Every article talks about it, and they’re absolutely correct: the screen changes everything.
I have the original iPad and many of today’s apps are really starting to push it to the limit. I passed on the iPad 2, as I was hoping for a Retina display and I’m really glad I waited. This finally brings the tool right to where I need it to be.
On the work front, I spend a considerable amount of time reviewing documents and providing feedback. PDFExpert has become the tool of choice for this kind of work, but on the original iPad, some of the 150+ page documents were really too much for the memory and processor. Then of course is the issue of the quality of the screen when people do silly things like write pages of stuff in 9 point text.
The combination of the responsiveness of the new iPad with the resolution makes this just like reading a paper document, except that the result is a mail with a list of annotations, plus a marked up PDF file that anyone can read. Awesome.
I also use Omnigraffle on the iPad for some quick documentation and it was an eye opener to see some of my files on the new screen. Detailed icons just pop and it gives a whole new life to the images.
Mobility
On the iPad v1, it was an experimental purchase. I bought it because I’m a nerd and went with the basic 16 Gb wifi model, thinking that I would use a hotspot on my phone or a public wifi access point when I needed to connect away from home or office.
I’ve discovered that this approach introduces a lot of friction in the actual usage on a daily basis. Too many access points have lame secondary login pages, even many of the free ones and the tethering plans are outrageously expensive and require an action on my part. So the upshot of this is that I tended to use the iPad very little while in the train simply because it wasn’t connected… and the screen on the iPhone was nicer. I found that I would go to the iPhone for Twitter, mail and the web first rather than fire up the hotspot.
So this time around I coughed up the extra cash for the cellular version and the immediacy of that always on connection. Too early to tell if the new iPad habits will stick or I’ll go back to the iPhone on a more regular basis, but I have a feeling that the iPad is going to be taking some significant time from the iPhone.
As a side note, a point that I made with earlier versions of the iPhone was that battery life tended to be terrible because it was so enjoyable to use that I wanted to be using it all of the time, and god knows there’s no shortage of endorphin producing habits created by games, email, social networks, RSS feeds and the like. Part of the enjoyment is the quality of the screen and the near perfect responsiveness. The new iPad just kills it on these fronts.