Note: This was written in July of 2011, but never published. As I prepare a post on the KindleFire, I thought I would get this one out the door.
I have a confession: I haven’t always been an Apple fanboy, but do seem to have become an Apple cheerleader in the past 36 months. I also confess that I own an iPad (actually won one from a vendor), own a MacBook Pro and work in Windows 7 (much improved over XP) daily at work.
Around 2003 I started using Linux in various flavors, but after having bought a first generation Intel iMac for my wife, I decided to buy a MacBook Pro when I needed to replace my Asus notebook. I bought the first Mac in 2009.
About a year ago a vendor I have done business with wrote me to say I had won an iPad from his company (having been entered in a drawing I didn’t know existed). After all the jokes from friends that I was being scammed, I actually received the iPad (thanks Perry!). It has proven to be the most engaging piece of technology I have ever handled – for everyone in the family!
Now, with confessions out the way, I want to tell you about two friends, both of whom I respect and love like brothers. Both work for non-profits, and we all formerly were employed at the same non-profit.
One friend, Greg, is a professor at a university and a great technophile. The other, Allen, is a leader in the non-profit he still works for, and is also a technophile.
About 9 months ago, after I had been posting here and on Facebook about my experiences with my iPad, Allen wrote me asking my thoughts on Android tablets. He was very interested in a tablet, and though he had never fully plunged into using Linux like I had, he had dabbled in Linux, and is very proficient at tackling new tech. He felt the iPad was too rich for his blood, and he wanted to wait for an Android tablet, convinced that they would quickly surpass Apple’s tablet. And, truthfully, he didn’t want to “go over to the dark side” of Apple.
I told Allen then that I couldn’t find any reason to believe that Android tablets would ever perform as well as the iPad or ever, dollar for dollar, be equal in terms of bang for the buck. He wasn’t convinced, and probably still isn’t. I am not sure if he has ever purchased a tablet.
Greg, on the other hand, aside from encouraging me to buy some kind of machine to help my back, has bought several Android tablets. He told me last week that he returned everyone of the Android tablets he had purchased–they were all junk were his words. He was waiting on the iPad 2 his school had purchased for faculty.
There is one kind of Android tablet user who will love the devices: the highly technically skilled who is willing to spend immense amounts of time to keep it working (especially when they try to upgrade the OS and all the apps they purchased have broken due to dependency problems).
There are many kinds of iPad users. Because the thing just works and rarely stops working.
An internationally recognized authority on media tablets and e-readers from the University of Missouri findsd that iPad owners are reporting exceptionally high levels of satisfaction and user satisfaction appears to increase the longer they use the device.
via iPad Defies Skeptics, User Satisfaction Still Increasing, University of Missouri Survey Finds.
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