On the first weekend that the iPad came out, I went to my local best buy and tried it. After using it briefly, I promptly listed 3 reasons not to buy an iPad. My main beefs were that it’s:

• Primarily a content consumption device rather than a content creation device
• Not as good as the kindle at books
• Not different enough from the iPhone

I held strong in not buying an iPad for about 2 months. But because I’m weak to the siren sounds of new gadgets (and I needed to get myself something for my birthday) I finally picked one up. You probably know where this is going…Yes, I haven’t put the thing down since I got it!

So why was I so wrong? I know it’s hard to believe, but at least I was right about one thing, it is a specialized device for internet consumption. But here’s the thing, because it does it so well, it has replaced all my other internet consumption devices. So now in the evening, instead of surfing on my phone or laptop, I use the iPad.

The Power of Immediacy

Much is due to the power of immediacy. There is no boot time for the iPad — it’s just always on. Scott Adams, the creator of dilbert, nailed this aspect of the ipad:

By far, the iPad’s most wonderful feature, compared to laptops, is the fact that it turns on instantly. There’s no boot-up sequence. That one advantage makes the iPad an entirely different product from a laptop. Once powered on, the iPad doesn’t start begging me to update things nor force me to make decisions. It doesn’t remind me of all the ways it is protecting me. It doesn’t tell me to order printer ink or ask me to fill out a survey. A regular laptop is like your boss: always making you wait before giving you busy-work assignments. The iPad is more like a punctual lover. It’s always ready for fun. And if you are tempted to do some work on the iPad, its non-keyboard quickly changes your mind. You wouldn’t say a lover is a crippled version of a boss. (Insert your own inappropriate humor here.) So any comparison of an iPad to a laptop simply doesn’t work.

Besides the immediacy, he points out another important fact, that you almost can’t do work on it. In many ways, that can be a benefit. When I sit down at my laptop to do a side project or write, I very quickly get pulled into doing work stuff because it’s all right there. On the iPad, it’s almost impossible for me to do my day job (programming) so I use it to do other creative activities like rediscovering the joy of drawing (yes, there’s an awesome drawing app on the iPad).

Better than the Kindle for Reading

My first thought was that it would not be better than the kindle for reading, but here I was wrong as well. Not to sound like the Apple marketing department (too late), but I never read a single book to my kids on the Kindle. Yet, on the iPad, I read to them every night.

So what’s the difference? As usual with Apple, it’s all about the visual look and the apps. The color illustrations definitely help to draw the kids in but more than that there are some gorgeous apps that fully animate portions of a book and allow kids to truly enter the book by touching characters on the screen and watching them move. It’s just hands-down more engrossing than the black and white experience of the Kindle.

Also, the kindle app on the iPad is better than the version running on the Kindle itself. It’s more functional with the ability to scan pages and truly gorgeous in full color. The sad truth is that since I got the iPad, I haven’t booted my kindle.

Better than the iPhone for Surfing

This may be due to the fact that I still have an old iPhone 3G (not even a 3Gs), but for casual surfing, checking email, and updating a calendar, I find that the iPad wins hands down. It’s faster and the larger screen really makes it a more pleasant experience. Now, I’m beginning to only use my phone for (say it ain’t so) phone calls. Or for those rare times when I’m out and about without the iPad.

Soon I’ll be getting the iPhone 4, but for now the iPad is king, and I was wrong about it. Sorry for ever doubting you Steve…

Recently, I was wandering the internet (I think I almost made it to the end) and I discovered a fun site called UsesThis.com. It catalogues what many tech luminaries use to get their job done: from DHH (of rails), to Joe Hewitt (maker of Firebug), to Jakob Nielsen (usability guru).

It’s a fascinating site to me because, for some unknown reason, I’m intrigued by what tools people use and specifically how to do a task as efficiently as possible with the just the right tools.

