Microsoft Office for the iPad? Maybe Not...

This excellent, elegant post at minimalmac does a marvelous job of outlining a reality that must be uncomfortable for Microsoft:

No one really needs Microsoft Office.

My company has been mostly an Apple iWork shop for some time now. Pages is our default word processor and, although we do a lot of training presentations, the truly exceptional capabilities of Keynote has kept my copy of PowerPoint gathering dust for some time.

The only exception has been Excel. We do a metric truckload of spreadsheets and graphs, and our invested time into the platform has made it harder to transition out. However, recent experiences with the "upgrade" to Office 2011 for Mac has us looking very closely at completing that transition. It should never take 45 minutes and a web search to figure out how to make a text box... Not to mention the f$@king ribbon!

For many people, for some time, it's been a common refrain that one must have Office to work on a computer. That refrain may no longer ring true.

(Tip of the hat to Daring Fireball for bringing this link to my attention).

Bitter About Apple

Last week Apple tried something different and did a pre-release of its latest version of OS X (Mountain Lion) by doing 1:1 presentations to a select group of tech journalists.

This has led others - notably, those not selected - to opine that the company has begun to take favorites, and that it has specifically ostracized the New York Times. This, the theory goes, is due to that paper's recent series of articles about working conditions at Foxconn in China, a company that assembles consumer electronics for Apple... And for a large number of other major electronics companies.

A theory that, as Daring Fireball's John Gruber ably points out, ignores the fact that David Pogue was among that select group of journalists. That's David Pogue of the New York Times.

The entire story smacks of sour grapes... Or perhaps bitter apples.

As someone who runs a business and who has on (very rare) occasion had business related interviews, I can tell you that one is always uncertain how the information one gives will be used by the interviewer. Anyone - and any business - in such a position would take pause at considering giving additional direct information to a news source which had shown a bent towards sensationalizing or reflecting unfavorably on their business in the past.

The news here - if any - is that Apple didn't excommunicate the New York Times. Pogue got his early information despite a multi-part exposé that, frankly, often seemed to present Apple as if it were the only company using the massive Foxconn operation for product assembly. This despite the fact that the entire industry - virtually every major consumer electronics manufacturer - has the same issue.

I'm not sure I'd be so generous were I in the same position with my company. Especially if I was in Apple's position. They likely no longer really need the NY Times for publicity.

The rest of it - complaints over who did and didn't get early information - plays as whining from the did-nots.

My HP Officejet Pro 8500 is a F&%king Liar

This afternoon I was in the middle of proofing and printing a series of reports.  The printer I was using was my HP Officejet Pro 8500, which has the added nice feature of being able to print double-sided documents.  All was going quite swimmingly until, in the middle of report number six or so it stops and gives me the following warning:

Cannot Print

The ink in the following cartridge is depleted.

Black [K]

Prior to seeing this, there was no indication, no suggestion, not event a hint that the black ink was low.  The last letters printed were just as crystal clear, just as sharp, as the first.

Well - no hint aside from the little warning triangle saying "a cartridge is low" that first started showing approximately 24 seconds after I first set up the printer.  HP as a company would perhaps benefit from a study of the effect of false positives on the response of users...  But I digress.

Most troubling here is this specific phrase in the warning:  "Cannot Print" followed by "Replace the following cartridge to resume printing".  And it isn't kidding.  The device simply WILL NOT print until you replace the cartridge.  It resolutely refuses to budge no matter how many obscenities one screams at it.  

Or so I hear...

Older models of HP printers would warn you (again, ridiculously early) that you were running low on ink, but you could press on bravely, printing page after page.  Then, one day, months (sometimes years) after that first warning you would finally reach the point where the ink on the page began to fade, and it was clear that now, at long last, one might have to give in and replace the cartridge.  

Now, instead, apparently the printer has been programmed to engage in a sit-down strike until it gets its way.  And I can't help but think, given that the ink never faded (not once), that this thing is holding out on me, greedily holding on to those last drops of ink, resolutely refusing to give way.

Undoubtedly this change in behavior would be framed by HP as presenting with some sort of benefit that I just haven't yet considered.  Still, it seems to me that the entity most benefitted here is HP itself, as I have now been required - not just encouraged or warned, but required - to replace a print cartridge despite no clear signs of need just so I could complete my document.  

All of which is why I'm pretty sure My HP Officejet Pro 8500 is a F&%king Liar.

Elevation Dock

Here's a very cool KickStarter project I first saw on Daring Fireball this evening. The Elevation Dock is an aluminum dock that will fit multiple generations of the iPhone, as well as different versions of the iPod touch and classic iPod. More importantly for my purposes it is designed to allow docking of an iPhone while it's still in a protective case.

This would allow me to retire the Lego stand I'm forced to use instead of an Apple dock as I am apparently a mutant with a superpower that causes the coefficient of friction on my hands and fingers to be far lower than that of any normal man.

At any rate, this evening it looks as if the project is already very close to getting funded. This makes for a good opportunity to get in on this product before it hits the market at full price.

