It’s been a week now that I’ve been playing with my new iPad (and by the lack of blog entries I’ve posted during that week, it’s pretty obvious that playing with the iPad is what I’ve been doing).
The iPad is now my favorite tool for reading email and web cruising. The Mail app, especially in landscape mode, is just plain gorgeous, and far easier to read than on my MacBook. For my RSS feeds, I’ve recently started using Pulse, a newsreader app, which has somewhat the same esthetic effect–Pulse gives you each feed in a scrollable row, so that it’s easy to skim through them for interesting items, and allows you to view the full items either as text or html, and gives you the option of jumping into Safari. Essentially, my morning mail-and-web routine now uses my iPad, which frees me from my desk to wander where I will while I catch up with news from the outside world.
Writing has been a bit trickier to work out. Though I like Pages well enough for its design and layout options, and for the occasional short letter, I’m not a fan of it for my regular writing. On my laptop, I use Scrivener for most of my writing, exporting to Nisus Writer Pro when I need something that looks like a Word doc to the rest of the world. But Scrivener is the product of a teeny two-person shop and there is no iPad version planned, so for the time being, I’m using myTexts for my everyday writing. It’s a nice straightforward, no-frills writing app, great for banging out the words without worrying about styles and formatting.
All I need now is to tweak the ergonomics of writing on the iPad a bit. I’ve used a Bluetooth keyboard at my desk with my MacBook for a few months, which has worked wonders for my shoulders—my desk is too high for comfortable typing on the laptop, and if I actually use the laptop in my lap, the arms and wrists are happier, but my eyes and neck and shoulders are not.
Sitting at a table, with my keyboard on my lap and the iPad on the table works pretty well, but I think I may toddle off to Ikea one of these days for a wheeled laptop tray, so I can slouch with my feet up in my recliner or on my sofa with my keyboard on my lap and the iPad floating at the right eye level.
So I’m comfy at home, or with the 3G, free to read my morning email at the local Peet’s. Life is good.
Mary Griffith 