I actually have more than one book but iBooks doesn't know it

Despite being a huge Apple fanboy, even I have to admit that there are certain things that Apple doesn’t do well at. I’ve got serious questions about the quality of several products that Apple has launched, anything from the Apple TV to Mobile Me. Even have a few gripes about little things like the Apple Remote that comes with your mac.

But the one product I feel like Apple has failed miserably at is iBooks.

Apple’s modus operandi is to look at the market for something and substantially revolutionize or improve it. They did it with laptops, with music, with phones and now with tablets. They tried to do it with selling and reading books online but have fallen way short of their primary competition, Amazon.

I’m not even talking about the device to read books, because I think the iPad is superior to the Kindle in about 1000 ways. No, my biggest complaint is the iBooks application and the iBooks store.

The biggest problem with iBooks is just the selection. I have about a 20% success rate so far of even finding the books I really want to spend money on while looking through the iBooks store. They simply aren’t there.

Secondarily is the way the bookstore syncs. I recently lost about 4 books from my virtual ‘bookshelf’ when i moved my iTunes library from one mac to another. No idea where they went. I suppose I could troubleshoot this a bit and get them again, but its very distressing to go to read something and find out you can’t (far more so than wanting to listen to a podcast or a song that has vanished, there is a much greater personal investment in reading a book in my opinion).

The Amazon kindle app, which runs great on the iPhone, iPad and even over the web, has worked well for me without a hitch. It is fast to buy books (if far less integrated than the iBooks process) and there is a great selection. I believe that titles on the Amazon store also are cheaper, at least in the few circumstances where I have been able to find the same book on both stores.

I just feel like iBooks is inferior to Amazon in every way, and it pains me to say because I really like the vast majority of Apple’s stuff. I guess they can’t be great at everything.

Not so much competition for my dollars, personally, but competition among tablet computers for non-Apple fanboys.

Blackberry’s Playbook looks like a pretty snazzy new entry into the tablet market. It is still aways off from being released, but it is sufficiently different that i think it could make a splash with the kinds of folks who are always tethered to their crackberry’s.

And this is the place where Apple is vulnerable – enterprise computing. I always hear folks inside of large companies (including my own) talk about how the iPad will never be a supported “business device” even though our company does support both iPhones and Blackberry’s. I guess the iPad and iPhone are just not seen as being corporate. But Blackberry’s certainly are, and the fact that you will be able to do most of the things on the Playbook that you can also do on the iPad will make this a relatively dangerous product. I also appreciate that Blackberry did not completely rip off the iOS ui and went with something that to me at least seems more original.

So i finally have my iPad and am actually using it to write this blog post. I have a lot of thoughts and theories about it, some of which i have not really seen written about before. Of course, i also have the obligatory “omfg this thing is awesome” commentary too but i I’ll refrain from wasting time saying what has already been said before.

My theory on the iPad is simple:

This is a device that is first and foremost for early adopters. It is also for people who, if given the choice, would rather read news, visit sites or play games on their phones than their laptop. If you enjoy your iPhone and like touching things as opposed to moving around with a mouse, and if you like self contained applications as opposed to web browsers, then odds are you would like the iPad.

Over the past few months, i have been shunning my mac book pro in lieu of reading news sites on my iPhone, especially when at home. I just enjoy having quick access to well designed applications that were stripped down and simplified, that i could navigate with my thumb or forefinger only. Apps like the iPhone Facebook one for example, or CNN or digg.

It is a somewhat accurate comparison that the iPad is a giant iPod touch. I can can only say that while it is larger version, it doesn’t lose anything by merely being bigger. It actually gains a lot from more real estate and like i said, if you like the iPhone you will also love the iPad. Does that mean you should buy one? I don’t know. I do know however that i will probably use this more than my laptop when not doing work related functions.