If you aren't familiar with KickStarter you can learn more here.

Tonsure /= To Ensure...

Okay, I am certainly not the first to notice some issues with the auto-correct software in iOS devices. But what I find especially puzzling are some of the decisions it makes.

This afternoon I'm typing the words "to ensure" on my iPad and, as is often the case, I somehow miss the space bar, leaving the two words together - e.g. toensure. The iPad then, as now, offers to replace it and, because I type relatively quickly on the iPad, it happens before I can make a decision about it.

The word it selects? Tonsure.

Now, I fancy myself a relatively well read and educated person, with a fairly decent vocabulary. Still, here I find that I am - not for the first time, mind you - having to look up the word that iOS has elected to replace my text.

Incidentally, tonsure refers to the shaved crown of a monk or priest's head. Look it up yourself if you like but, honestly, why would I lie about this?

When you do look it up, you'll find it to be a word first encountered in the 14th Century, derived from old French and Latin. As I gaze at this in the definition I wonder once again what algorithmic logic went into making the device assume that it was somehow more likely that I wanted to make reference to a friar's bald pate than simply having accidentally tied two correctly spelled words together.

I write on the iPad often, and while I dearly love my device, this feature is routinely the most frustrating aspect of using it. Among the things I write are psychological reports, and the word "pattern" features prominently in them. For a long period of time I had problems with hitting the "o" instead of the "p", which the iPad would then helpfully correct into "oat tern", apparently believing that I was writing about grain farming near the sea. Every time I add an additional "s" to the end of the word "was" I get "Wasserstein". What's more, while it offers these miscorrections routinely, it continues to resolutely leave the word "fir" in place each time I type it accidentally instead of "for", thinking either that I'm writing a newsletter for the American Evergreen Society or perhaps that I am writing dialogue in a western novel.

What I don't get here is how it makes those decisions. It clearly has some capacity to learn - I don't see "oat tern" any more, despite my continued errors with the word "pattern" - but it seems to make poor decisions in regard to the likelihood of a given word. What is the likelihood that I actually was trying to write "tonsure", a middle-ages relic of a word instead of, well, anything else? While I appreciate that these words are in the dictionary on the device - and that I learned a new and interesting word today - it would be great if Apple would perhaps re-think the words it offers based upon some calculation of the statistical probability of the word being correct.

Another alternative would be to allow the autocorrect to be turned off, while leaving the spell check turned on (this does not currently appear to be an option). Because the autocorrect puts in real words for relatively fast virtual typists the end results are sometimes rather strange, and more challenging to detect because, though the words are wrong, they are spelled correctly. This option would be helpful tonsure the errors would be caught when the piece Wasserstein proofread.

Perspective

It was a little while before I realized the power was out this morning.

It wasn't a surprise, really. The storm that was rolling through provided a convincing combination of wind and rain, which I'd chosen to ride out by reading portions of Sloane Crossley's I was Told There'd be Cake on my iPad. I suspect the noise level the rain and wind made against the ancient windows of my old house kept me from noticing that the window AC unit in my home office was no longer operating.

Power outages happen everywhere, but the effects are different depending upon the location. When you live in a town or city, as anywhere else, it means no television and only battery operated radios. And everywhere one should avoid opening the refrigerator unless absolutely necessary. Out here in the country it means all of those things, but it also means no water, as the well pump is operated electrically.

This requires a retardation of one's natural muscle operational patterns each time one uses the bathroom.

It's also fascinating - and a little silly - how one's mind can fail to fully grasp the reality of the situation. This morning I went for my second cup of coffee, thankful that the pot was still hot even though the coffee maker's hotplate was no longer functioning, and hopeful that it would still be warm for cup #3. If it wasn't, I reasoned, it was really no big deal - I'd just warm it up in the microwave...

I grew up out here - literally a mile across the field. When I was little a power outage meant that anything electric or electronic for entertainment was out (except for the aforementioned battery powered radios). Today I failed to initially register the outage because I was distracted by the book on my iPad, and now I'm writing this post on the same device. I'll post it after writing using the internet connection through my battery powered MiFi.

It does put things in perspective when the biggest concerns one faces following a storm are cold coffee and managing not to jiggle the flush handle on the toilet.

"Three of us voted for airplane, Sheldon voted for train, so we’re taking the train."

Yup - I wanted to take the train.

When I was in college I took the train on a trip from Illinois to Utah over spring break. I remember it fondly, rolling to the clackity-clack of the rails. I wore my American flag-colored drug rug, wrote poetry, and watched the wildlife as we rode to and then through the mountains. I had fascinating conversations with the people I was seated with in the dining car. I slept in coach without a care in the world.

I am no longer twenty years old.

This Place is Permanently Closed

I've come across an interesting and somewhat troubling bug in google maps. For some reason, there are locations coming up as being "permanently closed", even when this is not the case.

