iPad or Laptop? Which to Take on a Long Professional Trip?
I'm just back from a vacation where, I must admit, I had a good time trying out my iPad for the first time, to see what it could and couldn't do. Since I'm a newbie, I'm very pleased that Sam, one of the former students who will be a "fellow traveller" in our upcoming tutorial "course" on collaborative thinking for a digital age, has very kindly agreed to give me a more intensive lesson on what an iPad can do.
But I'm still at the pondering stage. A lot of my open source pals, of course, hate the iPad. Cory Doctorow even denounced it and suggested it was yet another nail in the coffin of the Open Web that Jonathan Zittrain has warned us all about. (http://www.boingboing.net/2010/04/02/why-i-wont-buy-an-ipad-and-think-yo...) I take these warnings to heart since HASTAC is committed to the Open Web and open source . . . but also know that purism tends not to make believers and there can be multiple pathways to a goal. I'm also excited by all forms of connection and innovation, even the closed ones, so long as those commercialized, proprietary forms don't restrict the open ones.
So my real question is, on a long (let's say two weeks) business trip to Australia, with lots of talks and manuscripts to write and read, do I bring my fun toy, the iPad, or do i bring my laptop or am I consigned to that really techno-travel-hell of lugging both? A 24-hour flight to Australia is a perfect time for movies, games, music, design, all that. But I may also be getting back a 450-page book manuscript with line edits in Track Changes (a terrible program, yes, but, alas, the one my editor will be using) and Pages, the word processing program currently on my iPad, doesn't even save the Track Changes code so is useless for my editing job. Interminable flight is perfect for interminable changes and perfect for breaks from editing . . . So that's the dilemma and I'd love your feedback.
In the meantime, I'll quote from my friend Jonathan Sterne who has this to say about his recent professional trips using the iPad. This comes from his Super Bon blog. http://superbon.net/
"I wouldnt try editing an essay on it, but then I rarely do that kind of writing on the road. Its a great reader but not a proper newspaper replacement because who wants to spill coffee (metaphorically speaking; I drink tea) on their electronics? My rating: extremely useful for your digital recording studio, a fun reader and tech toy. But academics could wait six months or a year for the productivity software to catch up to reality and not miss much."
Anyone else want to add to this conversation?
- Cathy Davidson's blog
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amazing for video, frustrating for video
I've found one thing I really love about the iPad. The iPad is a wonderful device for watching films on a plane in the compressed physical dimensions of coach. But because of it's iPod/Phone-like cabled way of syncing files, it's dependent upon me having another computer to load those videos (unless I purchase Netflix, which I have, and I like, but won't be streaming from the air). The iPad is very restrictive as to the exact format of the video it will take. So again I need my laptop if I have a video I want to play on my iPad and I better get the exact codec and compression settings right. So even a great feature of the iPad underscores some of its worst aspects.
I like the device but wish it were not iOS. At the root of all of this is the freedom-vs-security issue. For some people the locked-down aspect may be a good thing. But for me, I don't want to sacrifice that much freedom for security or for the incomes of Apple and iPad app developers. Ultimately I am bringing my laptop whether I bring my iPad or not.
I hear you!
Yes, I wrote too fast and didn't make the implicit connection that you make explicit: Cory Doctorow's opposition to the iPad's lockbox, lockdown, locked in state that feeds Apple's (always locked) coffers is actually tied to, intrinsically, its inflexibilities and makes necessary bringing along the laptop too. As much as I admire the beauty and user-friendliness of Apple products, I am infuriated anew, each time I purchase a new toy, at how restricted and limited they are, planning in obsolescence and the need for redundancy with each and ever new ah-ha unfolding. It can't only be coincidental that the fabulous new iPhone comes out without, da, the camera and then, tada, it comes out again with one . . . and on and on. It's a business model based on building in limits and so, at the moment, it looks like I'm joining you and other friends in the joint schlepping of iPad plus laptop. I often think that if Evil Microsoft didn't exist, Evil Apple would. That is, Apple gets to act as if they are Friend of the Consumer only because Microsoft has been cast in the role of the singular evil. Without Microsoft's evil shadow, Apple would be casting less the friendly apple-a-day-wholesomeness and more like something rotten-to-the-core. I keep waiting for it all to backfire. It usually does, if past business history is any indicator. At some point, it isn't just professional geeks like Doctorow who send up the alarm but general consumers tired of paying top dollar for products that, fabulous as they are, are not as fabulous as they could and should be. Android readers, anyone? However, at present, and judging by the line encircling the Apple store locally at taxfree weekend, it won't be any time soon.
