There is something to be said for the single focus of an iPad, that running a single program and focusing on the task gives you focus on that task.
On a modern computer, whatever standard by which you measure modern you can be doing several things, running several programs at once.
There is something that the iPad gives you in only allowing you do do one thing and do that one thing quite easily, but if you want to switch between programs (fine Apps) you have to double click the home button to allow you to switch.
But on a computer, on a desktop or laptop that is, it’s much easier to switch between programs, or have several running in the background of your main task.
Sometimes that’s good, in researching stuff you’ll need to have a browser open in the background with likely several tabs worth of information open to refer back to. Plus PDFs open as well with additional material.
But then there’s all the other minor distractions, at the moment I have two word processors open. Bean a small, low complexity word processor which I use to write most of my blogs, because it opens quickly, doesn’t have very many extra bells and whistles and lets me compose things quickly.
Behind that I’ve got Word open, which is what I should be working on. I likely could be working on the file that’s in Word in Bean, but Word is what I originally composed it in and will continue with it in Word.
Behind those there’s iTunes downloading podcasts, and somewhere at the back is Firefox, which is only a distraction which I should close, but haven’t.
It is an active concern, the internet lies in wait to distract me from the work I should be doing. It shouldn’t take self control like this to avoid the internet, but it does.
It was easier when the internet was dial-up, then you couldn’t just use it on impulse, you had to make a decision to use the internet, it would tie up the phone lines as well (unless you had a separate one for the internet, or fax or something). Then you used it, and while it was a decision based sort of activity you could actually do other things because load times were long.
Now it seems I’ve distracted myself from what was the main subject of this.
While an iPad does give you focus, Apple’s decision to tie down the operating system on the iPad makes it somewhat irritating from a text construction point of view. The dictionary is one of the most annoying parts, the other is the lack of keyboard shortcuts.
I don’t use the keyboard shortcuts for bold or italic often, but when I do it’s part of my regular typing process, I don’t pause to use them, I use them and then move on. But with the iPad it forces a break in the flow because you have to take your hands off the keyboard (I use a wireless one when I’m composing at length) and touch the screen. It’s not a gigantic issue, but it’s one of several annoyances which prevent me from using the iPad as anything other than an occasional text construction device.
On a modern computer, whatever standard by which you measure modern you can be doing several things, running several programs at once.
There is something that the iPad gives you in only allowing you do do one thing and do that one thing quite easily, but if you want to switch between programs (fine Apps) you have to double click the home button to allow you to switch.
But on a computer, on a desktop or laptop that is, it’s much easier to switch between programs, or have several running in the background of your main task.
Sometimes that’s good, in researching stuff you’ll need to have a browser open in the background with likely several tabs worth of information open to refer back to. Plus PDFs open as well with additional material.
But then there’s all the other minor distractions, at the moment I have two word processors open. Bean a small, low complexity word processor which I use to write most of my blogs, because it opens quickly, doesn’t have very many extra bells and whistles and lets me compose things quickly.
Behind that I’ve got Word open, which is what I should be working on. I likely could be working on the file that’s in Word in Bean, but Word is what I originally composed it in and will continue with it in Word.
Behind those there’s iTunes downloading podcasts, and somewhere at the back is Firefox, which is only a distraction which I should close, but haven’t.
It is an active concern, the internet lies in wait to distract me from the work I should be doing. It shouldn’t take self control like this to avoid the internet, but it does.
It was easier when the internet was dial-up, then you couldn’t just use it on impulse, you had to make a decision to use the internet, it would tie up the phone lines as well (unless you had a separate one for the internet, or fax or something). Then you used it, and while it was a decision based sort of activity you could actually do other things because load times were long.
Now it seems I’ve distracted myself from what was the main subject of this.
While an iPad does give you focus, Apple’s decision to tie down the operating system on the iPad makes it somewhat irritating from a text construction point of view. The dictionary is one of the most annoying parts, the other is the lack of keyboard shortcuts.
I don’t use the keyboard shortcuts for bold or italic often, but when I do it’s part of my regular typing process, I don’t pause to use them, I use them and then move on. But with the iPad it forces a break in the flow because you have to take your hands off the keyboard (I use a wireless one when I’m composing at length) and touch the screen. It’s not a gigantic issue, but it’s one of several annoyances which prevent me from using the iPad as anything other than an occasional text construction device.