How do I know this? My Lovely Wife and I were vacationing in Manitou Springs, Co, after the ABAI Conference this year. Manitou Springs is a lovely little tourist town that sits on the doorstep of the Garden of the Gods and the Manitou Cliff Dwellings - just down the road from Pike's Peak. We were looking for a place to have dinner on our first night in town, so MLW fired up her Yelp app and discovered a place called PJ's Bistro that served variations on polish food - pierogies, in particular, were what sparked her interest (she's half-Ukranian on her mother's side - you don't want to get in the way of a Ukranian on her way to a pierogie).

That decided, I looked it up on the Maps app on my iPhone. It was there, but the flag over the pin listed it as "permanently closed". Afraid all hopes of potato pocket heaven were lost, MLW called to ask if PJ's was open. She received a mildly confused "yes" from the woman on the other end of the line. (Incidentally, the food was delightful, and the restaurant offers a bit of balcony seating that offers views of the main drive in Manitou Springs, with the Rocky Mountains as a backdrop).

Ordinarily I might have written it off as a fluke, but the following day we decided to rent a car to cover the distance to the Colorado Wolf and Wildlife Center. We had the rental company pick us up. I didn't know the actual street address of our motel, so I just gave the name - The Dillon Motel - to the young man on the phone. Later he told me that they were confused because when they looked the Dillon up on Google Maps it was listed as - wait for it - "permanently closed".

I was aware that the Maps app that comes on the iPhone uses Google Maps as its source material, so it wasn't surprising to find the same indication when I looked it up on my iPad. The situation brings up a couple of troubling questions. The first is whether our entire trip has been some sort of feverish delusional experience brought on by too many days of behavior analysis seminars, or whether we've been sucked into some sort of alternate reality (staying at the the Dillon Motel does make me feel like I'm in a Quentin Tarantino movie - and I can't find either my gun or the drug money, making me very, very nervous as to who might come through the door).

The second, perhaps more salient question is: how many businesses are inaccurately listed as being "permanently closed" on Google Maps? It appears that this is one of Google's crowd sourcing features, so just about anyone can list a business as "Permanently Closed" - including competitors and prior customers with an axe to grind. Given that Google maps - either directly or through the plethora of other applications that rely upon it - is a primary source of information for a growing number of people looking for a hotel, a restaurant, an all-night bikini waxing spa, this could likely be a large source of lost business and revenue for such places. This would be particularly true for those businesses run by less tech-savvy folks, who are likely to be completely unaware of such a listing - after all, the legions of people not stopping into a store can't inform the owners of the problem.

Furthermore, even when a business owner is aware of an innacurate listing, who does she contact? There are no "report a problem" links that I could see on the iOS Maps app, nor on the mobile version of the Google Maps site. There is one on the desktop version, but I could not get it to allow me to enter information from my iPad. It might - probably would - from a desktop computer. But even if that's so, once the issue is reported it's up to Google to decide whether or not to correct the issue. And even then, this would be one correction at a time.

And that's somewhat beside the point. The reality is that these sites and applications are designed to be used by people who are out and about. The mobile versions - apps and mobile websites - are what people are going to be seeing and using more and more. Business people already contend with competition and the other stresses of the open market. They can be reviewed by anyone and his uncle for any reason. The business owner should not also have to worry about whether he or she is unknowingly losing business because Google has identified a business as "permanently closed".

Update: We had let the owner of the Dillon Motel know about his status on Google Maps, and he was able to have it corrected. He also indicated that he would get in touch with the owner of PJ's Bistro and make them aware. So - a happy ending for them, but how pervasive this is remains an open question.

Sherlock on the iPad

On the most recent episode of The Geologic Podcast host, skeptic, and musician George Hrab waxed poetic about Sherlock, a re-imagining of the classic Arthur Conan Doyle character in modern-day London. This is a BBC series being broadcast on PBS here in the states.

At first it was simply a curiosity - I'm a huge Holmes fan, but we lack any type of broadcast television service. And then I remembered that I'd just downloaded the new PBS app for iPad on Wednesday almost immediately after hearing about it on MacBreak Weekly.

Of course, there was no guarantee that this particular show would appear on the PBS app (which, until now, I had not had the opportunity to use), but there it was! I fired up the episode in the app and, after a brief delay, it began to play.

The first episode - A Study in Pink (a play on the original Doyle story A Study in Scarlet) - was quite well done. The actors were well chosen. Benedict Cumberbatch, who plays Holmes, is tall and angular, with a delightful baritone delivery of wry sarcasm (dripping with impatience at how slow those around him are to catch up). He's quite a bit younger than Jeremy Brett (possibly the finest Holmes) was in his Holmes days, but the age differential is appropriate to the timeline of the series, as it portrays the first meeting of Holmes and Watson. And, appropriate to an accurate retelling of the Doyle stories, the tale is told from the perspective of Dr. Watson, played ably by Martin Freeman as an Afghan war veteran struggling with a return to the placid nature of regular life.

