The iPad Will Change Something

There are a lot of nerds complaining about what the iPad can't do, and while those things are true they also don't seem to have anything to do with reality.

It doesn't have a camera: Fine by me. I've got a camera on my phone on my laptop and guess what my camera is a camera too. What do I need with another camera anyway? Some people are whining that it needs two cameras (one toward the user and one away for videoconferencing) If I want to videoconference I'd use my laptop anyway because I can put it down and it will stand up by itself.

It doesn't multitask: Great. Multitasking is overrated, I am much more productive with a couple of hours of no email, chats, or browser singing its siren song to me.

The big thing for me is iBooks. I read a lot of non-fiction and I like to take notes but there is no version of a book that really works for taking good notes in. Margins are too small except for tiny notes or a simple diagram. A Kindle will let you enter some annotations and some highlighting, if B&W is fine.
I hope that eventually that we can split the screen reading an iBook into the text and a notes section. Highlight a line and then reference that line to the notes much like a footnote but now have infinite writing room and I can stick drawings and diagrams in at the same time. It can't do that now but the core capabilities are all there.

I usually end up reading in less then ideal lighting circumstances I have a booklight I take with my on trips and use at home. So a backlighted screen is fine for me as long as I have some really fine dimming control. My iPod touch doesn't quite go low enough.

This is important to me because a big part of readiness is learning and mental preparedness.