[Sonist]

I've been away for a bit, so I played with the iPad for the first time today.

I should say that despite my philosophical objections to the iPad, I walked into the Apple Store thinking I will buy it today, then sell it if/when a better Android tablet cames out.

I opened a book and read for about 40 minutes, since the reading part is by far the most important reason for me to get such a device.

I liked the look and feel of the pages. It felt very "book-like." Turning the pages by touch is more natural, to me, than using a button.

The dictionary feature is well thought out, easy to use. So is the changing of font size and brightness. Everything is at your fingertips. Turning pages was very responsive, although at times the page would appear blank and fill out a second or so later.

There were significant issues, though, which stopped me from betraying my principles and trading my soul for the instant gratification I desired:

1. Reading on the iPad did tire my eyes after about half an hour. I little bit, but it was there.

When I read on the iPhone for a bit, maybe 20 minutes or so, then look in the distance, any signs further than 10-15 yards appear blurry. After a few minutes the blurriness dissipates, but it tells me that my eyes get tired.

Reading on the Kindle, I may get a very slight blurriness after a couple of hours of reading, but it's slight. I also stare at an IPS monitor all day, and don't have a problem with it at all.

With the iPad, there was definitely slight blurriness after about about 30 minutes. Not nearly as bad as with the iPhone, but still, it was there.

I don't know the cause for the difference between the two IPS screens, but here is a wild guess: The backlighting of the iPad appears somewhat different, to my eyes, than the backlighting of the 24" Apple monitors. I may be seeing things, but IPS is pretty power-hungry technology (this is why some were surprised about it appearing on the iPad), and Apple may have tweaked something to prolong the battery life.

Whatever it is, the IPS iPad appears to cause more stress to my eyes than the 24" Apple IPS monitor (or, it may be something else, like the viewing distance). I wonder if others have had a similar experience.

2. Screen size is too small. Reading a book, it felt even smaller somehow than my Kindle DX, even though they are the same size. It may have been because the higher resolution of the Kindle allows me to read a smaller font size more comfortably, or it may have been just the layout of the page.

Also, the screen would definitely be too small for reading full size PDFs, be it books, or magazines. My Scientific American PDFs, for instance, would be unreadable in portrait mode, and I really don't like scrolling in landscape mode, no matter how responsive the screen is.

Finally, the screen was a little too small even for comfortable web browsing, for my taste at lest.

So, I didn't buy one. Of course, there are all the other reasons for which I didn't want to buy the iPad, like the lack of Flash, the walled off eco-system, etc.. But in reality, I would have swallowed my principles, because I am a sucker for a new toy. But this toy just didn't do it.

So, my hopes are on the Google tablet, or the Adam, or whatever.... But at least now I don't feel like I am missing something.