The show is dark, both visually and in character. Holmes is led to excess by boredom, and Watson is left to play catch-up - all as it should be. And the show has nice touches of modern life, including bits of text that show up on screen - sometimes to indicate the text messages characters are receiving on their phones (a nice touch I'm surprised no one seems to have thought of before) and at others, to give us a bit of insight into something running through Holmes' head. I don't want to gIve any detail about the story away, but let me just say it was all quite nicely done. While it never gives anything away it does a far better job of letting you see what Holmes is experiencing than any previous attempt at this that I've seen. Even Doyle's original stories often seemed to leave out information so that Holmes would seem all the more clever at the end, something this installment seemed to rectify.

In terms of the technology, let me note that the streaming of the episode on the iPad was also quite well done. There's something different about the experience of holding the program in your lap while you are watching. With the device less that three feet away from your eyes it's functionally larger than most televisions are from across the room. With the headphones in the sound was excellent as well.

It occurred to me while watching the episode that, if I'd had an iPad when I was in college I'd have felt no need for either a separate television or computer - the device easily serves both purposes for a single viewer. Makes me wonder whether we'll see those things as separate devices in another generation...

I did experience a hitch towards the end of the episode - with about 11 minutes to go I lost my connection. This has been a common problem with my cellular modem connection, which is still better than the previous satellite option, but in part because at less than half the price the frustrations are more tolerable. After I reconnected, however, the PBS app seemed to be a bit confused about how long the episode was. It re-loaded, but thought that the 1:23 episode now came in at 0:47. It took several re-loads to get things back to normal, but once we got there it finished up quite nicely.

I can't wait for the next episode to be available...

How Does Satellite Internet Suck? Let Me Count the Ways

When the opportunity to move to the Homestead presented itself, we were generally pretty excited. In the midst of that excitement, however, there was some trepidation.

We'd been urban(ish)ites for for well over 15 years at the point that the opportunity for a pastoral life presented itself. Such a lifestyle, while largely devoid of personal privacy and the freedom to pee outside, does have it's perks: Sushi, a variety of pizza options, a movie theatre that's less than a half-hour away...

...And high-speed internet.

I feared our options would likely be limited when we started looking, and my fears came to fruition. Comcast's website made vague promises that cable might exist at that distance, but when I contacted the local(ish) office - which largely consisted only of advertising account people - they seemed confused that I would even consider it possible at our location. Verizon's website, upon scrutinizing our address, suggested that I "check back later", suggesting that, at some distant date, they might indeed offer DSL in rural Lee county. I did learn, however, that T1 service can be installed virtually anywhere. For a price.

That price? Somewhere in the neighborhood of a car payment.

When we moved we still hadn't come right down to a final decision. For a period of time we used my Verizon MiFi as a stand-in. The device works well, but it had substantial drawbacks - the largest being that I needed to take it with me during the day. I'd originally gotten it (and still use it) to have broadband data access while on the road. However, part of the benefit to this is that we use data syncing systems - Microsoft Live Sync and Dropbox (have I ever mentioned Dropbox before?...) as automatic backups - when something is saved into one of these folders when I'm on the road, it automatically syncs to the home computers. That way, should anything happen to the devices on the road I don't lose my work. Which, of course, doesn't work if both systems aren't connected to the internet.

So it was clear we'd need to do something different. I broke down and ordered satellite internet. I say "broke down", as we'd had experience with satellite internet before. My folks have internet through HughesNet at their "cabin" in Wisconsin. Our interaction with that system primarily resulted in learning about bandwidth caps. Essentially my folks had enough leeway in their contract that they could check their email and download pictures from friends and family, but when the rest of the Wades hit the wifi channel - with my brother checking, rechecking, and rechecking again on his eBay auction, Ethan watching "that cool FaceBook video" over and over, and yours truly downloading that much needed patch for Civilization 4 - well, lets just say we cross that line in a hurry.

And - when you surpass the bandwidth cap you are punished. Hobbled down to dial-up speeds, HughesNet attacking your web-surfing habits like Kathy Bates in Misery.

That experience in mind, we went with WildBlue. HughesNet claimed to have higher speed service (though the bandwidth caps between the two were nearly identical), but they counted data usage by day, while WildBlue went with a rolling 30 days of usage. This seemed more forgiving - you could have a very busy internet day, then back off for a few days and bring things back down.

The experience with WildBlue was less than stellar from the outset. It was difficult to get an installation day scheduled and, when the day came and the young man showed up to install the dish on our roof, it was raining. As the rain persisted, he kept calling back to the office and suggesting we re-schedule. The re-scheduled date was going to be several weeks away. I protested and - to his credit - he put the satellite dish up on a ladder in the rain (after I made it clear that I would do the work in the attic. For such a brave young man he was quite anxious about the attic… Chalk it up either to an unreasonable fear of spiders, or perhaps a somewhat more reasonable fear of accidentally putting one's foot through a 150-year old plaster ceiling).

