Brain Assassin

Ques­tion of the day: Who needs an iPad? I sure don’t.  I mean, what’s it gonna be? An eBook reader? Just a big­ger iPod Touch? It’s too big to take with you on a whim, it’s too energy hun­gry to use it as an eBook reader, and it sucks way too much to use the built-​​in vir­tual key­board. So what exactly does the iPad do? Well, I’m not here to tell you that.

I do like the dis­play, though, which is using liq­uid crys­tal dis­play tech­nol­ogy. The IPS LCD offers a very wide view­ing angle – up to 178 degrees – and bril­liant color. It uses a 4:3 aspect ratio with a 1.024 × 768 dis­play res­o­lu­tion. Ah, yes, I almost for­got the won­der­ful fingerprint-​​resistant oleo­pho­bic coat­ing which Apple had intro­duced in the iPhone 3G S. Any­way, even though the IPS panel is quite good, it’s still not enough to turn the iPad into a good eBook read­ing device.

LCD screens get washed out in bright sun­light. Try to turn on the back­light to improve con­trast and you’re sure to drain the bat­ter­ies much faster than the LCD already does.  Also, star­ing into a light source only pro­duces more strain on the eye than read­ing words by reflected light.

Apple has already formed a con­tent part­ner­ship with Hachette, Harper Collins, Macmil­lan, Pen­guin, and Simon and Schus­ter to offer ini­tial eBooks in its iBooks store – in the U. S. only, of course. What a waste. Just as well that I dis­cov­ered an inter­est­ing sur­vey today. Just look at the chart. Do I see some light at the end of the tunnel?