After much deliberation we plunked down the plastic for an iPad2. It was supposed to be a gift for me.. though I likely use it the least of all people over the age of 2 in this house. It shipped much faster than expected and just in time for the trip we intended to take it on. The primary motivation was to leverage our increasing and annoyingly vendor-locked-in investment in music and video from our good friends at Apple. Our daughter knows how to jockey Apple devices as if born to them. I also liked the month-to-month nature of the Verizon plan we chose. The “pad” is snappy, has a quality build, and yes there are a billion apps in the wild that I have no use for.
But, I’ve been rockin this EVO 4G in all of its Android glory for over a year now and I just really want a larger version of it. But, I want to pay far less than the iPad for basically a device with the same physical properties and hardware capabilities. Then I get the flexibility of the Android OS, and less vendor lock-in. Oh, and I want a $20 month-to-month Verizon plan like the iPad has for business travel. I would have gotten the Android tablet in fact if (1) they were priced just a tad cheaper than iPads for the same apparent capabilities (2) I didn’t hear iffy stuff about build qualities and (3) all the 3G versions seemed to require annual or multi-year plans with the carriers.
You see, I enjoy (need) the flexibility of Android and I prefer how it works versus Apple’s intensely spartan “you don’t even need a back button, settings button, or left arrow key” approach. If I want to strip down Android to the point of being a one-button kiosk, I probably can. But Apple’s one size fits all poorage is driving me nuts. All the apps I need are on my phone. But I just need a bigger screen for reading and more disk for movies. I don’t need five apps that let me hone my skills at chosing veggies at the grocery. Want to look up the menu at the local fish house – nuts, it’s in Flash and Mr. Jobs wants to control his platform too much and doesn’t let me see Flash.
But, we own an Ipad now and I think I’ve figured out that what *I* really needed (not my kids) was a now out-of-vogue (that was so 2010) netbook with a month-to-month 3G card/dongle from my carrier. <sigh> one of just a few purchasing errors I’ve made recently.