iPad in da house!

Yesterday, my husband gave me an early Christmas present: a 3rd generation iPad! Correction: It's actually a 4th generation iPad, aka iPad with Retina display.

The iPad will go head-to-head with my new Surface RT, which should be arriving any day now. I'm actually glad that the iPad got here before the Surface. With the MacBook, I always knew that I'd have a hard time overcoming my preconceived notions of how a laptop "should" work, based on years of using Windows laptops. But I've never used a tablet before, and therefore have no preconceived notions of how one "should" work. I'm equally open to the iPad and the Surface.

Or equally closed, as the case may be. I've always said that I don't "get" tablets. Why not just use a laptop?

Now, after 24 hours of owning a tablet... I "get" it :) The form factor is just perfect. It's small, lightweight, easy to carry around the house. I used it in the kitchen to look up my Christmas recipes, in the living room to check the weather forecast, in the nursery to browse Facebook while feeding my baby. It certainly won't replace my laptop for heavy-duty work, but for quick web surfing and mail (which is a lot of what I do when I'm not working), it's fantastic.

Now, I don't know that I'd pay a couple hundred dollars for that convenience, given that I do already own multiple laptops :) But the iPad was free with Marriott Rewards points (and the Surface is free through my work), so I'll happily take it and use it!

All that said, I've already run into a couple of limitations of the iPad that are annoying me. Probably the biggest is the lack of multiple user profiles. My husband has been stealing "my" gift quite a bit ;) And it is really hard for us to share the iPad. It's set up against his Apple ID, because he used to have an iPhone and had some purchased apps that he wanted to bring onto the iPad. That means 1) all of my iTunes music (I've owned iPods for over 10 years now) is not accessible, and 2) whenever I want to install a new app, I need *his* Apple ID password. The Facebook app is set up against my account, and he gets confused by the notifications popping up that aren't for him. He got to the Skydrive app first, so it is set up to access his files, not mine. Etc. Yes, with the exception of the Apple ID situation, we can always log the other person out and log in as ourselves, but that's a pain when you just want to check something quick. Might as well just go grab one of our laptops, at that point.

Another small quibble is that the iPad doesn't have an SD slot or even a USB slot. It would be really convenient to be able to pull pictures off my camera straight to the iPad, for retouching and sharing, rather than having to grab my laptop to do that. But it's just not possible.

The screen is also covered in fingerprints after just a day of use. Easy enough to wipe off, though.

Finally, while the iPad's on-screen keyboard is much more usable than, say, my phone's touch keyboard, it still isn't great if I'm doing a lot of typing. I'd love to have a lightweight external keyboard to use when I'm doing a little more than just reading and writing short replies to stuff.

That said, I have no idea whether the Surface offers these features, either. I guess I'll find out soon enough.