A computer for the average person
I’m sure there isn’t a shortage of views and perspectives on what is or isn’t “the best” for the average consumer, regardless of what the topic might be. For a long time I have been thinking about what would be the possibly best computer available on the market today and depending on when you have asked me the answer would have been different. Right now, I consider the Apple iPad to be the best choice for most people. With that said, it’s of course not the best computer in every situation and for every imaginable scenario. Your mileage may vary, as always.
Hardware
The basic design of the iPad is a very robust mono-block with very few mechanical parts that will wear and ultimately break. Excellent since that means there are fewer sources for failure and annoyance, often associated with trips to the repair center. There is also no fan that generates a nasty background noise whenever you use the iPad, which is also a very large plus for the device.
Battery life beats most of the available laptops on the market and quite a few of the alternative tablet computers as well. Nearly regardless of what you choose to do with an iPad, you will get close to 10 hours of battery life before having to hunt for power outlets and juice it up again. Lasting through a full 8 hour working day is no problem!
One problem that a lot of people might bring up is the lack of a physical keyboard, which would come in handy if you are frequently entering a lot of text into a computer. While the iPad lacks this, you are more than free to hook up any standard bluetooth keyboard to it and merrily type away as you please. Given the option you can either slim down and bang away at the screen, for when you want to be really portable, or you can bring a small keyboard along for the ride and let your fingers play on physical keys instead.
And of course it’s a nice and bright, high quality display that makes photos, videos and pretty much anything look really darn good. Quite appropriate for video conferencing, which many people do in their professional life, or perhaps just to talk to friends and relatives at a distance. Speaking of which, the iPad also happens to come with two cameras, so you have some pretty nice options for both video capture as well as video calling, although I would recommend a better video camera if you intend to take video with a bit more quality.
Software
It was more difficult to recommend the iPad as a sole computer to most people before iOS 5 was released. When the final hurdles were finally overcome and the wire was cut, the iPad became a “free” computer in its own right and untethered from any other computer in order to do its job. On a system level, I consider the iPad quite apt at the job of being the only computer for a good number of people. All system updates are performed on the device itself without any need for connecting to another computer for that simple job alone.
With all the thousands of apps available in the App Store nowadays, there is no shortage of available software. Pricing for a good deal of it is well under what one could expect given the quality and usefulness of the apps. Finding the app that’s right for you might be more of a problem and I really do think Apple should improve the discoverability of the App Store. Right now it’s pretty much a nightmare to find the app that will do the job best for the individual in question.
There is definitely no shortage of apps for creating music, video or text. Hooking the iPad up to most kinds of display equipment for presentations or showing video is not a problem either, as there are plenty of apps for that too. Participating in podcasts in not a problem and neither is editing them, but there might be problems in recording several people at once, unless they are all in the same room.
While I realize that I’m not an average person in this regard, today I see no lack of software that would truly hinder me from switching to an iPad as my primary computer. Unless you depend on very custom software in Java, desperately need Flash to live your computing life or have to run a specific app in Mac OS X or Windows, I’d say that you can find whatever you need to do what you want and need in the App Store.
If your main computing tasks involve surfing the web, checking out videos on YouTube and using Facebook, then I think the iPad is as close to perfect as you are right now able to find on the market.
Conclusion
The hardware is slimmed down and contains very few things that are likely to break particularly fast over time and with normal usage. In terms of software there are few obstacles for most people and you can find the kind of app you desire with some looking around on the App Store and checking out reviews online. Unless you are really depending on one particular app or class of apps that just don’t exist or perform well on an iPad, you are good to go.
For the same price as an iPad you could instead pick up a conventional laptop for your computing purposes and by doing so you could gain some nice features such as access to other applications and having a physical keyboard built into the device itself, as well as more storage space. The downsides are that it will undoubtedly not be anywhere near as portable or present you with the same snappy and fluid experience that the iPad offers. And let’s not forget about the battery life and the noise factor.
While not everyone might be able to live their computing life from an iPad, I do think that most people can and they would save themselves a lot of headache by going down that path. If there was a better option for most people on the market, I would be happy to recommend that instead, but as things stand right now I don’t think there is any product that beats the iPad on many points enough for it to be classified as better. Maybe this will change in the near future, maybe not.
