Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Where Tablets Fall Flat

Today I stumbled across an interesting article about iPads, which I rather agreed with. These are fun little toys, and work great for casual surfing on the go. You can even check your email, if you use a compatible account.

There are downsides aplenty, of course. The most discussed short-fallings are things like lack of Flash support, or sheer adaptability. Flash is necessary to many web applications like video. iPads come with iOS and are strictly regulated, as far as things like compatibility with third-party applications, programs, and software. To make an iPad (or even iPhone) do many of the things Android tablets do, users must "jailbreak" them.

Leaving all the software short-comings aside, the obvious failing of an iPad -- or any tablet, for that matter -- is the lack of physical controls.

Like many users, I have been impressed with the predictive text software on an iPad. This makes it significantly easier to use. However, sometimes an otherwise innocuous typo, caused by the smoothness of the screen and less-than-Olympic level accuracy, is auto-corrected into something completely ridiculous. Oft-times, it is also difficult to navigate on a tablet due to some combination of the webpage or app you are looking at and the way the gestures are intended to work.

Although I am easily classified into the "digital generation" and grew up with technology, I also have to put myself in the "old-fashioned" camp that longs for a tactile keyboard for anything other than "casual" surfing.

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