Since then we've seen considerable variability in performance - the latency of satellite (combined with the bandwidth caps) makes it utterly unsuitable for watching all but the briefest of videos online, or to use it for video or audio communications. And, of course, there is particular difficulty and often a complete lack of service if there's a thunderstorm.

Or snow. Of any kind.

Or Rain.

Or a stiff breeze on a cloudy day.

Or if it just doesn't f@&king feel like working.

This last part was particularly true during a period of time in which the modem would simply stop working properly about twice a week, requiring a hard reset (being unplugged for an ungodly number of Mississippi's and then plugged back in - typically right after you'd gotten into your jammies and sat down with a beer in front of the TV…). That one went on for nearly a month due to lack of time to call in - during which I kept meticulous track of the date, times, and weather conditions (naturally), only to ultimately be told, after much fruitless conversation, that I would have to call in when the problem was happening.

It took another technical assistance call and a service call later - the latter ostensibly made necessary as they absolutely had to send out a technician to make sure there wasn't a problem with my dish alignment... ...which he did by checking on WildBlue's website - to get the modem replaced.

It was against the backdrop of these events that I was particularly interested when I heard about Virgin Mobile's new pay-as-you go MiFi plan from Merlin Mann on MacBreak Weekly. This is the same device that I already use when I travel, but without the contract or the bandwidth cap that comes with the Verizon version. All that, at less than half the cost of WildBlue per month.

So this required some research. My first stop was the Virgin Mobile website to make sure the offer was real, that "unlimited" really meant no limits (cell phone companies are apparently allowed to call the plans "unlimited" if the cap is something that a certain high percentage of their customers are unlikely to exceed - Verizon's "unlimited" plans cap out at 5GB), and whether, most importantly, there was coverage at my home.

Much to my delight, it was all true, and the Homestead was awash in a bath of orange Virgin 3G service. So my final question was whether I would experience any differences in performance if I moved from the satellite to the cellular wireless. This required some testing to evaluate, but fortunately I already had a MiFi to compare it to.

I downloaded the speedtest app on the iPad, and went to speedtest.net on my iMac, and ran a series of trials to compare both the iPad and my desktop using the MiFi and WildBlue. I expected the MiFi to be slower, but I wanted to see if the difference would be large enough to discourage me. I ran ten trials under each condition, and then compared the results by running t-tests.

The results were surprising. In download speeds there was no significant difference in most of the trials, and on the one trial in which there was a difference the MiFi was the better of the two.

The MiFi was far, far faster in upload speeds, and had significantly less latency than the satellite.

The actual numbers and graphs can be seen here for those who are interested. The bottom line, though, is that the cellular wireless was always at least as good, and was better on most measures.

So I resolved to get myself a Virgin Mobile MiFi to replace my satellite. This turned out to be a bit of a challenge, as they were sold out on Virgin Mobile's site, and in a number of other online locations (I may not have been the only person to listen to this week's MacBreak Weekly or to read the NY Times review of it). But a little extra searching found that they had some in stock at the Peru Wal-Mart.

Since I've gotten things set up at home I've been playing with the system and it works extremely well. Everything was hooked up quickly, and I had everything running off of the Virgin MiFi in a few minutes. I even watched an episode of the Daily Show this evening to test it - it was Magnificent!

The iPad Review

As I write this it's been exactly one month since I brought my iPad home. I mean, it just looked so cute there in the store, blinking up at me from it's little cage - how could I not bring it home with me? And just like that metaphorical puppy, it's been a joy, but there have also been a few messes along the way.

I've been keeping notes on the device over the past four weeks, as I apparently have this insipid need to share my impressions of it with others. Let's start with the good news:

When I purchased the iPad it was with the intention of being able to largely replace my laptop - a three year old MacBook - with the device. To understand what this entails, it's probably helpful to understand how I use my computers. These are primarily work machines, and I use them to conduct data analyses for assessments, write reports, do billing, keep in contact with clients via email and Google Voice, etc. As much as possible we try to be an entirely virtual operation, and people typically send me information electronically. To accomplish the heavy lifting for data analyses and reports I use a 20" iMac with a second 20" Samsung monitor. I have documents synced using both Windows Live Sync (yes - it works with Macs, and its awesome) and Dropbox (also awesome), and email and calendars synced across all of my computers and my iPhone using Apple's Mobile Me. I am on the road several days each week, and it's my way to get things done when I am away. With these systems in place my MacBook has largely functioned as secondary workstation - in essence, when I fire up my MacBook on the road I have access to everything work-related I need just as I would on my iMac. The perfect remedy to the need to do things on the road.

Enter the iPad. It's role is to take up the job of the laptop on the road. As I mentioned in earlier discussions about the device, I was looking forward to it in particular because it promised to weigh significantly less in my backpack, require considerably less by way of additional fooferall in the form of power cords and cables, and still perform most of the tasks and activities I need from a laptop. In many ways it has done this exceptionally well.

