Convince me I need an iPad

Apple announced it sold it's 1 millionth iPad in just it's 1st month. I don't get it. How are these things selling like hotcakes? I can't come up with a reason to get one of these things. Even if one was given to me as a gift, I don't see myself using it very often.

Steve Jobs mentioned he wants to position the iPad to fill the niche between laptop and smartphone. First of all, I had never felt that there was a gap between these 2 devices that needed filling!

I have a Macbook and an HTC Desire. (I also have a desktop PC, a TV, DVD player, etc but let's focus on these 2 because of what Steve Jobs said.) The Macbook is strictly for web browsing, managing my photo collection and managing my music collection. I also bring it with me when I travel for watching movies. The HTC Desire is my smartphone which I carry everywhere. Where does the iPad fit in here?

I can use it to browse the web, but so can my Macbook (and Desire for that matter!). The desktop browser allows me to do so much more on my Macbook than I could on an iPad. For example, load multiple Youtube videos across multiple tabs, play Flash-based games, attach all sorts of files to emails, etc.

I can't use it to manage my photo collection because there's no USB port to import files and can't connect to printer. (Edit: I just noticed that Apple makes an accessory called the "Apple iPad Camera Connection Kit". Well, maybe I can use it to manage my photo collection after all. But this "feature" really should not require additional cost in the form of an add-on.)

I can't use it to manage my music collection because of the following:
-Can't get music onto the iPad. No USB port, browser can't download files, no optical drive for importing.
-Can't get music from the iPad. No USB port, no optical drive for burning media.

I guess it might be a better alternative than the Macbook for vacations. But then I only travel maybe 2 or 3 times a year. It's just not worth it.

I would love for someone to be able to convince me to get an iPad. Because I want to play with one. The large multi-touch screen looks fun. But, so far, I can only come up with one remotely valid reason to get it and many many reasons why not to get it.

1. The iPad is a portable device, not a mobile device. It's not like your smartphone which you take everywhere while not even thinking about it. You can't just put the iPad in your pocket. You're going to need a backpack or briefcase. If you're going to take it out of the house, you need to think about it and dress/accessorize accordingly.

2. The iPad is a portable device, not a mobile device, but yet, it runs a mobile OS. So why not just use a mobile device that runs a mobile OS? That is, either the iPhone or iPod Touch.

3. Because of the above, it seems to me that the iPad is best to be left and used at home. But if I'm at home, why don't I use my main computer? Why not use my TV? Why not use my stereo?

4. According to Apple, the iPad offers the best web browsing experience. Really? It doesn't support Flash. There's no file system so you can't download or upload anything. No, the iPad does not offer the best web browsing experience. It has a multi-touch mobile browser on a large screen. That's it.

5. According to Apple, the iPad offers the best email experience. Really? Again, there's no file system so you can't download or upload attachments (except for pictures). My smartphone offers more functionality here.

6. The most attractive feature of the iPad is, of course, the screen. A typical laptop has a larger screen. And since it's a real computer, you can do loads more things with it.

I haven't even started mentioning the other limitations of the iPhone OS!

This leads me to believe that Apple could have released anything and it would have sold a million units in 1 month. Just ask people about the upcoming iPhone. Even before the recently leaked footage, people all say they can't wait for it and they'll get it, no questions asked. What the hell? Only Apple fans think this way. There is no information released about a product and yet, they know they want it.
Before a person decides he/she wants to buy something, shouldn't he/she know what that thing is first?

Tips & Tricks for the HTC Desire

Long-pressing the Stand-by key brings up options to:
- Power off (obviously)
- Toggle Silent mode
- Toggle Vibration mode
- Toggle Airplane mode
- Toggle Mobile network
The last 4 items are particularly handy since that means you don't need dedicated widgets on your homescreen for them.

Pressing the Volume Down key after the ring volume is 0% will toggle on Silent mode and then Vibration mode. Similarly, pressing Volume Up key will toggle it back the other way.

Android does multi-tasking extremely well. Long-press the Home key to toggle between the most recent 6 applications you've been using.
Edit: After the official Froyo update, the most recent 8 applications are now available.
Edit2: If you have an Desire HD/Z ROM port, then the recent application list is also accessible in the notification shade.

To quickly move widgets across screens.
1. Tap and hold a widget.
2. With another finger, swipe across the optical pad to the screen you want to land on.
3. Release the widget.
The Home key also functions when you're holding a widget. So if you want to move a widget from the far left to the center screen, you just have to tap and hold, press Home, and then release the widget.

Speed up your browser
I've been doing this since Opera Mobile on my Touch Diamond and I'm pleasantly surprised I can still do this on Android's browser. The browser on the Desire is actually already quite fast. But try disabling Javascript. Many sites work just fine with this disabled and you'll definitely feel the difference in loading speeds.

In the browser, if you want to get to your History list, long-press on the Back key.

