iPad Thoughts

Don’t buy an iPad unless you plan on spending a good bit on apps up front…otherwise, you won’t be able to make the most of the device.

The keyboard is better than I would have expected when in landscape mode. I still like to attach the Apple Bluetooth keyboard if I want to type a lot – but the built-in keyboard certainly gets the job done. If you don’t type many numbers or special symbols, it’s possible to type at a really good clip.

Book reading is fantastic – both in iBooks and Kindle for iPad. iBooks is the prettier app in general. I love the Kindle background image though – it changes based on time of day. As expected, Kindle has a much larger selection. If I buy new books, I’m probably going to lean toward the Kindle for portability reasons. Importing ePub books into iBooks works fine and they look very nice – so I’ll still use it to read my books that are purchased outside of either store. If you need to read a PDF book, you’ll want to look at GoodReader (or other apps)…the PDF reading interface in GR isn’t as good as iBooks or Kindle, but the text is perfectly readable and it gets the job done.

Battery life is pretty fantastic – it looks like I can get 2 days of moderate use on a charge. Very happy.

The official Apple case is good, but overpriced. I got it because it has a mode to angle the iPad like a keyboard and it really does help. It also has a way to stand the iPad up so you can watch movies or make a virtual laptop (with the Bluetooth keyboard). I definitely prefer with a case to without it, but the case itself just doesn’t feel quite up to Apple quality construction wise. The seam around the outside is super large and annoying sometimes.

The screen collects tons of fingerprints – it cleans up quick and easy, but if you look at the screen on an angle or in bright light, then you’ll notice them quite a bit. I haven’t found them too distracting, but they are there.

This is the first iPhone OS product that I’ve really wanted multitasking on. It’s not a laptop replacement as a whole, but certain things are better than on a laptop/desktop..but it would be even better if multiple background apps could run.

The app store is a bit of a mess right now – Apple is actively changing it each day, but it’s still hard to find apps In the store without knowing the app name. It was far worse on Sat, but it’s still not quite there.

All in all, I’ve very happy with the purchase. I do still want a stylus though – I just can’t take notes with my fingers and the keyboard isn’t quite fast enough for me. If I have a Microsoft Courier plus an iPad, I think that will be everything I need for my mobile productivity. We’ll see – I’m excited to see what new apps come out in the next few months…some pretty amazing things are possible now, so it will be awesome to see them. And yes, this whole post was written on the virtual keyboard on the iPad…and it was a pleasant experience. 🙂

Here is my first round of iPad app purchases:

Pages

Keynote

Numbers

Sketchbook Pro

Expense Tablet

Magic Piano

Wolfram Alpha

Weather HD

iMockups

Sketchpad HD

Things

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I’ve got about 20 more than I’m going to think about over the weekend – mostly games. I think tower defense and RTS games are going to be fantastic on iPad…specifically interested in Red Alert…but I want to see some reviews before I plunk down the $13 (since I’m not a huge gamer).

So, my Paypal account was hacked a few days ago apparently. I reconcile my financial records with my bank & credit card accounts at least once a week…this week, there was $1700 missing from my bank account. I made the mistake of linking Paypal to both my credit card and my bank account. I had my reasons for adding my bank account (it used to bypass fees and a few other things), but I never expected it to be a problem since Paypal seemed trustworthy.

Well, I don’t know how it happened…it wasn’t a phishing scam, or my giving out my account info (intentionally at least) to friends/family or anyone else. Somehow the hacker was able to get into my account, update my credit card address to his, and then order a PC from HP online…and then cancel the order and get the refund sent to him. Paypal never sent me a payment confirmation email like they normally do, but my email address is still the only one on the account (at least it was when I checked). So I’m surprised I didn’t know about this earlier. I’m also surprised they didn’t validate the update to the credit card billing address (since it’s used to confirm a shipping address). Maybe my CC company said it was valid, but it wasn’t…totally different city, state, and street address…

I’m a bit miffed at this whole thing – I do conduct business online, but I’m pretty careful with anything financial online. I’ve tried to extend trust proactively to a handful of sites that I found useful…Paypal, Mint, and a few others. I think that was a mistake now – I’m going to go back and make sure any online account never has my checking account info. The only exception will be my mortgage and utility companies…at least for now. I really don’t want to mail in bills for those…so I’ll proceed with caution there. I don’t really believe all of these services at automatically insecure due to this one issue with Paypal, but it just made me thing about it and every copy of my account info increases the chances of a security breach.

I’m not worried about getting my money back – I feel confident (at this point at least) that Paypal will get everything sorted out and fixed up within a week or two. This isn’t something I want to deal with again though – I don’t normally keep a ton of money in my checking account, so if this would have happened a few months ago, it would have been a huge issue. As is, it’s just a wake up call and an annoyance. It’s a good learning experience at least.