Well, it might be.
Like most gadget-engaged Mac fans, the iPad, as we must call it (iTablet still sounds better to me) was something I was waiting to see and consider. And, to be honest, I still am.
Why? I'm not sure where it would fit into my use pattern to be honest and that's really why. It doesn't have quite the power of a laptop so if I need to travel AND take a computer, it won't, as I understand it, do that. I couldn't, for example, go to visit my parents, take my iPad and jump into SL to do some work. Although there is an iPhone client so I might be able to something very limited, and that would be something to consider.
Now, browsing the web on a giant iPhone/iPad - that's attractive. The practicalities of browsing on the iPhone split into two parts. Zooming, following links by touching them and the like, that's all great. But the iPhone's screen is tiny and zooming is (almost always) required and that's limiting. On a screen four times or so the size, then the downside of browsing on the iPhone is removed and the iPad looks attractive. "Information dipping" - looking up actors in a TV show for example to work out where I know them from - would be well suited to the iPad. But the MacBook does it perfectly well too, so that won't be the killer use that makes me decide to go for it.
The thing that will make the decision for me will be the quality of the reading experience. I've used
Stanza on the iPhone quite happily, something like Stanza would be an acceptable app, something designed by Apple and optimised for the iPad would be even better I hope. But that doesn't answer the questions for me. I will assume, in the absence of other information, let's assume that Stanza works nicely enough for me to want to use it to read on the train, in bed and the like. And there, really, for me, is the crunch. I need to pick it up and see. I really need to pick it up, then curl up in bed and see how it feels to read it. Do you think my local bookshop or computer shop will have a bed handy to let me try it?!
If it feels good to read in bed, and certainly if I can run SL on it in some form, then to iPad or not will become the real question. And if I do... I rather think I will be funding it by selling the MacBook. I like having the laptop but I don't use it as a heavy computing machine very often - I mostly work at home on the iMac. Something that "makes do" in SL and is a good eBook tool is what I need I guess.
Anyone know if there's an iPad SL client out there?
