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…

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.

After enjoying my trusty t-mobile dash for 2 years, the time had finally come to upgrade phones. As I do with most tech decisions, I spent too much time obsessively researching the alternatives out there.

Mainly I was looking for a phone that did email well, supported 3G, full web browsing, and had good task/calendar support. My search led me to two contenders — the much-hyped iPhone and the brand new G1 running the google android OS.

The G1

First, I went and checked out the G1 because I was already a t-mobile customer so that was the path of least resistance. After trying it at the store, here were my initial observations:

• Form Factor: Due to the slide out keyboard this is really a chunky phone, it was much thicker than my existing t-mobile dash.
• Google Linkage: This phone is tightly linked to all things google which means it wants to use gmail and google calendaring.
• No Exchange Support: This hurt the most. I live and die in exchange. I’m sure it will get support soon, but it does not have it right now.
• Real Keyboard: I like that it has a real keyboard rather than a virtual one. That’s what I was used to with my Dash. The only problem was that the outlaid chin-rest made it hard to hold while typing.
• Android OS: This was the gem of the G1. The OS had some really nice features like a notifications pane that told you whenever processes finished or email was received.

I actually went into the store planning to buy this and stick with t-mobile, but after trying out the phone I just couldn’t do it. The big deal-breakers for me were the no exchange support and the strong ties to google mail (which I didn’t even use). Not to mention, the clunky design of the phone bothered me.

The iPhone

After being disillusioned by the G1, I decided to check out the iPhone and possibly switch to AT&T. Here is what I discovered after trying it at the store:

• Form Factor: Much thinner and sleeker than the G1.
• Exchange Support: This version had great exchange support.
• Virtual Keyboard: At first, I had a REALLY hard time typing on this, and it was almost a deal-breaker for me.
• OS: The OS running on the iphone is simply gorgeous. There’s just no other way to say it. Everything is wonderfully rendered and where you expect it to be. The flicking your finger around the screen is really a great way to navigate and all of the icons just float into place.
• Task Management: It was missing a good task manager though the calendar was pretty good.

After using the iPhone, I was very impressed. It’s just an extremely intuitive device and the combination of phone, ipod, email and calendar in one device is makes it very compelling. My main issue was that I struggled to type on the virtual keyboard and have never been a huge apple fan, given that I make my living doing Microsoft programming.

The Winner

I went back home and read some reviews on the iPhone keyboard. Most users said that it took time to get used to but they did finally become proficient.  I also found some good 3rd party task managers for the iPhone. That was enough to remove my last few stumbling blocks, so I finally settled on the iPhone.

It’s two weeks later, and I don’t regret it one second. The iPhone has really grown on me as I’ve gotten deeper into it and played with the many apps available. I compare to Tivo in that the UI is just so well done, that it puts so many other devices to shame and makes it a pleasure to use!

It just goes to show that the UI is so important because that’s how the user interacts with the device. If you can make the UI lovely you will make your user enjoy the experience.

For someone that regularly uses the google set of apps (mail, calendar, etc) and who highly values open systems, the G1 might be a stronger candidate. Or maybe a killer app will soon be released for the G1, but we’ll see…In my mind the iPhone has a big head start.

-Bryant