The iPad was released with a few thousand apps but none that really appealed to me. It took a while for a great RSS reader to appear and for a great Twitter client to show up. Facebook still hasn’t arrived so I just use their web site when I absolutely have to see what friends are up to. I waited a few months before buying an iPad, that’s how unconvinced I was that this would even be worth it but $500 isn’t a lot of money to a guy that LOVES technology. $500 is the price of a new pair of headphones. I’m not made of money but what I do make mostly goes to technology and the iPad was cool and small and fun. I bought one and, for the first 12 months, I just didn’t feel like it was worth it. Crazy!
The iPad was useful but after reading news articles and a few pages on a Kindle book and perhaps a low-res racing game, I’d put it away, grab my laptop and blog. For a lot of bloggers, Twitter and Quora and Summer movies hurt the frequency of posts. For me, the iPad has affected how much I blog. My blogging has been hurt by the iPad and I’m not afraid to admit it.
Every day, I kill the battery on the iPad. That’s how much I use it. It’s 7PM and my iPad is at 20% and will soon be dead. Why has the iPad been in my arms all day and not my MacBook which I only used once in the past week to bang out some emails on my trip to San Francisco?
I wake up at 6AM, grab my iPad and moderate emails. This process involves reviewing and deleting emails that I don’t need. I’ll respond to any that require a single line of text and I’ll move to RSS feeds. The smart cover has enabled me to type on the iPad in landscape mode everywhere I go. The smart cover flips around backward and I’m typing fast enough considering I’m still in bed and half-asleep. Before the smart cover, you had to get a thick case that propped up sideways and Apple’s case was crap. The smart cover is amazing. RSS review is basically deleting or marking as read the items I don’t care about. I’ll take about 75% of the unread items out before I get out of bed. I want to know about Facebook Privacy changes but not about Mark Z’s 7 million dollar mansion. I launch iTunes and enable AirPlay to stream music to my AppleTV, Airport Express Speakers and I start my morning by making a cup of tea.
Battery Life – 97%
I have an iPhone but I prefer to launch an audio book on my iPad (it’s a 64 gigabyte model so I keep audio books on the iPad and iPhone is only music). I get in the car and my iPad connects automatically to my Bluetooth system. I stream a book to my car stereo on my 25 minute drive to work.
Battery Life – 90%
I get to work early, make another cup of tea (I keep tea & loose leaf tea holders at home & work). I launch Reeder and update RSS feeds. I prop my feet up for half an hour and read the important industry news for my job. My office door is closed, headphones are in and I get caught up on what is going on in my industry (navigation & mapping). I’ll field another few emails and perhaps post a tweet simply exclaiming what day it is.
Battery Life – 80%
Of note, I have a CDMA Verizon iPad so the battery gets eaten much faster than my WiFi iPad. WiFi iPad if not connected to a base station would lose 5% of battery life when not used in a day. The Verizon iPad loses 30% just sitting there in a day. This is due to Google Latitude, push emails and Boxcar.
I fire up my Dell notebook at the office and get to work. This is my work station until around 12:30PM. During lunch, I take my iPad and sit outside or in our lunch room and read Instapaper articles that I bookmarked while getting work done. I see things I want to read but won’t pause my work to read them. These are reserved for lunch time. I’ll check baseball news and standings and check what time the SF Giants are playing that day. I’ll review Twitter & Facebook before my 30-45 minute lunch break is over.
Battery Life – 60%
If there’s a baseball game on, I’ll prop the iPad up vertically and watch a game / listen to a game while working the last couple hours of the day. It’s not distracting and I glance over anytime there’s a great play as the announcer’s voice generally goes up a few octaves when something amazing is happening. Before leaving, I’ll check my RSS feeds again, send long articles to Instapaper and read a few misc. Things.
Battery Life – 45% Time to go home.
On the way home, I’ll finish another chapter of my audio book
Battery Life – 40%
At home, I’ll pull up a recipe for the night and make that. I may have even used the Epicurious app while at the grocery store which has a handy shopping list feature where you favorite recipes and it puts ingredients in your cart as a list for when you go to the store. I’ll make a drink using a Cocktails app and a recipe using Epicurious or a Safari search. I’ll stream audio to my AppleTV via the iPad and eat dinner. I may use the Remote.app for playing a TV show or movie on my television.
Battery Life – 30%
8PM, I lay in my office and lean back to read everything in tech news I missed that day. I bookmark things that I want to blog about and get to Inbox Zero, Google Reader Zero and Instapaper Zero by around 10PM.
I may play a game like Real Racing. If it’s a weekend, I’ll fire up a movie and keep the iPad propped up so I can get push notifications or search IMDB for an artist in this movie that I’m interested in hearing more about. I might to to Netflix to add some films from that artist to my queue.
Battery life – 15%
10PM, I lay down and once again check news articles. I may read a chapter on my Kindle and check the weather for the next day. I do a final check of my schedule for the next day since Exchange is plugged into my iPad so I can check my next day meetings and this will tell me if I’m setting my clock for 8AM or 5AM since many of my colleagues are based in Europe, we’ll have some early meetings.
The iPad usually dies at this point and I’ll have to check the schedule on my iPhone.
This is a day in the life of Adam and his iPad. A year ago, I used the iPad once a day to do a Safari search or check emails. A year ago, I preferred writing on my iPhone or MacBook but the speed of iPad 2 plus Verizon + smart cover + battery life + convenience + apps means I’m using the iPad much more.
It’s a phenomenal device and it’s a device that everyone should own. The iPad has offset the time on my work computer, personal computer and iPhone. I can’t believe I’m saying it out loud but I was wrong. The iPad has changed how I compute. I still get work done and still blog but the iPad has replaced everything that is not absolutely essential on a computer. I still need a computer for work but, for everything else, there’s iPad.