Travel With the iPad - 10 Days On The Road 

I wrote this a couple of weeks ago -- I just hadn't had a chance to edit it until now.

Sitting about 6 miles above the Earth in a cramped airplane seat, I'm banging out a summary of my experience traveling with the iPad. This is the wifi-only iPad, one that I've had since day 1. I'm using the Apple bluetooth keyboard, which makes typing something a bit longer like this significantly easier.

The Ugly

• Oleophobic, my ass. The screen, because of it's size and how often you're touching it, picks up fingerprints like crazy. Since it's bigger than the iPhone, you can't just run your sleeve across it to clean it. You best get used to the screen being covered in fingerprints (it's really ok) or you better bring a cloth.
• The Apple Case. I actually like the Apple case more than most. It's small and lets you prop up the iPad in the different ways you might want to use it. However, it collects dirt and grime like a vacuum. It's horrific.

The Bad

• No multitasking. Now, while this gets resolved this fall, it is a bit of a pain. It's not really a huge pain in the ass, like you might guess. It's just an annoyance. You're watching a movie and want to pop over and check some email--you have to change apps. Can't just let the movie's audio play in the background. Want to click visit a site or search for something you saw in Twitteriffic or NetNewsWire? Have to stop using the app, switch over, then switch back. It's not great. But, it only affects you maybe 5% of the time. The rest of the time you're happily watching a movie or reading a book and not planning to do many things at once.
• No wireless podcatching. This, to me, has been the far more egregious failure than the lack of multitasking across the iPhone and iPad. The iPad (as I'll get to later) has really proven to be ideal for travel: listening to podcasts while reading a book or reading some downloaded feeds. Except, after 24 hours of flying to Australia, I've listened to my podcasts. Over the next few days, if I'm lucky enough to find a wifi signal, I want to grab some updated podcasts to listen to on the plane home. Does iTunes know my podcasts and automatically sync them? No. I have to manually search through the iTunes Store looking for the ones I want to listen to, find the new episode, and download it. Why can't the iPad (or iPhone, for that matter) be smart enough to know what podcasts I listen to (it can get the list from my iTunes when I cable-sync), give me an option to update those, and download 4 or 5? For a device that's so wonderful to use, this is one of the worst experiences on the iPad.
• App pricing. I'm not sure how I feel on app pricing, quite frankly. I don't mind paying a bit more for an iPad app than it's iPhone counterpart. But some of the new apps (non-universal) are just money grabs (ahem, SplashID). There's no new functionality. In some cases, it's just a layout change. Paying 2 or 3x as much to have a second iPad-only app is something I think we'll see die over time. When that happens, I think app pricing will move off of the "naughty" list onto the "nice" list.
• Really poor cookie retention. I tend to use reasonably secure passwords, and I've relied on PwdHash in my browser to make that easy. But, once I get the password in there, it's nice for the browser to keep me logged in. Safari on the iPad seems to expire cookies really fast. Though maybe I'm dumb and missed a setting somewhere

The Good

• The battery life. Holy Jebus. A computer that--using it off-and-on to watch movies, read books, read downloaded feeds, play games--lasts an entire trip to Australia. Literally. I watched two episodes of Doctor Who (love the new Doctor, by the way), read most of War of the Worlds, watched a movie and a half, played a bunch of Enigmo, and read through about 2000 synced articles in NetNewsWire. Most of that while listening to music or podcasts. And I arrived in Australia (a 5 hour flight from Boston to Dallas, 4 hour flight Dallas to LA, and 16 hour flight from LA to Melbourne) with about 20% of my battery remaining. On the flights back I've read through another 2000 articles, watched another movie, read through the NY Times articles, and now typed this out. The battery is currently at 56%. Unbelievable.
• The size. It's small enough that I just through the iPad and bluetooth keyboard in my carry-on. No laptop bag. It hung out with my water bottle and sweatshirt. No special case. Didn't have to take it out for security (except in Sydney, I think, where they might not have known what it was). Popped it up on my lap comfortably. Used it in a sleeping back propped on it's side to watch half of a movie when I was still on East Coast time and everyone else was asleep. Read through a couple of books in iBooks the same way. Just really, really easy to bring around. I would have hated bring my laptop (or a netbook and it's power adapter) to a place like Wilson's Promontory in Australia. The iPad was perfect.
• The screen. As bad as the screen is at picking up fingerprints, it really does shine for video. I'd ripped some of my own movies that I had gotten recently and not watched yet -- watching them on the iPad was almost as good (especially from 18 inches away) as watching them on the big screen. Certainly a better screen than the one sitting in the seat-back in front of me.

  Now, I've had a couple of bad screen experiences (sitting in bright sunlight, you're screwed due to reflections and due to the fact the iPad will heat up too much to use). That's going to make beach going a challenge for most folks. (though I'm pasty white and spend 99% of my time under a parasol, so maybe not for me ...)

• iBooks. You know, I didn't really think I'd do much with it. I'd been reading Sherlock Holmes in Stanza on the iPhone. I grabbed it and War of the Worlds in iBooks, and it was just a great way to kill time when trying to adjust to a 14 hour time difference. It's also pretty much the one app were portrait mode is far better than landscape. If I'd ever really found a reliable wifi signal in Australia (poor Aussies and their horrible broadband), I probably would have grabbed a new release book and read that. But then I wouldn't be typing this.
• The interface. There's no mistakes. There's no lost keystrokes or misinterpreted mouse clicks. Never has the interface lagged behind what I am trying to do, or never have I waited while an hourglass or beach ball spun and the UI tried to catch up. You don't know how big that is until you realize you've spent your entire trip doing stuff, rather than waiting for stuff.

In the end, the iPad is just a phenomenal travel tool because of the convenience. Everything about it (well, except the fingerprint magnet of a screen and the dust magnet of a case) is design to make it easy to bring with you and do whatever. You never need to charge it (I charged it twice in 10 days). You can get through airport security without unpacking it (generally). You can watch TV, movies, read a book ... basically whatever you want. If you have wifi (or the new 3G model), you can do even more. (Or, when someone figures out how to tether it to an non-jailbroken iPhone.)