The Productive Student

I received my iPad on Saturday, a day after the official release in 9 more countries outside the U.S. I’d like to share my initial thoughts on the device with you, considering some business-model aspects as well as usability in an academic environment.

First off: I am truly impressed with the device. It was well worth the investment. That said, let’s ditch all the ballyhoo and jump right to some more critical points.

Reading

The iPad, to me, is a reader and browsing device. After using it over the weekend, I know for sure at this I’ll be the primary way to read news, blogs and view video and images.

I say this in contrast to our smartphones: they are primarily communication devices. While the iPad does do e-mail, IM and social media as much as any other computer, i don’t see that as the main use case. Then again, the selling point may just be this versatility, and it Kiffers from person to person.

From a business point of view, it’s already changed things. I have bought issues of magazines – something I haven’t done since my last issue of “Mickey Mouse” and a few sporadic buys in between around 10 years ago. I have shelled out serious bucks in two days for editorial content our generation is used to getting for free. The iPad will bring back valuation of professionally edited content, opinion and in-depth niche material. A whole slice of people who, until now, were happy consuming “free” news will no longer be happy to do so.

That, I think, is the beginning of the much-touted revival of print media. It’s more than that. It’s the revival of media as such, and a convergence of international video, text, audio and imagery accessible to everyone at any time at a “local” price. I didn’t have access to Time magazine at a regular newsstand here in Switzerland. Now. I have it right on my iPad.

I find this trend funny because it seems that with print, the publishing houses have no trouble distributing their content freely on the app store. This is not the case with movies: to date, I can’t buy video content off the iTunes store. I’ve already spent more money on magazines than on video content, which exists in the U.S. since well over five years now.

The App Store

While magazines are emptying my wallet, I noticed that the app store is showing some disturbing trends. The ratio of free apps to paid ones is, based on my browsing perception, immensely lower than on the iPhone. I roughly counted one free app in ten paid ones.

Now, this may be the design of how the app store “features” apps. It also probably is an obvious consequence of the app store’s success, which is followed by a slew of developers now wanting to cash in on “HD” versions of their free iPhone counterparts. Another reason may be that iPad apps simply set certain expectations, i.e., a full-fledged UI with rich functionality. This means that developing for the iPad is simply more costly, and hence, apps cost more.

The Mac has a healthy community of free, libre and open-source software. I don’t see that kind of culture emerging on the app-store, perhaps due to it’s philosophy of close control and centralization. (there are many open source options on the app store, spearheaded by WebKit of course, but they are few).

I saw this frustration in my little brother (age 13), who pretty much gave up searching through the app store for a free ipad-optimized game that looked half-way interesting. He’d rather stick to flash sites, Apple.

Beyond that, I also noticed that using iPhone apps on this device is silly. It’s ok if you need the functionality and there is no alternative, but I found myself rather deleting such apps than tolerating their blurry app icons on my home screen.

This leads to my next big point of frustration: Some apps’ iPad versions are separate purchases from their iPhone versions, while others are not. This means that I sometimes have to maintain two copies in iTunes of essentially the same app, and I sometimes don’t. I can see how developers want to cash in on the iPad as a separate purchase, and I don’t blame them. I blame Apple for not having put an obvious process for this in place. Users pay the price, by being confused about paid apps, iPod apps and “universal” apps. More so because the distinction between these types is made only within the app store, and poorly at that. On my devices, I have no direct way of telling what apps will —or should— be synced to my other devices as well.

I’ve also noticed that the app store seems relatively bleak. A lot of developers are still catching up, and the lack of a proper blogging tool, official Twitter client or iPad version of my most used apps (like the Swiss train schedule) is distressing.

Notebook Replacement

I’ve noticed how my usage patterns have changed: I use my iPhone a lot less, and when I do, it’s mostly for communication tasks (quick e-mail replies, text messages, Twitter, Facebook tracking) and the occasional check on the headlines. I never enjoyed using the browser and now I have a way never to use it at all.

I also don’t use my desktop for a variety of tasks anymore. The most surprising change has been that I prefer to do most e-mail on the iPad. I’d like to only criticize the lackluster Exchange integration. The calendar doesn’t handle Outlook invitations very well, over-simplifying the options where Outlook really shines. Categories and calendar notes don’t sync at all or incompletely. His hasn’t bothered me on the iPhone, but on the iPad, it gets distressing, and there’s no alternative that is as feature-rich as Microsoft Outlook.

I do still see the need for a desktop, as file management and creation are still superior. Imagine downloading a file from a intranet site (such as university sites for class material), reading it, editing it and sending it via e-mail. This involves Safari, a PDF app, Pages and Mail. And there’s no straightforward way to pass the file from one to the other. At least, there is no unified way to do so, which may appear consistent across apps.

In Business

The iPad widens business opportunities brought on by the iPhone. It is a form factor in which people will enjoy consuming media and doing everyday web-related tasks.

The biggest change, to me, is in reading. Books, magazines, blogs. I don’t see how magazine publishers can continue asking for the same price as print counterparts unless production value rises significantly. Magazines need videos, interactive content and lasting value to succeed on the iPad. Or they need to be priced much lower. This is what we saw with music on iTunes.

The magazine business on the iPad will call for designers with new skill sets. They must oversee end-to-end production of digital magazines, from layouting, technical finishing and bundling into an app for various devices. It’ll change the process of publishing by creating new jobs and job titles.

In Academia

The student union of my university just released an app that consolidates events, news and campus-related activities into one app. Considering how many students have an iPhone, this will surely contribute to campus life.

Beyond such endeavors, I’m keen to see how professors embrace apps for their courses. It’d be great to see a development framework for iPhone apps that helps professors create apps for their courses cheaply. Class material, videos, links to relevant reading and more. These things exist already in web-based formats. But the iPad OS, with all it’s frameworks and APIs, can provide for a richer experience.

I’m not sure how well the iPad can replace paper and pencil as a note-taking device (I don’t believe in notebooks as note-takers). But it comes very close.

Exciting times are ahead, and being an early adoptee brings with it the cost of having to wait for the rest of the world to catch up. And I’m waiting.