The Digital Analyst

At one point I was the perfect Apple customer – I owned a Mac Laptop, iPod, iPhone, iPad, iSoul… everything but an AppleTV and Mobile Me account.  Apparently it wasn’t enough for the replace-everything-in-two-years business model Apple had set up for their customers.  I’m going to try to be as level-headed as I can in this post, but Apple has pushed me to the breaking point this week.  I’ll explain….

A couple months back, the vibrate button on my iPhone stopped working.  It wasn’t a huge deal, so I didn’t rush to get it fixed. I didn’t realize until later that my missed calls had skyrocketed because I couldn’t hear the ringer in my pocket.  So I looked up the issue online and found out it’s fairly common and that Apple would try restoring it first and then replacing it if that didn’t work.  I tested the restore solution to find out it didn’t fix anything (it’s like restarting your wireless router.  You always try it and then call your internet service provider’s help line to have them tell you to try restarting it.  Even though you explain that you already did that, you do it again to amuse them and…. IT’S FIXED!  I still have no clue how that works.).  Anyway, I took my iPhone into the Apple store to have it replaced.  No problem there.  The Genius Bar, while usually filled with snarky little mac fanboys, was helpful and quick.  I got a replacement 3Gs and it was working, no problems.  Although it didn’t have my settings yet, I could still use it before I restored it from my last backup saved the night before.

Why is there always a "Genius" wearing a stupid hat like that?

I get it home and plug it into my PowerBook to restore my settings.  I select my backup from the night before and walk away to let it do its thing.  A couple minutes later, I check on it and iTunes has stopped syncing.  I was expecting this to take the annoying couple hours like it normally does to restore an iPhone, so I immediately knew something was wrong.  When I picked up my phone, it was just a black screen with the white apple logo.  I couldn’t get to the home screen or even reboot it.  It gave me an error saying it was stuck in recovery mode and none of the google searches I did could help me troubleshoot it, so it was time for round 2 at the Genius Bar.

This time the “Genius” Bar wasn’t as helpful.  First it was annoying that they made me register an appointment when there was nobody in front of me.  I couldn’t just walk up and start talking to someone.  I understand why they have that process, but when the store is empty and there are all these employees just standing around, they should just skip that step.  Anyway, back to the real issue.  I tried explaining what happened to the “Genius”, but like most macboys, his below average listening skills made him miss the part where I told him I was in the day before and this was a broken replacement iPhone.  So he went through the same process of trying to restore it and he couldn’t figure out why it wouldn’t boot up.  By the second time I got through explaining the issue in extreme detail, he got it.  He still tried to restore it because that’s apparently the solution to any problem the “Geniuses” have figured out.  When the screen turned purple and started flashing green and yellow bars, he finally gave up and replaced the replacement iPhone.

After 30 minutes of this, I was just glad to walk out with a new (read refurbished, but new to me, so who cares) iPhone.  Having been without a phone for an entire day, I tried calling my Dad to check in with my family in Cincinnati.  The only problem was that I couldn’t hear anything.  It said it was “calling”, but I couldn’t hear it ringing.  I tried putting it on speakerphone, but that didn’t work.  I could play voicemails and music, but nothing was coming out of the ear speaker at the top of the phone.  Thankfully I hadn’t even made it half a block away from the Apple store, so I turned back to have the “Geniuses” look into this new problem.  Once I got it, they couldn’t believe I was experiencing ANOTHER issue.  Thank god this time they didn’t make me check in and didn’t bother restoring the phone.  They just gave me another and I was out of the store in 10 minutes.

"Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name...." (points if you get the reference)

So now I’m on my third replacement iPhone in 2 days, but at least I didn’t have to pay for any replacements or put anything in the mail.  It really could have been a lot worse.  Apple’s warranty is the best out there.  Period.  If I had a Blackberry or Android phone, I would have had to deal with people at an AT&T or Verizon store who know even less about cell phone troubleshooting than Apple Store “Geniuses” and it would have been a much more difficult process to replace my phone.  I wasn’t out of the woods though.  The issues with my first replacement iPhone came up when I tried syncing it, so I knew that would be the test.  I wasn’t going to trust this new phone until all of my music, apps and settings looked like my old phone.

