iPad 2 impressions: Chris Rawson

A couple of the other TUAW staffers have given you their first impressions of the iPad 2, but I'm coming at it from a different angle, because I used the original iPad for a grand total of about 20 minutes. This won't be a comparison of the new iPad versus the old; instead, it'll be my take on what this new device means to me and how it promises to reshape the way I interact with computers from now on.

When the iPad debuted in January of 2010, I wasn't particularly impressed. That's mostly because, like many other people, I'd been waiting for a device that was something halfway between an iPhone and a Mac... leaning far more toward the Mac side of things, naturally. After the iPad's unveiling, like many other detractors, I considered the thing "just a big iPod touch." Thinking back on my attitude then as I type this post on my brand-new iPad 2, I can't help but wince a little at my naïveté, especially when I wrote something like this in August of 2009:

"I'm not really in the market for a tablet-sized device. I've got a 17" MacBook Pro to do my heavy computing, and an iPhone to do lighter tasks when I'm on the go. For me, the gap in functionality between the two doesn't seem wide enough to justify a whole new device that's halfway between an iPhone and a MacBook. In order for me to get really excited about an iTablet, it would have to be more than a gap-filler between the iPhone and the MacBook. It would have to be revolutionary, a device that does something neither existing product is able to do."

So what changed between then and now? Why am I typing this on a 9.7" touchscreen instead of the keyboard on my MacBook Pro? The iPhone 4 was really the catalyst. With its more powerful processor and multitasking via iOS 4, the iPhone 4 slowly started to displace a lot of the functionality I used to get out of my MacBook Pro, particularly during periods when my MacBook Pro was in the shop, and all I had to rely on was my iPhone. I found that the only aspect of the iPhone that felt truly confining was its screen size. Suddenly a "big iPod touch" wasn't looking like such a bad idea after all.

I came to the iPad 2 with a clean slate (pun intended), having only very briefly used the original iPad in store displays. I sort of knew what to expect from the iPad from using my iPhone 4 (or so I thought); it'd be the same experience, but faster and on a bigger screen. Once again, I was wrong, and pleasantly so. The iPad 2 is far more than just a scaled-up version of a smaller device. It feels like this is what Apple was aiming for all along, and the iPhone was just a stepping stone.

After using my iPad 2 for a few days, I already consider it indispensable. Going back to using the iPhone feels like peering through a keyhole into a diorama version of the world after using the iPad, and using a Mac feels simultaneously more flexible and more limited. I can switch between tasks more easily on my Mac, and for now, typing on a physical keyboard is still more comfortable. However, the fact that only one thing happens on-screen at a time on the iPad actually helps me a lot with my focus, and it's also part of the almost mystical allure of the device.

The iPhone is a great device in its own right, but at no point while using it did the device itself disappear. I was always watching videos, browsing the internet or playing games on a tiny box. That's not the case with the iPad, and using it has reminded me of the way Bruce Lee talked about how water flows and adapts to whatever container holds it:

"Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless -- like water. Now you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup, you put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle, you put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot." It's the same thing with the iPad. Launch Safari, and you're not holding a device that shows the internet -- you're holding the internet itself. Launch Pages, and your iPad becomes a word processor. Launch Flipboard, and the iPad transforms into a magazine. Launch iBooks, and your iPad is now a book. The edges of the device itself fall away, and the iPad simply becomes whatever you tell it to become.

It's a phenomenon I've read about, but experiencing it for myself has brought the joy back into computing for me. It's been a long time since the simple act of discovering new things brought a smile to my face when using a computer; honestly, the last time I remember feeling this truly connected with a device was the first time I used a Mac, in 1989. The same "a-ha!" cognitive gelling that happened the first time I double-clicked an icon to launch an app rather than having to type in an arcane string of characters happens again every time I find out what this deceptively simple touchscreen device is capable of.

Many people have talked about how thin the iPad 2 is, and it's definitely that -- almost absurdly thin. That thinness helps reinforce the illusion that you're not really holding anything at all, and that what's on the screen is all there is to the device. There's no fan noise, no spinning hard drive, nothing disrupting the chi of whatever you happen to be doing with the iPad. Apple calls it a magical device; I always thought that was an incredibly corny thing to say until I used it for a few hours and saw for myself.

The iPad 2 isn't perfect. Its cameras truly do suck, and I expect I will hardly ever use them. But, as I said in a heated conversation with an Apple-loathing friend of mine, I'm not going to rely on the cameras on a device like this anyway, because I have a DSLR, and that's what "real men" use for photography. That said, one thing about the iPad really did disappoint me: the initial setup process is the iPad's Achilles heel. Since the iPad 2 arrived at my doorstep while my Mac was away for repairs, I had the opportunity to see for myself just how far from Apple's vision of a "post-PC device" the iPad 2 still is. Excited as I was to have this new device, without my Mac, it simply sat on my ottoman, frustratingly inert and useless for several hours until I synced it to my Mac for the first time. And since that first sync required moving nearly 50 GB over USB 2, the amount of time that passed between the iPad 2's arrival and it actually being in a usable state was something like five hours.

The pitiful cameras and the initial setup are really my only complaints with the device so far. I thought I'd be disappointed with the display resolution after almost a year with the iPhone 4's Retina Display, but since I'm not holding the iPad 2 twelve inches from my nose like the iPhone 4, the lower resolution isn't as big of a deal as it was for, say, my old iPhone 3G. In terms of actual day-to-day performance, the iPad 2 feels subjectively faster at many tasks than my MacBook Pro. Considering how much more powerful in terms of raw specs my Mac is compared to the iPad, this seems like pure craziness, but there it is. A year ago I never would have believed that a tablet device like the iPad could be my primary computer, but after only a few days, I can already tell my MacBook Pro is going to be gathering quite a bit of dust in the months to come.

Now that I have an inkling of what the iPad is capable of and how it changes the entire experience of interfacing with a computer, it's no longer remotely surprising to me how long the lines for this thing were during its launch in the US, nor is it astonishing that 70 percent of the people standing in line were new users like me who hadn't had much experience with the iPad before.

After the first iPad's launch, a couple guys I knew said the iPad would be a miserable failure because it didn't bring anything truly new or revolutionary to the table. To those two guys, and to the army of pundits who've spent the past year stirring up dissent against the iPad because it doesn't have Port A, Widget B or Feature C, and to my Android-loving buddy who claimed some forthcoming LG tablet would perform unprintable acts upon the iPad 2 because it supposedly outcompeted on specs, I can only agree with what my colleague Erica Sadun said a while back: if you're focused on specs to the exclusion of all else, then you have missed the point of what a tablet should be. It's not about specs, it's about what the thing can do for you and the experience you have while using it. After using the iPad 2, it's the kind of experience I wouldn't trade for the most powerful CPU or the highest megapixel camera in the land.

The iPad 2 won't replace my MacBook Pro entirely, and it probably won't entirely replace most people's standard computers, either. But for the kinds of things the iPad 2 is capable of doing, the device does them in a way that's somehow more satisfying than the Mac. By removing the abstraction layer of a mouse/keyboard combo and putting the display in your hands rather than at your desk, Apple has made the iPad into a truly personal computer.