Battery Life

The promised savings in weight and bulk come from couple of different sources. Firstly, the device is significantly lighter than a MacBook: 1.5 lbs for the iPad vs. 4.5 for my 2006 vintage MacBook. It's also considerably smaller, in all dimensions.

Secondarily, however, there is the question of the need for power cords. When I take my MacBook along I never do so without the power cord. Its battery is good for perhaps three hours of actual use before it's begging for the electric teat. That cord is big and bulky, taking up space and adding weight to my pack.

Typically the battery life predictions of electronics manufacturers - including Apple - are irrationally optimistic. The claims for the iPad were in the 10 hour range. I'd hoped for something like eight.

My results, like those of so many others, were very pleasantly surprising:

April 7, 2009

Today was the first real day "at work" with the iPad. I went to work today and took it along. At work it was tethered to my MiFi, sitting on my stand of proprietary design, acting throughout the day as a digital picture frame when not otherwise engaged checking email or activating google voice. My work day started at approximately 9:30 this morning. It's now 8:39 in the evening, and I am still above 20% battery left. While this perhaps does not represent continuous use - for example, this includes the half-hour drive from Dixon back home - in my typical real-world use of this device I am now running past 11 hours of use. At this point it is clear that the iPad can be expected to make it throughout the entire workday without needing a recharge. What's more, it also continues to retain sufficient charge for me to do some reading, web browsing, or writing such as I'm doing now.

In a conversation with the delightful Lanie Lee this morning she asked what I thought of the iPad. I answered honestly that it usually takes me a while to warm up to new devices - particularly when they cost a large chunk of change. I had similar experience with my first iPhone.

But today I had the iPad running as an email/calendar/google voice center and, quite frankly, it excelled at these functions. It was small and unobtrusive, but - paired with the MiFi - extremely effective at these functions. This task is primarily what I requested of my MacBook at work. It's always done this adequately, but in a way that was bulky and screamed "I'm using a laptop at work".

9:02 PM - 20% warning

10:33 PM - at 7% and still going. We're at 13 hours ladies and gentlemen!

Yes - 13 hours of battery life in real-world use. What's more, my experience is not atypical. Several reviewers have achieved similar outcomes, running the device playing video continuously. And apparently MacWorld's Chris Breen tried to find out how long it would run just playing audio (e.g. not running the screen), and gave up after when he still had over 70% battery after 48 hours.

I've put this less formally to the test since, and have yet to find a need to recharge before I get home. I have gotten to the point at which I simply do not carry the power cord with me when I take the iPad along. I have no fear that I will run out of power.

Reading on the iPad

A big component of how the device was talked about in the media was as an ebook reader. In fact, this was a source of frequent debate amongst the neck-beard set on the tech blog comment boards, with vehement proponents of e-ink claiming that reading on the iPad's LCD screen for extended periods of time would cause one's eyes to fall out.

I must be unusual in that my eyes have resolutely insisted on remaining in my noggin. I do, in fact, find that I read considerably more on this device than I have read in several years. Due to an insanely busy work schedule (which was just going to be for a short time when it started...), most of my pleasure reading has consisted of scanning websites while sitting in front of the TV in the evening. I have read a handful of long-form books on my iPhone, including Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach; Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free by frequent Wait Wait... panelist Charlie Pierce, and Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human by Richard Wrangham - and enjoyed the experience. However, much of this reading has been in down time - weekends up at the cabin or when taking the train to a conference - as I've found it very difficult to remain focused on reading in the evenings (whether on paper or on the iPhone), distracted by the combined pairing of fatigue and the television.

I've discovered that I seem to prefer reading on the iPad. It is, for some reason, easier to focus when using the device, even with the television running in the background. This is true for the printed word, but even more so for....

Well...

...for comic books. That's right, I said comic books! If an august personage such as Andy Ihnatko can let his geek flag fly in this respect, I can too! So there it is!

There are multiple comic book readers for the iPad. And these existed for the iPhone as well but, while I tried them on the iPhone, the comic reading experience on that small screen was interesting as a proof of concept, it was not something that called me back for repeat engagements. But Marvel Comics came out with an application and it all went something like this:

One application that I absolutely must give credit to is the Marvel Comic app. Being a fan of comic books by history I decided to give it a try. I downloaded two freebie issues of The New Avengers from 2004. The application works exceptionally well, allowing quick alteration from either a full-page presentation (the traditional comics page view) or a close-up panel to panel view. Either presentation is gorgeous, and the panel to panel view has the added bonus of not allowing you to see what's coming in advance.

The application is also available for the iPhone and iPod Touch, and it's based upon a user account. This means that, similar to the Kindle experience, you can have your comics with you wherever you go - they aren't in a single location. The iPhone isn't an ideal device for reading comics, but it's a nice option to have available when you are standing in line at the Sam's Club checkout.

This all was unfortunately done so well done that I was reminded that I actually like comic books quite a bit, and discovered that I needed - needed mind you - to know what happened after the second issue. I got out my wallet in preparation for engaging in the typical tedium of entering my name, credit card info, height, weight, blood type, etc, and tapped the "purchase" button. Much to my surprise the application asked me for my iTunes username and password instead.

