On a recent trip I picked up a copy of The Atlantic, the aging magazine that used to feature reports from the fine James Fallows on subjects of technology. Fallows is a business writer as much as a technical savant, and he brought a generation of experience to his work. Alas, a replacement editor falls well short of that skill set in assessing the iPad’s chances to change mobile computing. Megan McArdle, the magazine’s business and economics editor, wrote this under-researched assessment of a product she’s never used.
The iPad does a bunch of things, but none of them exceptionally well. You can’t read it in full daylight, and its battery life is much shorter than Kindle’s. With no true built-in keyboard or ability to multitask, it’s not a substitute for a laptop — and unlike my iPhone, it won’t fit in a pocket, take pictures, or make calls. Unless you need it for one of its speciality uses, it doesn’t replace anything you already have; it’s just one more thing to carry.
Pages, from Apple's video demo
It appears McArdle is among the unwashed masses of journalists who didn’t enjoy a few minutes with the real product before writing her April piece on Kindle vs. iPad. I’ve owned the former for a year and expect the latter within the week. But it’s possible that McArdle will want to revise her gradecard about “doing nothing exceptionally well.” All she needs to motivate her corrections are the Apple videos online this week showing off Mail and Pages, the iPad’s e-mail and writing tools. Yes, this might be something else to carry — something more useful to a business than a copy of The Atlantic. Aside from a smartphone like the 3GS iPhone, I can’t see what else she would need to tote. And at just 24 ounces, this new Apple tool is likely to carry a heft to make the 6-ounces of April’s Atlantic seem like dead weight.
When my smart business tool arrives by this weekend, I’ll spend awhile loading it up with inexpensive tools like Pages and Numbers, the Apple apps sold for $9.95 each at the iTunes store. I won’t have to buy Mail (included), and since the app uses the same information as my Mail on my iMac, the transfer is likely to be smooth. (Look for our report next week.) There will be a $2.99 purchase of Infinote to organize projects and communication, and maybe even a copy of OmniGraffle, although I use the same program on my Mac and the Omni Group wants $50 for its iPad version. I already own QuickOffice, providing me with iPhone word processing and spreadsheet tools that swap files back and forth to the Mac, or up into a smart online storage spot like DropBox. QuickOffice is already in my iPad toolbox, even though the device is still making its way through UPS delivery. See, it’s an iPhone app, so it runs on the iPad at no extra charge.
And if McArdle is lucky, I my find some time to read The Atlantic’s Web site articles in Safari on the iPad. But that slapdash research doesn’t merit the dollar-an-ounce price of the printed mag. For 11 years I subscribed to the print edition. Its business savvy has fallen way behind in the 150-year-old pub, a sorry state of affairs for an enterprise that’s trying to stay afloat in the media sector. If they’re lucky, they might have something out next year that supplies sharper reporting on business tools along with the other things the mag offers. As of this issue, its take is far from exceptional.
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