As discussed in my previous post, I am the proud owner of a 15″ PowerBook G4 that I got at the end of my Sophomore year of college.  It’s 5.5 years old, but it’s still hanging in there.  Sadly, Apple has given it a 10 count and decided they’re done with it.  I found this out when I tried upgrading my iPhone from iOS 4.1 to 4.2 and discovered the new update would only work on Mac OS 10.5 and my machine was a 10.4 (and because they switched to Intel processors after the version of my computer, I can’t upgrade to 10.5).  To make matters worse, when I clicked on the “Update” button to download the new iPhone update, it acted like I was trying to update iTunes and kept telling me “You already have the latest version of iTunes”.  I decided I’d just sync it and deal with the iOS upgrade problem at another time.  Except this time iTunes had lost my backup from 2 days earlier!  It showed up when I tried syncing the first replacement phone, but this time it was asking me to sync back to November.  SUPER annoyed, I selected it anyway, but it only synced my photos, contacts and general settings…. no apps or music!

Somebody get this guy a scotch.

After making myself a stiff drink, I became determined to ninja my way out of this situation.  I’m the DIGITAL ANALYST for Christ’s sake!  I can’t let this little machine defeat me.  I racked my brain for possible work-arounds to fix my syncing issue since restoring it didn’t work.  I figured I’d try upgrading the iOS to 4.2 on my PC laptop.  Of course this couldn’t be a simple process either.  When iTunes finished downloading the file and was “processing” it, my “network timed out” and couldn’t finish downloading the file.  I tried re-downloading it, restarting iTunes, restarting my computer… nothing worked.  I googled the issue and a forum said to disable my Antivirus temporarily and that should fix it.  While it did fix it and iTunes finished downloading the update, I was still annoyed I needed to disable my Antivirus protection in the first place.  It’s a standard Antivirus program called Kaspersky that is given away with every laptop sold at Best Buy, so I know I’m not the only person who experienced the issue, but I digress…

I finished downloading the update and upgraded my phone to iOS 4.2.  Hoping this would solve the sync issues I was having with my PowerBook, I plugged it in and crossed my fingers, but of course, nothing comes easy.  Upgrading to iOS 4.2 made my iPhone completely incompatible with my old computer.  iTunes won’t even recognize it and just spits an error back at me any time I try to make them play nice.

At this point, you must be wondering why I don’t just sync it with my new computer.  Here’s why….  my iTunes music folder is saved on an external hard drive.  I keep all my files there so if anything were to happen to my old laptop, everything important would be backed up externally.  So when I got my new computer, I tried connecting it to the external hard drive, but nothing happened.  The computer saw that something had been plugged in, but it wouldn’t let me open a folder or anything.  Turns out, formatting it to work with my PowerBook made it incompatible with any 64-bit Windows operating system.  So I couldn’t transfer the files or even access them from my new computer.  I discovered this issue when I first bought this laptop and again tried to troubleshoot it online, download new drivers, etc. etc., but nothing worked.  Since I don’t have a “Genius” Bar for my Samsung Laptop, I talked to the IT guy at my work.

Turns out that I could plug the hard drive into a new Mac and it would recognize it because the new Macs with intel processors have a driver necessary to read old Mac hard drives.  So the solution was that I’d have to first transfer the files to a newer Mac with an intel processor, then reformat the hard drive to work with my PC, then transfer the files from the newer Mac back to my hard drive.  That should in theory work.

Until I can get that worked out, I’m going to have to be patient.  At least this phone seems to work, so I won’t have to go back and deal with any other “Geniuses”.  A problem for the interim was that I don’t really use my phone as a phone.  I really use it for the apps.  I’m addicted to Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, HuffingtonPost and Solitaire, so without those apps, my phone feels worthless.  Well, while I was updating my iOS, I changed the email address used as my login from an old account to a newer one, thinking it wouldn’t be an issue.  Sadly, I changed it right after my phone had synced, so it was still using my old email address as my iTunes username and I couldn’t change it to my new one.

This was an easy problem though.  I’d just re-sync my phone and it would recognize my new iTunes account settings.  Easy peasy one two thre…. ERROR!  I guess Apple thought I hadn’t experienced enough crazy-stupid issues over the past 24 hours, so it tossed this curveball at me.  It was saying I needed verify my account AND that my account was verrified in the SAME ERROR MESSAGE!  Had hell just frozen over?  I couldn’t believe it.  Of course I turned to Google and found a post from someone having the same issue:

I really thought I’d seen it all, but this was a new level of WTF APPLE?!  I followed the steps from the linked issue above and finally fixed my iTunes account after working on it for close to an hour.  At least now I’ve downloaded my most important apps, so I can make it through until I transfer my external hard drive and can restore from my backup registered in November.  I’m not even expecting to recover the backup I made 3 nights ago… part of me is just giving up after all of these iSsues.