I ended up buying the other four books in the series that were available in the application. The only complaint I would have at this point is that the number of comics available seems small. I am sure this will change as time goes on, but I really want to know what happens after New Avengers #6.

I later became aware that the Marvel app is actually based on Comixolgy's Comics app for the iPad, and that all of the marvel titles, plus titles from multiple other publishers, are also available on that application. I discovered, for example, that Matt Wagner finally got around to putting together the second section of his three part Mage series (apparently over a decade ago), and that there are a variety of other titles - Wanted and Bad Ass, among others - of which I was unaware. However, mostly I discovered that it turns out - apparently - I still like comic books.

Video on the iPad

As might be expected, video playback on the iPad is excellent. This is territory - video playback on portable devices - Apple has had well in hand for some time, and it's no exception here. With the 64gb that the device has available I have more than enough room on it for a few TV shows in case I'm on the road with nothing to do, as well as (and frankly more importantly) video for the little one to watch while traveling. 'Nuff said here.

Research, Email, Reference Access

A large part of completing the work I do includes doing research and reviewing documentation that has been provided for me. Typically this information arrives via email, or its available online. And again, in this respect the iPad excels. Whether one is doing research online, or reviewing documentation through a protocol such as Dropbox, the device works exactly as hoped, providing a exceptional web searching capability and very good document reading options as well - it will allow the user to open most major document formats for reading purposes. What's more, this option works as well as it does on any laptop, and the screen is frankly much easier to read than the one on the iPhone (which has frequently served this role for me).

Similarly, I keep in touch with many of my clients via email. I do a lot of basic emailing from my iPhone, but will haul out the laptop for longer form conversations. The email program on the iPad is exceptional, and more than meets this need. It's comfortable to work on, and the screen very nicely allows the writer to see what he's said - extremely important for longer emails (assuming one actually reads what one has written before one sends it...).

And speaking of writing...

Writing on the iPad

When I first got the device I bravely predicted that I would probably be primarily using a Bluetooth keyboard with my iPad. I did, in fact, pair up an Apple Bluetooth Keyboard with my iPad. What's more, this was an effortless activity:

Day 3 - sitting at my desk with the iPad hooked up to an Apple Wireless (bluetooth) keyboard. Took seconds to hook up, works flawlessly as I type this. Makes me wonder if I should take a typing test with this keyboard just for comparison (I think it would be too depressing).

The reality has turned out to be quite different than my prediction. As I did with my iPhone when I first got that device, I decided that I was at least going to give the software keyboard a try as I would have to have some familiarity with it for occasions on which I did not have the Bluetooth keyboard immediately available or in which it was simply not convenient to use.

As this is just a blog, it would likely have been perfectly acceptable to give you my impressions of whether the on-screen keyboard was good enough for day to day use. However, as it is my personal blog, those who know me well will know that there must be data. What you see in the heading picture is a measurement of my typing speed on the iPad's on-screen keyboard over time as compared to my rate on a standard Apple Bluetooth Keyboard and on my iPhone. Source for all of the speed tests was the iPhone typing test website.

The first, most disheartening thing I learned doing this is that I'm not as fast on the standard keyboard as I thought. Back in typing class in high school I seem to recall typing around 90 WPM. I've told people a number of times in the past that I type 90 wpm. In fact, a considerable amount of my personal self-worth was wrapped up in that number....

Ahem...

The upshot here is that, with about a month of practice I am now nearly as fast with the virtual keys as I am with those that are solid and real. I no longer carry along the Bluetooth keyboard, and I've comfortably written multiple page documents - including this entry - all with virtual keys. I would write my novel on this device.

The Bad

There's always a downside, and this device is no exception. The downside, for me, comes from a surprising source: the iWork suite.

iWork is an office suite written by Apple specifically for its devices. They came out with the desktop version several years ago now, and these programs are surprisingly good. Pages and Keynote - the word processing and presentation program respectively - are in my opinion considerably better products than their Microsoft Office counterparts. Numbers, their spreadsheet, isn't quite as good as Excel for calculations and graphing, but it's serviceable enough. Importantly, these products provide a means to reliably translate documents from iWork formats to PDF and MS Office format, removing most of the concerns about compatibility that come with using alternative office productivity software. I use Pages and Keynote almost exclusively when writing reports or doing presentations.

It was with this experience in mind that I downloaded the three iWork applications for the iPad quite literally on day one. My initial impressions - mostly of Pages - were really pretty good. It was easy to write on - particularly with the device in landscape orientation and the virtual keyboard activated. There were some odd User Interface (UI) decisions made - the formatting tools are only available in portrait orientation, making it very cumbersome to format as you write, which is my common practice (to italicize as you go you must stop typing, orient the device to portrait mode to get the toolbar to show, select the word in question, tap the appropriate tool button on the screen re-orient to landscape, and return to typing) - but I assumed these would be non-issues as I would typically be writing with the Bluetooth keyboard...

