After seeing Shawn Blanc’s awesome new iPhone look, I decided that I simply had to have something just as cool on my iPod. So, I followed his instructions, with a few tweaks:

1. Installed blackra1n
2. Installed Cydia
3. Used Cydia to install OpenSSH, Winterboard, FontSwap and Droid Sans for FontSwap
4. Downloaded Matte iPhone UI and Overdue icons from deviantART (the Matte Nano icons Shawn linked to caused annoying size inconsistencies, and I like these better in any case)
5. Using Cyberduck, SSH’d into my iPod and dumped the downloaded files into the /Library/Themes folder
6. Enabled the two themes in Winterboard
7. Used FontSwap to change the default Helvetica Neue font used throughout the OS to Droid Sans

And with that, I have the super-awesome mish-mash of themes and tweaks that I can only get with a jailbroken iPod Touch. I love it!

I’m not sure what to think about the iPad. It does have some interesting features that I really want:

• iWork. If I need to take notes, I can pull the thing out of a backpack, turn it on, and type away. It’s more portable than a laptop, and much nicer to use than a netbook. Most office applications are either crap or, as in the case of Office 2007/2008/2010, consume way too much resources for a netbook to handle. For the price, only a comparable full-size Dell laptop would be a more usable system, and you sacrifice a lot of portability.
• IPS display. The iPad will have a screen that rivals the best regular LCD displays. So if you were, say, a salesman for a design firm or print company, you could show the client an awesome proof on the iPad, with the best color display possible, without being overly bulky. There’s lots of potential for graphics-related applications here (Brushes was shown at the keynote, looked cool), and it could become a professional graphics tool easily.
• Powerful calendar system. The calendar app really turns into something else on the iPad.
• The best platform for books and magazines. I actually think novels are best left to something iPhone-sized, but for textbooks, newspapers and magazines, the iPad will provide the best experience possible for the content. Hopefully they do something more like web applications rather than PDF viewers, but these are industries that know a lot more about Adobe InDesign than about web development, and with the exception of the New York Times app I don’t see this changing soon.

Now, what isn’t so cool:

• The interface isn’t always suited for the device. This is particularly true of the homescreen, which they just stretched out from the iPhone screen and added a wallpaper. I’m not a fan. This seems to have been rushed. The Spotlight app is a prime example of an application that’s received no real changes to fit the different screen size & format.
• No multitasking? This is a device that really needs multitasking. It’s a device that you’ll be using for longer periods of time, and the ability to switch between applications quickly would be much appreciated. I’d hate to think about what the situation with notifications is on the device.
• 4:3 Screen. Are we traveling back to the 1990’s? We’ve just finally converted all our videos and other media to a widescreen format, and then Apple drops a 1024x768 display on us. At least the colors will be good.

Really, the iPad is Apple’s netbook. It fills the role of the secondary computer system that does simpler tasks on the go. It does it, however, with vastly increased battery life, much better performance (it isn’t saddled with all the baggage that a full OS needs), a more functional interface, and greater portability than the average netbook. All for maybe $100 more.

Would I get one if I had the money? Not as-is - the home screen needs a major overhaul. Oh, the pitfalls of version 1.0.

I consume more ebooks than most people do. The reason is mainly convenience - why drive to the store to get a book when I can pull out my iPod, buy a book, and read it without getting off my butt and spending an hour in town?

So why do I say they suck? They’re the wrong answer for the content.

This is particularly true of textbooks. Indeed, print textbooks are bad to begin with. When you use a textbook, you’re usually looking for something in particular, and you jump around the book looking for something. There’s tables of contents and indexes to help out, but those are time-consuming and annoying.

Instead of using the power of computers to improve the situation, ebooks exacerbate the problem. In the case of Kindle books, which on the iPod & PC have no search ability, you are completely at the mercy of the table of contents & index. Furthermore, Kindle books are entirely linear. They treat all books as novels, and as a result you have asides buried in the middle of paragraphs because they can’t show something to the side of the main body text. They also can’t be easily cited, because there are no pages. PDF textbooks are a bit better, because you can search them and maybe even copy text or print out of them. But you don’t see them, because they’re difficult to secure.

Ideally, they would take the content of text-ebooks and put them in the form of a website. Those are comparatively very easy to navigate, and if that doesn’t work, very searchable. They can also have real interactivity - really cool charts, quizzes/homework/etc., and other media resources such as videos and the occasional piece of music. Security wouldn’t be an issue as long as students were required to log into their paid accounts to access the site. The only downside is that they can’t really be used in class, but I’d be willing to accept that tradeoff.

Ebooks do, on the other hand, work well for novels. With a novel, you’re reading a long, constant stream of text that never really ends, and you never jump around the book. An ebook reader is great for this. They also give you have a library in your pocket that can’t be ruined (you can destroy the device, but the books are still “in the cloud,” ready when you get a new one). For reading novels, they’re wonderful.

But will they replace printed books? Probably not. They’ll cause the publishing industry to suffer greatly, but history has shown that most obsolete technologies tend to stick around in one form or another. People still buy CD’s and even vinyl records instead of MP3’s. People go to the theater instead of the movies. People still ride passenger trains instead of flying in jets.

Vinyl records are a great comparison with printed books. Those records are selling better because, despite all the inconveniences that go along with them, they have higher quality than even CD’s. Ebook readers require power and sometimes an Internet connection, aren’t as easy to read, and aren’t nearly as dummy-proof. A book will never crash on you, and the only bugs you’ll find are actual bugs. There’s way more freedom to design a book as opposed to a Kindle book or even a PDF. They have all sorts of advantages over ebook readers. That won’t change very soon.

If I was a textbook publisher, I’d migrate all the content to the Internet as soon as possible. Not just sticking downloadable PDF’s to an e-commerce store, either. Make actual sites with the content of these textbooks, charge for access instead of charging for the book, and hand the technophobic professors printed but otherwise identical textbooks. The students will love it.

If I was a novel publisher, I’d rather be a smaller quality-focused publisher than a bigger mass-publisher. Eventually, like the vinyl record, the customers left over will be the ones demanding the highest quality.