Thanks so much for writing to confirm what I was thinking more and more, the small of it and the large . . .
what I carry
I'm taking both with me now, because each serves a different need. The iPad I use mostly for reading--which saves a lot of luggage space because I used to take books along. The laptop is for working--either at conferences, in archives, or for writing in my hotel room in the evenings. Sometimes I take my lightweight Linux OS ASUS laptop along, and sometimes I take my MacBook.
I had one interesting interaction with a customs agent in Manchester where he inspected my iPad, my MacBook, and then my iPhone. He rolled his eyes a bit at my brand loyalty. I actually hate that in many ways, but I find that these are the tools that allow me to get my work done, so that's what I carry.
What did you carry ten years ago?
This is a fabulously interesting discussion. Next question: what did you carry ten years ago? I'm trying to remember. I think it would have been a book, some mags, a cd player (remember those?), and a book bag filled with manuscripts (as in paper: remember that?), a date book with addresses, maybe a laptop. I can't really remember when I started carrying a laptop with me. My Blackberry--although I think it was a Palm Pilot at first--came around 2002, I believe. I remember a meeting with my pals at the Fuqua School of Business, I'm guessing it was around 2000 or 2001, when my colleague Nevin said, "I'm going to predict the future. One word: portable." He then pulled out a prototype of the about-to be released latest version of a PDA, one that he predicted would take the business world by storm. He got that one right! Wikipedia tells me the Palm Pilot was invented in 1997 but it was a while before there were the right kind of pipes available widely enough that suddenly everyone was carrying one.
Everyone else: can you remember your own "portable" history?
10 years ago
Ten years ago I was carrying an Apple eMate (like this one: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_86fa3woQOHU/SxEJaMvCaWI/AAAAAAAAA50/g0cnvzU5Jf... ) around to class. Even then, it was pretty old school, but I loved its portability. Since then I haven't owned Apple products until I got my iPhone 2 years ago.
One fun bit of history: My spouse & I name each of our computers using a version of the military alphabet. Our first computer was "Alpha, the next "Bravo" and so forth. We stopped using the military names when we got to G (opting for "Gaia" rather than "Golf). My newest laptop is "P" (Persephone). There are some computers that I remember more distinctly than others from over the years. "Echo" was the one that got me addicted to the Internet. "Firefox" saw me into grad school and "Junebug" is my favorite-ever laptop that I still use for recording my podcasts. Many of these machines I think of as fondly as I do of dead pets. That's kind of weird...
first portable?
I'd had a couple of positions where I had laptops at my disposal to bring to conferences to make presentations but in 2000 I purchased a Sony Vaio ultraportable laptop, the SR7K. It weighed less than 3 lbs, had no CD drive and needed networking hardware to be inserted in the PCMCIA slot. But I had ethernet and wireless cards for it. That machine went everywhere with me. It was so small and light and sturdy that it allowed me to wire myself around google searches. That was the time my thinking became deeply integrated with and utterly dependent on internet searches and my writing became dependent on writing code and methods to manipulate search results to poetic ends. Instead of trying to remember what I wanted to query I just queried it because I had my machine with me. I also wrote more poetry and created more digital media during that time than in any other period of my life. Much of that was due to the sudden shift in availability of computing for me. I was spending a lot of time between Austin TX and Chapel Hill writing code and creating multimedia content so it came at a time when I needed mobile computing. That little Vaio still runs. An amazing little device.
memory lane
Ten years ago I had my beloved Powerbook G3. It survived a theft, several bumpy trips, and an OJ spill, until one day I plugged it in to find a deathly blank screen. Two months before my thesis was due. Cue hysterics, heroic attempts by my CS geek friends, and a now near-pathological system of back-ups of back-ups. RIP dear Powerbook. I can still think of files that were lost deep inside of your circuits.
Then I tried a Handspring Visor for about 10 minutes but realized that my university class schedule really wasn't that complicated to track! A bad example of my technolust gone haywire.
And for a good idea of what was really considered portable: here is my dad's first Apple computer - I think that's the Macintosh SE in the middle. It came with a gigantic padded blue suitcase that we used to carry it around. Seeing this now instantly brings me back to playing Crystal Quest (edited to add: OMG! It's available to play! Windows only, sadly.) He can still remember his CompuServ number that we used to log on that computer.