Just curious if anyone here got the iPad then took it back and purchased a different tablet.
Yeah, I know. Why would former iPad owners be here? I'm sure there are a few of you hanging around.
I guess I can raise my hand here. I bought the iPad, played with it for some days, found that it absolutely sucked at everything that I wanted to do with it (read eBooks, especially in bright daylight, watch movies, surf the web, write emails, WRITE, use it for remote administration of my server farm at work), and then I returned it to Apple. I own a Kindle now. While you cannot compare a Kindle with an iPad - one is a pure eBook reader, the other pretends to be a multi-purpose device - the Kindle does not suck at the one thing it was made for: Being an eBook reader.
The iPad's display is a nightmare in bright daylight, the on-screen-"keyboard" is the worst thing imaginable for writing, and iOS is too restricted to be a truly useful platform for real world use. Also, the iPad's hardware is too weak for even playing back movie rips without stuttering or dropping frames.
The only thing that was nice on it was playing Plants vs Zombies or Shredder Chess. And even here, I must say, I prefer my iPhone.
I might take another look at the iPad when it's grown up. But by that time, the competition will have released a series of devices with real operating systems that do not suffer from Apple's Walled Garden syndrome. And that Walled Garden will eventually be the iPad's worst enemy.
Anyway. I don't hate the iPad. I just think that it is a really useless toy.
I don't really get the "I wanted it to do more" complaints. Of course we want everything we own to do more but it's not as if you were sold some blind item. I'm neither wealthy nor poor but before I drop nearly $1,000 on something I do a little bit of due diligence. I bought mine on the day the 3G was released and I already had a good sense of what it could and couldn't do so the "but it can't do...." posts seem a bit misguided.
There are too many things that you can only find out once you own and use the device for more than a few minutes in a shop. Usually, you grant an Apple device the benefit of the doubt, like, for example, "I probably get used to the on screen keyboard after a couple of days". But then you discover that you don't, and then you realize that the device doesn't cut it for you.
You are also misled by Apple to believe that Pages for iPad is a real word processor, and then you use it and find out that it is just something like the Wordpad accessory for Windows.
Apple also tries to tell you that you don't need Java or Flash for a real web browsing experience. Well, they obviously don't expect their users to connect their iPads to a corporate Intranet, video surveillance servers or any of the gazillion of online games or video websites on the Internet.
Apple also tells you that you can watch movies on the iPad. Well, not ONE of dozens of rips that I have on my hard disk played without frame drops on the iPad, and I tried almost all available (pay-for) video players from the AppStore.
Then the damn thing is just too heavy to really use it as an eBook reader in bed. Compare it with a Kindle and then honestly tell me what you prefer for reading a novel.
None of this can really be found out by reading hyped reviews or by playing with the thing in a store. You have to own the gadget for a couple of days to get there. And on the fourth day, I couldn't come up with anymore excuses for owning a useless electronic gadget and returned it.
