Facebook  Twitter  Pinterest  Flickr  Google+  YouTube  Instagram

iPad Thoughts

Written on: April 14th, 2010 by: in Blog Posts

I was very fortunate to be able to spend a lot of my vacation last week “road-testing” a new iPad, and I’m happy to report my findings! First, let’s say that while the iPad is very cool indeed, there are some significant limitations overall- as an e-reader device, however, I don’t think that there’s an equal.

The iPad works pretty much out of the box, and once it was unpacked, I got down to the business of downloading a number of library-oriented applications. The iReader native Apple e-bookstore and reader app is very nice, although I think that the virtual bookshelf imagery is a bit hackneyed at this point. However there were all of the titles one could hope for- a little pricier I think that Amazon. The user-interface for the reader is very nice indeed, and extremely intuitive. The reader ‘swipes’ the page to turn it back and forward, and there are tools at the top of the screen for font size, bookmarking etc. The large size of the iPad screen makes this the closest thing to reading a real book- the appearance and ‘feel’ is very book-like: when you factor in the fact that this is only one of the many things that the iPad does (albeit one at a time- more later), you have to think that Jeff Bezos over at Amazon.com is chewing his fingernails down to the bone.

Alternatively, Jeff Bezos probably knows exactly what he is doing, as is shown by the fact that Amazon very quickly brought out a Kindle App for the iPad, which is a beautiful piece of work and almost completely emulates the experience of reading a book natively on an actual Kindle. Considering that the books read on the Kindle app are purchased through Amazon, maybe the Kindle’s success was as a device that bridged the transition between print reading and digital reading for a mass audience, and Amazon is happy to migrate to whatever becomes the ubiquitous device – although this probably won’t be received well by the millions of people who purchased a kindle over the past year or so!
The absence of a flash media player on the iPad means that it’s sadly not possible to view Hulu.com television programming. However, there are plenty of alternatives. The NetFlix app will stream movies to the pad over wifi, and there’s also an ABC TV application that shows current programming. For newspapers, the New York Times and USA Today both have innovative applications, although, in a sign of the times, the NYT application doesn’t provide full access to the daily paper- rather it’s a scaled-back “editors selections” from the current edition. The NYT will implement a paywall for its online content within the next few months, so this is probably something like what the new website will look like.
Another area where the iPad stands apart from any of it competition is in its appeal to comic-book fans. The Marvel comics app is incredible- one of a couple of comics-oriented apps that might be more transformative to that industry than ereaders in general might be to bookstores, libraries, and publishers. Reading a comic book on an iPad is simply….better than reading it in print. The colors are more vibrant, the size of the comic is about the same, so nothing is lost there- and additionally readers can view a frame-by-frame presentation of the page that adds a new cinematic aspect to the reading experience.
As for the web-browser- no surprises there, and the iPad screen and keyboard makes navigating and completing forms and fields relatively easy. This blog looks fine on the iPad- although of course you can’t see the limited amount of flash content that the regular page has, and the main library website and catalog are also more than adequate. I was particularly interested to note that it is possible to listen to some of our NetLibrary audiobooks on the iPad (the ones in MP3 format)- presumably it will also be possible to view our ebooks as well.

What about the limitations? Well, the fact that the iPad only does one thing at a time is a real limitation, and kind of annoying. I don’t really see any reason why I shouldn’t be able to listen to music on the Rhapsody app while reading a book with the Kindle app, but this generation at least of the iPad doesn’t allow me to do so. Additionally, iPad apps are MUCH more expensive than iPhone/iTouch applications, and there are far fewer of them at this time. You can download iPhone apps to the iPad but for the most part, they look kind of crappy.

So what about the impact on reading? I think, that for right now at least, the printed book is still safe. For the most part, this kind of device presents advantages mostly to the reader as consumer, and to the publisher. It’s easier to get books (and easier to sell them and persuade the reader that the demand exists) but in general, the experience of reading them is the same. I had downloaded an example of one of the much-lauded “vooks” (video-books) which provide additional embedded content along with the print material, such as short videos, animations and the like. At least the one that I checked out seemed to be hastily cobbled together- the enhanced content was relevant, somewhat informative, but didn’t really transform the experience of reading it. However, I could only think of what could be done by an author like David Foster Wallace with this medium, or about how much better an incredible book like House of Leaves could be if the printed words could actually come alive in the way the author wanted them to, or how a true multimedia, hypertexted novel could be realized on this kind of device. I don’t think there’s anything like that out there yet, however.

It was also incredibly to see how my 10 year old daughter could simply pick up the device and figure it out (you may have already seen the video of the 2 year old picking up the iPad for the first time). Worrying, in some ways, as well: without a revolution in content and the reading experience, what is the likelihood that a kid will pick up this kind of device and think “well, here’s a thing that lets me do all kinds of interactive activities, watch videos and tv shows, play really dynamic and exciting games…I know what I’ll do, I’ll read a book on it.”