For those of you who have made it this far into my longest post here, I apologize for the rant.  You’re probably thinking, “You’re the Digital Analyst dude.  You should understand tech becomes obsolete and buy gadgets more often”  and there’s some truth to that.  My problem with this whole situation is that it could have been avoided, but Apple decided my computer was obsolete.  It wasn’t that it stopped working or that iTunes wouldn’t work on it or anything else.  I mean, it’s not even 6 years old.  I’m mad because I bought a $2000+ laptop 5 years ago and assumed it would work for at least this long, but really I expected it to go 7 years before I recycled it for the metal.  I expect 2 year life cycles on iPods and iPhones, but a computer is a much bigger investment.

Is 5 years the maximum shelf life we can expect from computers now?  I’m sure if I asked a “Genius” at an Apple Store that they’d tell me their new MacBook Pros will last longer than that, because that’s what they told me when I bought my PowerBook 5 years ago.  That’s why I upgraded the ram when it started slowing down.  That’s why I manually took the entire machine apart to replace the keyboard after some coke had been spilled on it.  I invested time and money into keeping that laptop chugging along, but then Apple decides to stop supporting Mac OS 10.4 and I’m screwed.

What would happen if Microsoft decided to stop supporting Windows XP?  People would be up in arms!  Rioting in the streets.  They bought computers 5 years ago that still work just fine today and then Microsoft decides to drop them?  That’s not how you treat customers who have been loyal to your product for this long.  Of course Microsoft will eventually stop supporting XP and new updates will only be available for Vista and Windows 7 computers, but at least they’re supporting their products and proving that they can still works 5 years later.

I originally wrote this post for Interpret LLC’s blog.  Please check it out and read the other interesting articles by my colleagues.

Everyone in the social media space has predicted 2010 to be the beginning of the ‘location war.’  Smartphone applications that let you ‘check-in’ to places you visit in real life finally began bridging the digi-social experience with the real world.  Foursquare took the early lead in the location war, but Facebook has stolen its thunder with the roll-out of its own location-based service called ‘Places.’  While many are calling Places a direct competitor for Foursquare, Facebook’s strategy is markedly different and surprisingly compatible with Foursquare’s services.

The biggest difference between Places and Foursquare is that Facebook has not gamified their service.  The points, mayorships and badges built into the Foursquare experience have been very popular with early adopters, and Facebook’s decision to not incentivize check-ins with anything beyond the satisfaction of self-expression has been seen as the only chink in Places’ armor.  This decision against gamifying their location-based service seems more indicative of Facebook’s overall strategy in regards to Foursquare and other similar services like Gowalla, Loopt and MyTown than an oversight in the development of their own services.  Instead of trying to compete with them and push them out of the space, Facebook has left its Places API open for Foursquare and other services to compete within their platform because they don’t care about the actual act of checking into locations as much as they care about the user-data those check-ins can add to their website’s advertising value.

Facebook knows it’s on the top of the social media mountain looking down at the rest of the networks trying to climb their way up, and with the lead they’ve surmounted in active users, it would seem paranoid and borderline vindictive for them to try to squash smaller platforms – they simply aren’t a legitimate threat to Facebook.  They’ve recognized that they can let the other companies do all the leg work developing unique and engaging user-experiences while they gather the increasingly valuable data each of these services generate.  Location-based check-ins are a gold mine of tangible profiling data that Facebook can use to develop more targeted advertising, leading to higher premiums and more specific opportunities for building relationships with location-centric advertisers.

One of the most important ancillary effects Places will have is the spur in creation of Pages for local businesses.  When someone creates a place to check into on Facebook, businesses have the opportunity to ‘claim’ that Place, given they provide proof that they are the actual owners, and once a Place has been claimed, Facebook automatically creates a Page for that Place.  Integrating Places into their Pages platform will give local businesses a strong incentive to build or increase their social media presence.  Once more local businesses have created their own Facebook Page, they can then be sold advertising targeted to people who have checked-in to their business.  The Pages will also likely become destinations for promotions, coupons and other deals which will increase their value to users, lead to stronger engagement, more time spent on Facebook, and again, higher premiums for their advertising content.

