"Boy, do I need a stand for this thing."
That was my first thought when I sat down to write this on the new iPad (aka 3).
I'm one week into the experiment of trying to use my new baby as not only my new iPad, but as a substitute for the laptop I won't be buying now.
I thought I had it all figured out -- Bluetooth keyboard set up, Pages app purchased ... but I have no stand, so I have to type this looking down at a piece of glass on my desk. But what a beautiful piece of glass she is.
Sixteen months ago, Steve Jobs famously said, "I think PCs are going to be like trucks."
Translation: Some people will always need the heavy-lifting provided by a truck, but most of us can get by with a car.
Having never owned a truck (although always needing one when it came to computers), I wondered if it was time to put his theory to the test.
For me, the main improvement in the new iPad that I needed to see before giving up the laptop was the upgraded camera.
The Retina display is great, the 4G LTE is swell, but the new optics on the camera as well as the ability to record 1080p video means that now I can leave behind one more gadget when I leave the house (granted, I look like a dork holding up this aforementioned beautiful piece of glass to take photos, but if I cared what I looked like to the outside world I would buy new clothes more than once every few years).
Forcing myself to pick up the iPad instead of the laptop has been surprisingly easy to this point.
Last weekend, I filled up my son's kiddie-pool so he could play in the water, grabbed the iPad and a lawn chair and joined him outside so we could enjoy the beautiful day together.
As he happily went "fishing" and raced his little plastic boats, I was able to remotely connect to my computer at my office 10 miles away to get a head start on the week; watch the Rockies take on the Dodgers in Cactus League play; look up the current radar as I saw some dark clouds off in the distance; take pictures of my son doing something cute; film my son doing something cute; get on a Skype call so his grandma who lives in Greenville could see him doing something cute; edit the photos I took of him to lighten up the sky (because of said dark clouds); and then edit the video I took into the year-in-review video I've been working on for his birthday.
That was just in the first 20 minutes.
Doing all of these things is possible on a laptop -- which has a much greater heft, much shorter battery life and many more moving parts to break.
Obviously, for this one afternoon in the yard, the iPad was the better choice.
In fact, the only thing I've had any trouble with this entire week has been not having a stand to prop it up when typing these words with a keyboard -- which is a problem easily solved by procuring a case that does just that.
The iPad isn't going to replace my desktop computer at work, and it never will. At work, I need a truck. But can it replace my desktop/laptop at home? If this week is any indication, it's a real possibility.
If I, as someone who considers himself a power user (aka, geek) can do it, then we are indeed truly looking at the "Post-PC" era, as Apple likes to call it.
If you're not there yet, you might want to take a look -- at this point it doesn't look like there's any going back.