But these are frankly minor issues, and ones which I am confident that Apple, with it's relatively rapid software update pattern, will address in the near future (I would vote for them making it an option to put the tools palette on your iPhone via Bluetooth similar to the way the Scrabble app for the iPad works, but I'd be happy if they'd simply put the modifier keys down a level or two into the virtual keyboard as well). The major issues surround file handling and translation.

There has been quite a bit written by actual reviewers about the issues with file handling in iWork, so I will only summarize here: In essence, it's a pain in the ass to get your files on to and off of the device.

We make heavy use of a file-sharing product called Dropbox (which I also mentioned - several times - above). This is a wonderful program which syncs files across multiple computers and also makes them accessible on the web. It makes it possible for me to work on a report at home on my desktop but then stop, run my daughter up to gymnastics and, while waiting, I can pop open my laptop and pick up exactly where I left off on the report. There is no need for me to think about what files I want to take along, no preparation of flash drives, no need for virtual networking applications to work back to the desktop. The file is simply there. It just works.

Unfortunately, it doesn't work the same way on the iPad. I can access files on Dropbox either through the web interface or through their new iPad app. I can open a document in Pages and edit it quite nicely. However, I cannot save that document back to Dropbox. Or to anywhere else except to Pages on the iPad.

This is not to say that I cannot get the document off of the device - I can export it through iTunes, send it to iWork.com, or email it out. But at that point I now have two versions of the document - the original on Dropbox, and the new copy. Keeping track of versions is a problem that anyone who has been using computers for this type of work is aware of - carefully reviewing each copy to make sure you have the "right" version of it. It is definitely something that no longer should be an issue, and stands in stark contrast to other programs on the device:

As I sit here in my chair this Sunday evening reading Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work I realize a couple of things:

- I've spent more time reading this book combined today then I have in the prior three weeks or so since I got it. And;

- The way the kindle and marvel comics apps behave - that ability to sit-down at, or pick up, any connected device - my iPhone, my ipad, or the iMac on my desk - is precisely why the file transfer issue in iWork is so very frustrating and disappointing. They know how to do this, and do it well. Apple is supposed to know how to be at, and beyond, the cutting edge of user convenience. They should already have figured out that having the files updated and accessible wherever we are was a primary feature.

The other thing I've come across - which I haven't actually seen mentioned by any other reviewers - is problems with document translation to PDF. Specifically, we will distribute reports to clients as PDF's over email, and the iWork suite on the iPad offers this as an option in all three of the productivity programs. Unfortunately, I have found that eroded PDF's, distributed via email, are unreadable for the recipient under some circumstances. These seem to be very specific and include:

The document has been imported to the iPad from a desktop (e.g. It was not natively written on the iPad).
The document contains graphics.
The recipient is reading the document on a PC running Windows.

In fact, some investigation into this suggests that it may be folks using older versions of Adobe reader that are having trouble reading the documents (I've found that I can read the same documents just fine on all of my apple devices). But many of my clients are in social service agencies which are likely not to have recently updated their computer hardware or software, making this a pervasive problem for me. I've found workarounds to prevent this - not emailing documents as PDF's from the device, but rather waiting to distribute when I get back to the desktop works, and it's necessarily part of my workflow because of the file handling problems - but this adds additional steps that I didn't have before, which is certainly not something that I wanted from a new device.

In sum

Aside from the file issues I absolutely love the device. And, frankly, the downsides really stand in sharp relief because it does everything else so very well. I am reading more long-form writing (e.g. not webpages) than I have in years, and have re-discovered my love for comic books. It's an excellent device to research and do work on, and in most respects meets the promise of replacing my laptop. Most days of the week my Macbook doesn't join me at all, with only the iPad and my iPhone keeping me company. This is a significant improvement in terms of reduction of both weight and bulk, and I'm very happy with it. Happy enough, in fact, that I carry it and contend with the file transfer issues rather than bringing along the MacBook which would allow me to avoid them.

There's been lots of debate about what this device is - a big iPod Touch, a Netbook or laptop replacement, an ebook reader, or something different entirely. I'm on record as being perfectly happy with the idea of it simply being a bigger iPod Touch. However, after a month with the iPad I fall into the latter category - this is something new.

It, in fact, operates as a better portable device than any notebook I've ever owned (and I've owned several), and without the compromises that the iPhone requires. It is an extension of the desktop for work purposes, while also offering multiple entertainment options for down time - my books, my comics, my tv shows and movies can be with me whoever I go, and reading or watching them is a no-compromise proposition. I purchased the iPad instead of updating my three-year old MacBook, and a month into it I have no regrets with respect to that decision. It's quite simply the case that a notebook is far more than I need on the road most of the time. I doubt I am alone in this case.

Once the issues with iWork are addressed (and I'm relatively confident that they both will be addressed, and that it will happen relatively quickly, given Apple's typical product update cycle), there will be virtually no reason for me to have a notebook computer at all.