In the end, Facebook isn’t betting against companies like Foursquare, they’re betting on them.  They’re betting they will continue developing apps that deliver highly engaging user-experiences that integrate seamlessly with and add value to Facebook.  Facebook is very comfortable letting Foursquare play with their point system, badges and mayorships, as long as those check-ins are posted to Facebook walls and integrated into their ever-growing stream of user-profiling data.

A tragedy occurred on Thursday.  As I was flying back from NYC from my second business trip ever (first one was the previous week… yay new professional adventures!), I made one of the most stupid mistakes I’ve ever made with something I own/love.  I left my iPad in the magazine pocket of my plane seat.  I did not realize this until about 6 hours later and have come to grips with the fact that I will likely never retrieve my baby.  I went through different ideas of tracking IP addresses connecting to my email account wirelessly on it (the email accounts should update automatically if it’s connected to a wifi router), but while I KNOW it is possible to locate my iPad by identifying the IP address connecting to it, law enforcement is basically stuck in the pager-era, so this sounds like a fool’s mission.  If anyone has any ideas on how to find locate my iPad (no, I don’t have MobileME), I’m all ears.

I’m really torn up over it because of the apps I had on there… I can’t watch Netflix as easily in my bed before I go to sleep.  I’m stuck on my high score in Fruit Ninja (greatest game EVER), giving my co-workers an opportunity to beat my rather impressive, if I do say so myself, high score.  Even worse, I’m halfway through the book Linchpins by Seth Godin and I do not want to have to buy it again to finish the book (same with Blink by Malcolm Gladwell).  My Powerbook was too old to sync with my iPad, so neither were backed up (major frustration… I’m definitely in the market for a new computer, so you can expect a post on that to explain my decision-making process once I’ve made up my mind).  I’m going to investigate whether I can get those ebooks somehow.  I figure Apple has a record of me purchasing it through my iTunes account, so I should be able to get access to it on another computer.

The most interesting part of this experience though has been the realization of the role the iPad played in my life.  If it’s true that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone, I wish the iPad gave me more to miss.  I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s purely a luxury device in my life and not something I can justify purchasing again only a month and a half after my first purchase.  Basically, I can live without it.  This is slightly depressing in hindsight, but also depressing in foresight because I know I’ll eventually buy another one…. I’m debating whether I’ll wait for just the price to drop or if I’ll have the patience to wait for the second generation.  Right now, I’m thinking I’ll wait for the second generation.  By then the apps will have evolved into iPad-worthy experiences (which I can’t currently claim… it’s a nascent marketplace though, so the sky’s the limit on innovation within the space), the price should drop and they should have integrated the front-facing camera for video chat on it.  I feel like the only reason the first version of the iPad didn’t have it is because they wanted to wait to release it with the iPhone 4.  From a business perspective, I completely understand the roll-out plan, but from an early adopter consumer perspective, I expect more from Apple and I know the camera is a really easy feature to integrate.  I digress though…

After realizing that I didn’t need an iPad in my life, I began considering which devices were truly essential for me anymore.  The first one that I KNOW I couldn’t live without is my iPhone.  I rely on it way too heavily.  It’s my primary device for interfacing with email, social networks, web search, communicating with people, organizing my life… the list goes on.  It’s been integrated into so many parts of my life that if I lost my iPhone tomorrow, I don’t think I could make it more than 2-3 days before buying a replacement.  This was a shocking revelation to me because I couldn’t put my home computer in the same category.  It certainly meets a different set of needs, but in the end, I found it didn’t meet any crucial needs that my iPhone couldn’t accomplish within a short period of time.  There’s no replacement for saving all of my old files, navigating pictures, or full-on web browsing, but the more I thought about it, the less these features mattered.  Almost all of my pictures are uploaded directly to Facebook or Twitter from my phone and I’ve started using Google Docs to save Word, Excel and PowerPoint files.  I have all of my historic files backed up on an external hard drive, so even if I lost my laptop, I’d still have the files that really mattered.  The fact is, if I lost my laptop or spilled water on it or whatever other tragedies I can imagine, I wouldn’t need to replace it within a week to continue functioning on any level that mattered.  It would certainly be inconvenient not to have access to a full web browser, but that’s the main thing I use my computer for anyway and the Safari web browser on my iPhone meets nearly all of my essential browsing needs.  My situation would be different if I relied on my home PC for work, but I try my best to finish work in the office, on the Windows-based PC my employer provides me, and keep work-related tasks separate from home.  Work-life separation is very important to me, which is part of my explanation/excuse for not updating this blog more frequently.