I have this idea in my head that if only I had the right tools I could write that awesome piece of software or those memoirs that change the world! But I’m slowly learning (to paraphrase a bad joke) it’s not the tool; it’s how you use it.

This was reinforced to me on one of our family vacations when we drove by the home of Laura Ingalls Wilder. Wilder wrote the famed Little House on the Prairie book series, and while I was at her home, which has now become a museum, I saw her first drafts on display. Would you like to know what “tools” she used to write her enduring masterpieces of homespun american life?

A yellow lined school notepad and a pencil. That’s it!

No word processor, no 30″ monitor, no MS word, no vim, no spell check, no nothing! Kind of makes us feel a little spoiled when we worry about having just the right tool to get a writing job done.

On the usesthis site, Mark Pilgrim echoes that sentiment during his interview:

I’m a three-time (soon to be four-time) published author. When aspiring authors learn this, they invariably ask what word processor I use. It doesn’t fucking matter! I happen to write in Emacs. I also code in Emacs, which is a nice bonus. Other people write and code in vi…Whatever. Picking the right text editor will not make you a better writer. Writing will make you a better writer. Writing, and editing, and publishing, and listening – really listening – to what people say about your writing. This is the golden age for aspiring writers. We have a worldwide communications and distribution network where you can publish anything you want and – if you can manage to get anybody’s attention – get near-instant feedback. Writers just 20 years ago would have killed for that kind of feedback loop. Killed! And you’re asking me what word processor I use? Just fucking write, then publish, then write some more.

That about sums it up, doesn’t it. Maybe it’s time to stop worrying about tools and do a tad more writing?

There’s been a lot of talk about the upcoming Google Me. Thus far, Google has excelled at engineering sites, but has struggled when it comes to social networking sites. We need look no further than orkut, google wave and google buzz for examples.

There is no doubt that google is smart with great talent and no shortage of cash, but they’ve never come anywhere near Facebook, Twitter or even MySpace’s success in the social networking universe. Why is that?

Some may argue that Facebook has just been lucky and they were in the right place at the right time. But I think it’s a lot more than luck. I think it has to do with culture.

The Cultural Divide

Recently, I was reading Tony Hsieh’s book about founding zappos.com and he makes the compelling point that culture is everything. Zappos’s culture of outstanding customer service along with being fun (and a little quirky) is what separate’s them from being just another shoe company.

And in the same way, Google’s culture has truly shaped them into what they are today. Look at their well-known products: Gmail, Google Calendar, and (of course) Google Search.

They all share a common set of traits:

• Graphically Sparse: They are minimalist with simple designs and very few graphics. It’s obvious that a designer is not running the show at google.

• Fast: All of google’s apps are optimized to run at lightning speed. In fact, the most distinctive thing to me about google chrome (their browser) is how darn fast it is. It’s almost painful for me to go back to the slowness of IE after regularly using chrome.

• Efficient: Not only are they fast from a performance perspective, but they make it very easy to perform their task in as few steps as possible. It’s almost as if they’ve optimized not only the code, but the process of each task such as adding an event to a calendar (eg – just type “7pm at george’s”).

All of these leads to great software, but it’s a very specific kind of software. It definitely solves a problem in an efficient manner, but you could argue that there’s just no heart. And that in squeezing every last ounce of inefficiency out of the process they’ve also removed some of the humanity — It’s truly an engineer’s company.

They problem is that engineers (in general) aren’t that interested in being social. I think the reason is that being social requires doing things in a not so efficient way. You have to “make small talk”. It requires talking about the weather and sports, along with the myriad of other mundane stuff that most engineers simply see as a waste of time. Paul Graham said it best:

The main reason nerds are unpopular is that they have other things to think about. Their attention is drawn to books or the natural world, not fashions and parties. They’re like someone trying to play soccer while balancing a glass of water on his head

I’ll bet if you were to poll the employees at google, many of them would say that spending time on Facebook was a waste of time. And therein lies the problem for google when making any kind of social app — it’s just not in their DNA.