I needed a new solution. My Acer is two and a half years old and overheats before I could even do anything meaningful on it. It left me no choice but to force-feed my entire computing life into my iPad. It's where I read, watch videos, surf the web, chat, play games... I never even have to connect it to my PC anymore thanks to the cloud. IOS is fast, intuitive, and power-efficient - perfect for an experience device like the tablet. If the iPad could just become more PC-like in some ways, it could be the perfect solution for me.
I've been looking forward to the Surface Tablet and Windows 8 to be that holy grail device which could bridge the laptop and tablet worlds. However, it turned out to be tweener device that is neither a good laptop nor a usable tablet. The Lenovo Yoga proved intriguing for a while, but the high price and the 13.3 inch tablet form factor were too off-putting. With two of its best devices out of the way, I realized that the biggest problem of Windows 8 lies in the OS itself. Everything about it was inconsistent in its effort to be everything to everyone.
It left me with the next best option: the Macbook Air. I can do meaningful work on it, yet it's not much heavier and thicker than an iPad, has great battery life and iOS features like gestures and an app store. Many reviews have declared it as the perfect laptop, a mix of portability and power with a price that competitors find difficult to match. Although I still found the price exorbitant, I psyched myself to jump into the Mac bandwagon but pulled back at the last minute after a few days playing with my dad's new Macbook Pro.
Mountain Lion OS is undoubtedly the best version of Mac OS X yet. The gestures are amazing, combining the best elements of a touchscreen with the precision of the mouse. I loved how consistent it was with IOS. However, I still had this feeling of 'constraint' which I had always felt with OS X. I had a Mac Mini once, and all the complaints I had with it surfaced right back. Apple's vision of the OS has always been activity-based rather than content-based. This paradigm works well with experience devices, but when I work on a PC I sometimes just want to manipulate files directly and get the application chromes out of the way. It was frustrating to have such unintuitive file systems especially for my files. It felt like a locked down desktop to me, lacking the freedom and sense of control I had always felt with Windows.
I went back to square one and reflected deeply about what I really wanted in a computer, about which tasks I do most frequently and how well my current solution, the iPad, could fulfill them. I'd say I spend 50% of my free time reading, which the iPad satisfies with read-now app Flipboard, read-later app Pocket, and long-form reading apps iBooks and Kindle. I spend maybe 20-30% of my time watching videos and browsing the web, and the iPad answers this need satisfactorily as well. Another thing I do frequently is Skype chatting and video calling. Again, the iPad trumps any laptop in this regard. In terms of what I'd like to do more, the iPad remains superior: checking mail, playing immersive games, and drawing on Paper. They all feel natural on the iPad. As Steve Jobs proclaimed in his presentation, the iPad does a few key things better than any laptop. With the expanded app selection, these key things now represent 90% of my computing activities. The question is, do I still need to shell out a thousand dollars for the few things my iPad remains unable to do?
As far as I'm concerned, laptops now edge the iPad on only two major fronts: file management and typing. Since it's an OS-level problem, nothing can be done with file management for now, which leaves the iPad with the other major flaw: typing. I believe that a good physical keyboard is essentially what draws the line between a consumption device such as an iPad and a productivity machine such as a laptop. Touch typing with two hands on the iPad is so cumbersome that I often resort to thumb typing, which is far from ideal given the size and weight of the device. To make matters worse, typing instantly renders half the screen real estate unusable.
The eureka moment came when my brother asked me for advice on the best under-700-USD laptop to buy at this point. I answered him in jest: an iPad with a keyboard. It gradually dawned on me that it wasn't so crazy after all. A keyboard case could essentially transform the iPad, not just into an ordinary laptop, but the lightest, thinnest laptop with the longest battery life, smooth operation, Retina display, a detachable touchscreen, and a library of 500,000 apps!
What would remain as the drawbacks then? Not many. Multitasking is a major concern, but the 4 finger swipe to switch from one app to another suffices for now. Besides, the IOS way to focus your concentration on one app also boosts productivity. The lack of office apps has already been somehow augmented by excellent productivity apps like Readability, IA Writer, Evernote, and of course Dropbox. There are some small concerns with the limited browser and constrained communication between apps, but copy and paste also suffices in many instances. As mentioned, the remaining major flaw of the "iPad as laptop" is that it cannot manage files both within its own drive and in external drives. In that use case, I still need my laptop, but it will be relegated to the role of 'file facilitator' (and the occasional formal work), while my iPad will be my go-to device for everything else. Problem solved.
The quest for the best keyboard case pointed to a single holy grail product: the Logitech Ultrathin Keyboard case. It was reviewed as the top keyboard case by two of my favorite tech review sites: Wirecutter and The Verge. My brother and I both got it in Taipei for less than the US price, and we couldn't be happier. The satisfying 'click' of the keyboard to the iPad transforms it into a new device altogether, one that is the best of all worlds at a fraction of the cost. I haven't used my laptop in a month, and I don't miss it at all. I found the ideal computing solution through my iPad and Logitech Ultrathin keyboard case, and it will remain the ideal solution while I wait for the future to arrive: a more consistent Windows 8, a more IOS-like Macbook Air, a Retina iPad Mini, and money to burn.
No comments:
Post a Comment