A big part of my job is finding new technologies and keeping myself informed -- for this, the iPad has been an excellent tool.
Another big part of my job is testing out new technologies and writing about my experiences -- for this, the iPad is next to useless.
That said, I take a lot of notes on my iPad. For this, it's not optimal, but its getting better -- closer to pen & paper. Unlike pen & paper, I can actually share my notes and drawings with my globally-distributed team.
If Apple wants to reverse the trend of perception against the iPad as a consume-only device, they should perfect its ability to simulate pen & paper and tout its usefulness as a note-taking device. This appears to be the approach Samsung is taking with the Galaxy Note.
Ditto. I got rid of my Facebook account for that reason, primarily -- I don't believe monopoly is ever a good thing and Facebook is headed that way fast (simply because of the network effect, not because they're gurus at building monopolies).
There's another reason I ditched Facebook, though. I found that my life was getting too entangled with other people. I had a lot of friends in the past who worked or still work for the US govt. and my current views on that government (that it is corrupt to the core and needs to be rebooted) were making them afraid for their jobs. Simply unfriending me is not enough, because Facebook has a memory...so I sent everyone my email and Twitter ID and went through the 2-week-long process of deleting my Facebook account.
What scares the hell out of me is that Facebook is concentrating so much personal knowledge in one place -- one-stop shopping for corrupt governments!
The proper approach is to federate the social networks together, so people can move from Facebook to Twitter to G+ to LinkedIn effortlessly but retain control of their data and hence put up a sizable barrier to corruption.
Another big part of my job is testing out new technologies and writing about my experiences -- for this, the iPad is next to useless.
That said, I take a lot of notes on my iPad. For this, it's not optimal, but its getting better -- closer to pen & paper. Unlike pen & paper, I can actually share my notes and drawings with my globally-distributed team.
If Apple wants to reverse the trend of perception against the iPad as a consume-only device, they should perfect its ability to simulate pen & paper and tout its usefulness as a note-taking device. This appears to be the approach Samsung is taking with the Galaxy Note.