Saturday, March 19, 2011

iPad interface maturing

I've been trying out a few new apps for the iPad, for example TextForce (online/offline text handling and file handling) and ReaddleDocs (online/offline file manager/viewer), and I must say I'm pretty impressed.  The interfaces of iPad apps are getting better looking and also more intuitive month after month, and the apps are getting more powerful. TextForce for example showed me in less than a minute a very understandable interface for handling and editing text documents on the iPad and in the cloud, and there was not a thing which was not clear. Very lovely.
The same is true for PhotoGene, very simple and intuitive interface, and yet quite flexible and powerful. It can do pretty much all the thing I normally want done to photos.
If things continue in this direction, and nothing indicates they won't, then small- to mid-sized tablet will become very powerful tools for many people a lot sooner than I'd dared hope.

I keep getting astounded by the flexibility of this tool, it really is a thousand things. If you are mobile, or indeed quite immobile (as in bed-ridden for example), you can practically run the whole non-physical part of your life on an iPad. You can read on it, from dozens of different sources, you can watch all kinds of videos, again from multiple sources, you can write on it, just email or real work, you can use all kinds of games and then also productivity apps... it's just ridiculous.
I had a friend who was pretty much limited to her bed for a few weeks after an operation. She had just gotten an iPad, and she was amazed to how much more pleasant and productive that thing made those weeks for her, she did research and studies, found entertainment, was even productive in some ways...

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