So I’ve found that the only truly indispensable  gadget in my life is my iPhone.  Although I’m not glad that I went through the agony of losing my newest toy, I have learned an important lesson about what truly is essential in my life.  If I were more willing to consider a ‘disconnected’ lifestyle as an option, my iPhone wouldn’t even qualify anymore, but let’s not get crazy here.

Which devices in your life are truly indispensable?  If you lost a device, what true impact would it have on your life beyond simple convenience?  These are important questions because the relationships we form with technology can have a profound impact on our daily lives.

This is a guest post written by Brenton Lyle, Senior Gaming Consultant at Interpret LLC.  To give some context, Brenton gave me permission to publish an email he wrote to my office in response to an article sent to our listserv: Who will buy the iPad? I thought the points he made were strong, well articulated and pretty funny, so it would have been a waste if it just ended up in my Outlook Deleted Items.

I think it’s important to look past the day-one reaction of the tech-savvy internet commenter crowd; they’ve proven historically to be impossible to please without creating a product that’s doomed to failure (I imagine a quad-core, Linux-based, open-source tablet with seventeen USB outs and three HDMIs, all for $32 (or $2000), might have had a chance of avoiding the ire of the self-declared gadget elite).

The iPad may succeed or fail, but I think it’s important to know what it is Apple is actually trying to accomplish (conceptually, that is; shareholder value is the literal goal, of course). Jobs decided that room exists for a gadget with a new set of uses – uses you don’t yet realize that you’ll enjoy. If they’re right, this will go next to “Put Arm & Hammer in your fridge” as another famous example of expanding your market by introducing new consumption habits. Do you browse the internet on your couch, or check your email while eating cereal? You don’t, yet*, but Apple is hoping you’ll enjoy doing it.

Jobs said in his presentation that they’re filling the space between phones and laptops. That is actually a simplification of what they’re attempting (it was too obtuse to describe on stage during the introduction). They’ve identified an entirely new type of web-connected, technology-enabled media consumption, that is neither mobile, nor full laptop computing. The whole thing gets confused, however, when one (correctly) points out that a number of devices are already capable of doing these things. The obvious comparisons that spring most readily to mind are the iPhone and netbooks, but the key to the iPad is the fact that these devices were never intended for this type of “casual computing”, nor are they particularly well suited for it, the same way that your daily-driver car can roam the open plains and explore dirt trails, but isn’t exactly optimized for the task.**

This is illustrated below:

The space between mobile and laptop computing

The famous “Blue Ocean Strategy” article (I believe Kim Mauborgne wrote it) said (paraphrasing) that you’re more likely to succeed if you figure out how to sidestep your competitors, rather than beating them in yesterday’s marketplace. Nintendo demonstrated this so soundly with the Wii—woefully underpowered, laughable graphics, and a wildly unconventional and untested control scheme—that Sony executives still cry themselves to sleep 35% of the time. Apple is attempting the same thing with the iPad: cater to an entirely new type of computer use with a device that isn’t a phone, or a computer, or any combination of the two.

People are getting hung up on the fact that, with regard to technical specifications, it is by definition (and parts vendors) a combination of the two: capacitive touchscreen (mobile), A4 processor (computer), icon-based homescreen UI (mobile), etc. But attacking the iPad because of its specifications is like lambasting the Wii because it lacked the 8-cell processor of the Playstation 3: you’ve missed the point.

* If you said “yes”, you’re likely among the netbook hyper-minority, probably hate the iPad, and have likely already written a few comments online about it. You are not actually the market for this device, and I have it on good authority that Steve Jobs hopes you spill cereal on your netbook.

** If you drive an off-road SUV in Los Angeles, we cannot guarantee that people aren’t laughing at you in the Whole Foods parking lot.

Brenton can be contacted directly at brenton.lyle@interpretllc.com.

Steve Jobs introduces newest member of the iFam

It’s time to welcome a new member to our digital family of gadgets.  Apple’s iPad is like the middle child, stuck between the iPhone and MacBook wondering what it’s place is in this wild and crazy mobile computing world.  The iPad isn’t the first tablet computer, but the hype and momentum behind it make it sound like Steve Jobs sucessfully redesigned the wheel.  While I’ve seen many apple fanboys disappointed that the iPad is essentially a jumbo iPod Touch with 3G, this OS is precisely why I believe it will succeed where so many other tablets have failed in the past and find a place in our lives.

