iPad questions from a social science researcher's perspective
As a researcher, writer, and teacher who spends many of his days interacting with a computing device—either a 24 inch iMac, a 9.1 inch Linux netbook, or an iPhone—obviously a product like the iPad is big news.
As an iPhone user, it all looks very familiar. But I’m left with four very basic questions that I think any academic who currently owns a laptop, desktop, or both, will ask:
1. Will it allow me to multitask and switch seamlessly between apps?
2. Will it allow me to load my own PDFs of journal articles?
3. Will it allow me to annotate my own PDFs and iBooks, and save and sync those annotations across to my desktop Mac? And will it allow me to do this in the other direction—from desktop to iPad?
4. Will it allow me to sync iWork documents seamlessly between iPad to desktop? No compromises over formatting, etc.?
I can see the app developers solving some of these knotty problems, but we’ll have to wait and see.