Dave Caolo

Craig:

“My iPad has a lot of personal information on it: email, business documents, and financial data. When you pass it around, you’re giving everyone who touches it the opportunity to mess with your private life, whether intentionally or not. That makes me uneasy.

I can envision several ways to solve this problem: either with a traditional login screen or with something new like folders that require a passcode to open. I have no doubt that your designers can find something elegant that gives me peace of mind as I share my iPad with friends and family.”

I agree, and I’ll add that the iPhone needs a similar security feature. I occasionally hand my iPhone to my kids so that they can play one of the many games in the App Store intended for them. Unfortunately, there’s nothing to prevent them from navigating away from that app and availing themselves to anything else the iPhone can do. I’d love to see a pass code or something else that would keep them “locked” in that app.

The 7th Zone:

“The iPad is not the only worrying sign of Apple’s decline. Let us dissect what went wrong with Apple – the iPhone’s AppStore, the shift of focus away from the Macintosh, and as mentioned, the blighted existence of the iPad.”

On April 20th, Apple reported adjusted earnings of $3.33 per share, blowing past the consensus Wall Street numbers. Total revenues were $13.5B. That’s more than $700 millon above even the most optimistic predictions. Gross margins up to 41.7 percent, from 39.9 percent a year ago.

Yep. Nightmare.

Inspired by a brief Twitter exchange with Steve Rubel, I’ve begun thinking about the iPad’s ability to meet the needs of the typical computer user. I mean the folks who spend the vast majority of their computing time

1. Reading/writing emails
2. Browsing the web
3. Enjoying photos
4. Watching video
5. Word processing

As Steve said, it’s not 100% successful, though I suspect I’m more optimistic about its potential. For me, web browsing with the iPad is extremely pleasant. The same is true of the email experience.

Photos look gorgeous on the iPad but a Mac is recommended for management.* Once photos have been uploaded, there’s no way to move them between albums, events, etc. There’s an accessory that connects a camera directly to the iPad, but I haven’t used it so I don’t know how it works. Additionally, the iPad offers no image editing out of the box. Users are dependent on the efforts of 3rd-party developers.

Word processing is good but could be better. I use Apple’s Pages app (US$9.99) and Bluetooth keyboard successfully, but sharing documents between iPad and Mac is cumbersome.

This leaves video. Yes, YouTube works as do videos purchased from the iTunes Store. That will satisfy most, but not all.

I’ll be exploring this in greater detail on TUAW as a part of the use case series.

*You can share photos with an iPad using a PC.

What haven’t I written a comprehensive iPad review yet? Honestly, I haven’t been able to put the damn thing down long enough to get started.

In the two weeks that I’ve owned my iPad, I’ve seen a sharp decline in the amount of time I spend with my MacBook Pro. Unless I’m working at a TUAW, I’m using my iPad. The only reason I don’t use the iPad for writing TUAW posts is due to an inconsistency with the CMS. If that weren’t the case, I’d use it then, too.

What I’ve realized is that the iPad has become my go-to computer. Perhaps that’s because I represent the best user case. I’m not a graphics professional or designer. I do a lot of writing, reading and web browsing.

Fortunately for Apple, that’s how the majority of users behave.

And yes, I wrote this post on my iPad.

Browsing the web with an iPad is a unique yet utterly familiar experience. Since its inception, the Internet has delivered its contents via bulky and often unattractive machines. Enormous CRT displays with ironically small viewing areas, unnatural input devices like mice and keyboards and the furniture needed to support them create a barrier between the consumer and the information to be consumed.

There’s a sense of “me” and “it.” I, the consumer, am sitting in my chair while the website being browsed, or the “it,” is elsewhere.

With the iPad, “me” and “it” become “us.”

We, the content and I, are in the cozy chair (not the desk chair where the computer is) together. A quick double-tap of the iPad’s display magnifies the text to fill the screen while retaining razor-sharp focus. Best of all, I hold that site’s content in my hands, reinforcing the fun, intimate act of reading a book that was established in childhood.

It sounds cheesy, but it’s really that pleasant.

I’m using the iPad WordPress app to compose this post on my iPad. It’s quite an impressive app. I’ll have a full review soon.

From Stephen Fry’s interview with Steve Jobs in the current issue of Time magazine, regarding the iPad:

“One melancholy thought occurs as my fingers glide and flow over the surface of this astonishing object: Douglas Adams is not alive to see the closest thing to his Hitchhiker’s Guide that humankind has yet devised.”

If you only read one article about the iPad, make it this one. It’s absolutely tremendous.

I’ll be at Boston’s flagship Apple Store on Boylston Street this Saturday covering the iPad launch. Come over and say, “Hi.” It’d be great to meet you. I’ll be wearing my gray TUAW T-shirt.

Earlier today, Seton Hill University announced their intention to give an iPad to every full-time student in 2010:

The iPad initiative kicks off the University’s Griffin Technology Advantage Program. This new program provides students with the best in technology and collaborative learning tools, ensuring that Seton Hill students will be uniquely suited to whatever careers they choose – even those that have not yet been created.

And that is the end of the game. As we said on TUAW last year, when the iPad was only a rumor, whoever does textbooks right will win the ebook market. Former TUAW blogger Christian Warren:

Do textbooks, and you win. Even without a subsidy it would be worth the investment for most 4-year students, and a no-brainer for grad school. I know during my extended tenure in college that I spent thousands on textbooks, often getting nothing back at trade-in. I had to deal with professors switching [editions] every semester, making finding used books unreliable, unless I wanted to scour eBay and then wait for delivery.

This arrangement will benefit budget-minded students and booksellers alike. Consider the revenue that publishers lose every year when students re-sell used books to campus bookstores. Also, Apple’s got a distribution solution in place that students, faculty and staff already know how to use in iTunes U.

Get publishers to agree to iPad distribution and you’ve got a device that can follow a student from his/her freshman year in high school to graduate school. Why buy a laptop when every student has a device that can be a textbook, reference tool, Internet appliance and whatever else the limitless imaginations of developers can produce?

[Via TUAW]