The reason tablets have not succeeded in the past is because they always tried to force a square block into the round hole where their operating system should have been.  One of our biggest problems when venturing into uncharted digital space is that we try to force what’s in front of us into a frame of something familiar to us.  Early tablets tried their best to be an alternative to laptops with an operating system you were already familiar with on the PCs around your home and work, but the interface is so unique on a tablet that they never quite lived up to expectations.

If early tablets tried to force a full-on PC operating system without success, many will argue Apple is committing the same error in forcing their tablet to mimic their other portable devices with an iPhone OS.  My take on this argument is that the OS Apple designed for the iPhone and iPod Touch is actually better suited for a device the size of the iPad, especially when it comes to reading eBooks or other content online.  I’ll be upfront and say that my iPhone is probably the most essential device in my life and I feel lost without it sometimes.  I use it for reading email, news and other blogs, but the limitation of reading on a phone’s smaller screen means I’m constantly zooming in, switching to landscape and squinting to make things out on websites that aren’t optimized for mobile browsing.

One issue two co-workers and I got into a heated debate over yesterday is the role that the iPad will play in our gadget lineup.  They both were disappointed that the device was essentially a blown up iPod Touch and thought that the inability of users to multi-task on the iPad would severely limit its utility and reach in the market.  I think they fell into the trap I described earlier, hoping the iPad would be something it is not – a replacement for the netbook.  As Steve Jobs said in his keynote, “netbooks aren’t better at anything”.  The reason they aren’t better than anything is because they try to be everything to everyone.  They’re the early versions of the tablet PC with a smaller screen and tiny keyboard.  I’ll admit, those two changes make a big difference and I do think there is a place for the netbook as a mobile productivity platform for people who need to take their work with them, but they are not an apples-to-apples comparison because the iPad is not trying to replace the functionality of a laptop.

Apple understand it’s corner of the PC market is precisely that… the personal computer.  They make great computers for you to use at home.  They’re easy to use.  Plain and simple.  They’re also easy on the eyes and carry a level of sophistication missing from most Windows-based PCs.  However, unless you work in film editing or graphic design, Apple’s products are not designed for work-style productivity.  Their version of Microsoft Office, especially PowerPoint, is tough to navigate and I personally find them borderline unusable compared to the Office suite of apps for Windows.  I’d address iWork except that I don’t know anyone who actually uses it.  The iPad is also aware of its role in your personal computing life.  If you need to research online, review spreadsheets and work on a presentation, the iPad is not the device for you.  I would argue the netbook is too small to handle those tasks with any ounce of grace, but if you need to do mobile work, it’s the best solution because laptops are too big and expensive to easily carry around.  Bottom line, the iPad is NOT a netbook and it isn’t trying to be one.

I can’t speak for everyone, but I’ll try to give you a sense of the role I envision for the iPad in my life in order to expound on the features that I think will help it succeed.  First, my current setup at home is that I have an iPhone I carry around everywhere and a PowerBook that sits on my desk or is used in the living room to project movies.  This arrangement has worked for a while, but my laptop is on its last leg, so I’m currently considering the optimal device combination for my life.  After much debate, I believe I’m going to replace my PowerBook with a new iMac in my room.  I almost always leave the PowerBook sitting on my desk, so it’s essentially a desktop anyway at this point.  My iPhone covers almost all of my daily mobile computing needs, so I don’t feel a need to lug around a device that is very expensive to replace in a worst case scenario.  If my iMac sits on my desk and my iPhone goes with me when ever I leave my apartment, then the iPad is my everything in between device.  I’ll primarily use it in my apartment, although I will certainly take it on trips to read books or watch movies.  Like many tech-enthusiasts, I consume an inordinate amount of reading online, but I don’t always like doing it from my computer.  The iPad will untether that consumption, allowing me to read more easily in my living room and bed.  I spend so much time reading in front of a computer, it’s almost weird to think that I can read the same content while sitting in a big comfy chair or couch.  I’ve tried taking my laptop to the living room to read on my couch, but there’s never a good way to sit with it and it overheats my legs too quickly.  While just using the device to read and surf the net doesn’t sound like a lot, it’s probably the primary reason I use my computers at home.  I don’t think the iPad will replace most of my computer usage, but I do think it’ll transform the way I interact with social networks and think about the Internet.

What role, if any, do you see tablet computers playing in your life?  Where do you think a device like the iPad fits into your daily routine?