Over the last year or so I’ve made a slow transition to only using my iPad as my “evening” machine. I read my feeds and emails, catch up on social networks, Instapaper content, etc. And as I’ve transitioned to the iPad, that’s all I’ve been doing at night.
I bounce around looking for more content to consume, but I don’t reply to emails (creating a backlog). I’m not writing blog posts. I’m not coding or experimenting.
Time to read and think is good, but it’s gotten way out of balance. I used to be more productive; and I miss that. I love my iPad for content consumption, but I need to balance my consumption and creation better if I’m going to build some of the things I want to build here in the near future.
That starts now.
(I originally wanted to title this post “iPad Considered Harmful” as a nod to this classic, but ultimately decided against it.)
Since I got my macbook air, 11″ I hardly use my ipad
The kids use them more for games and movies
I’m a one computer guy these days.
https://alexking.org/blog/2011/08/03/dev-environments-multiple-machines
@alexkingorg is this post to utilize your timeline plug in?
I’ve been thinking about getting an iPad in part to do passive things, such as catch up on feeds and read books (replacing my Kindle). However, I also miss being able to write on my tablet (I have a MacBook Pro now). I currently use a paper notebook, but I find it limiting.
Do you anticipate using your iPad simultaneously with your main machine?
I love the iPad for things it is good at (and prefer it to my laptop for these things): consumption and wireframing. The thing I think I need to do is make sure I limit my usage to reasonable time windows for these things and use the laptop more by default.
Here is my new solution…
http://aws.amazon.com/workspaces/
Great insight. I’ve been thinking about getting an iPad as my evening device as well, doing the simple emails and other odds and ends since I can’t stand doing them on an iPhone. But I’m hearing that may not be the case. Might be time to reconsider.
Al – kind of cool, but that doesn’t solve the problem of the iPad being a tool for consumption not creation. Which I think is Alex’s point
but if its just the interface then it doesnt matter if you use your phone/tablet/notebook/desktop the system you are using is still the same
Form factor is a biggie, but I think the more important issue is mindset.
Yeah, the arrival of hulu basically killed our blog.