does it lie around collecting dust? No way. I love this thing. I share it with my wife, and though it was a hard sell to get her to be on board with me plunking down the dough for it, she loves it. She uses it while in the kitchen for recipes and watching cooking videos while she's cooking. We both play games on it, and we both really enjoy reading on it. Also, we're both taking classes and use it quite a bit for studying. My son loves the interactive books on it and I love that he's not on my computer anymore. I feel like it's a lot safer (for both him and my computer) for him to use iPad for browsing and playing games on.
Mark Finch mainly uses his tablet for reading: "So my iPad sits next to my favorite chair at home, and I use it to read in the morning while having coffee and in the evening while having wine. In between times (and depending on what I want to accomplish) I use either a desktop Mac, a MacBook, an Ubuntu-powered Dell netbook or my Motorola Droid. My music lives on a desktop computer and also on an iPod; my photos are on a desktop computer and on a MacBook. For what I do with it, my iPad is perfect. It's just another appliance that makes certain things more convenient. Similarly, I don't really need a toaster or a gas grill -- I could make toast and cheeseburgers in my oven if I wanted to -- but I sure am glad I have them, and use them frequently."
Commenter mpuvvula: "I bought an iPad and returned it in 2 weeks (before the re-stocking fees applied). Its simply a brick! It didn't print, it was awkward to handle and it had no compatibility with MS Office (to do any real work). I couldn't play any media other than iTunes (VLC & Flash were removed). It was as bad as the iPhone. I figured its for people who love Apple, BMWs & Jaguars! I ended up with Inspiron DUO, WIN 7, 2 GB! Its not as snazzy as iPad, but it plays any video you throw at it on a flash drive (Divix, MPEG4, Netflix etc)."
"I got an iPad for XMas and use it a lot," commenter smist08 writes. "Best device for flying can do all the things you mention and is the right size for easy viewing and fitting in the space you have in economy class. Also ideal for meetings, don't have to lug my laptop anymore for reference and notes. I also like having it handy when watching TV for looking things up and social networking."
Commenter rhonin "bought an iPad via a special promotion for a cheap price (about 50 percent off retail). Not returnable. I have tried to make it more than an occasional media consumptive device. Sigh................ After a few months it has become the quintessential dust gathering paperweight I occasionally charge and use. To many of the posters here, I wanted a more PC-centric device."
The most unexpected response comes from Diane Carpenter: "[I] encourage anyone abandoning their iPads to donate them to a child or adult with autism. I wrote the attached story about buying my severely autistic adult daughter an iPad."
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010