In the browser history, you can easily and quickly add/remove bookmarks by toggling the stars on the right.

Select and delete multiple messages at once in Mail application
This may already be well-known but it took me a while to figure it out so I'll include it here.
1. Press the Menu key.
2. Tap Delete.
3. Select the messages by tapping on the "X" on the right of each message.
4. Tap Delete.
Edit: If you run a Desire HD/Z ROM port, then your Mail application will have checkmarks always visible on the left.

Moving messages into folders in Mail application
1. Press the Menu key
2. Tap "More"
3. Tap "Move to"
4. Select messages by toggling the checkmark on the right of each message.
5. Tap "Move to (x)"
6. Select accordingly

In Mail or Messages application, tapping on the contact picture brings up several icons for you to do one of the following:
- Call the contact
- View the person's contact card
- Send SMS
- Send email
- Send IM via Google Talk

Synchronize with Google Exchange server as an alternative to the Google Mail application which is quite limited. Set up with the instructions here.
Edit: Ever since Google started releasing updates to their Google applications, the Google Mail application has actually become quite robust.

In the dialer, tapping the contact card icon on the right of each item will take you to the respective contact card. Tapping the plus icon allows you to add that number to your contact list.

In the dialer, if you don't input any numbers and you don't select anybody on the list and you just tap "Call", it will call the person on the top of the dialer list.

In the dialer, scrolling (either swiping the list or using the optical trackpad) will hide the number pad.

In the dialer, swiping laterally on the optical pad will toggle between different phone numbers of the selected contact.

Calculator can be rotated into landscape via accelerometer to transform into a scientific calculator.

As an alternative to the downward swiping gesture to unlock, press Menu key. Edit: This is no longer applicable after the official Froyo update.

To unlock the device, you don't actually have to swipe downwards on the bar near the bottom of the screen. You can begin your downward swipe anywhere and then let go once you make contact with the bar.

To see the current date, just tap on the notification bar and it will be displayed in the upper-left corner of the screen.

In camera application, tap and hold on a spot to focus there and take the picture.

The word suggestion bar (that appears during text editing) can be moved by tapping, holding and dragging it.

Press the Back key to hide the on-screen keyboard.

To select custom sound files for notifications, put them in the following folders in the root of the microSD
Ringtones
Alarms
Notifications

To jump to a particular letter in the Contacts list, you need to use the scroll bar. The scroll bar appears on the right when you scroll but will auto-hide after 2 seconds. To easily grab it, touch and the contacts list, scroll it (don't flick-scroll), stop, and let go. The scroll bar should now be stationary for you to just get it.
Alternatively, try scrolling vertically with two fingers on the screen.

Use the Search key. It's not just for searching Google.
-If you type a contact's name, you can easily access the contact card.
-If you type an application's name, you can easily launch it.
-If you press the Search key while you're in your browser bookmarks, you can search within there.
-many more uses!

Use the Menu key. Try it everywhere. You may find some helpful settings/options/features.

Press the following into your dialer to access some interesting stats:
*#*#4636#*#*

Go easy on widgets. HTC Sense has some really nice widgets but some of them adversely affects your battery life because of their need to be updated throughout the day. I'm not suggesting you don't use any of these. But try to take a conservative approach for better battery life.
-Twitter. Don't use the full screen Twitter widget. It only allows you to view tweets and post tweets. You can't interact with the tweets in other ways and you can't hit links. If you tap a tweet, you're just taken to the full Twitter application. Solution: Just have a shortcut to Peep on your homescreen. If you must tweet from your homescreen, use the 2x4 Twitter widget.
-Friendstream. See above regarding Twitter. Same thing.
-Latitude. Why anyone would use this is beyond me. This just keeps updating your current location. It'll wreak havok on your battery, especially if you have GPS enabled.
-News. Just have a shortcut to News application. The Widget almost doesn't make sense if you have more than several RSS feeds.
-Stocks. Again, you can just have a shortcut to the Stocks application.
-Weather. Remember, none of the weather widgets are necessary if you already use the HTC clock+weather widget. You can just tap the weather icon in that widget to launch the Weather application.

Use the optical track-pad. Lots of review sites mention that it's useless and that they'd prefer HTC to just not include it so that they can either have a larger screen size or smaller device. I find it to be very useful.
-Use it for precise cursor placement in text editing. Great for going back to correct a block of text.
-Use it for selecting text in text editing. Place the cursor where you want to start your selection. Long-press on the optical track-pad to bring up the context menu. Tap "Select text". Then use the optical track-pad to fine tune your selection. Afterwards, you can long-press on the optical track-pad to bring up the context menu to cut or copy the selection.
-Use it in the browser to jump between links. This is useful if the links are very small. You can also long-press on the optical track-pad to bring up the context menu so that you may open in new window, etc.

If you don't want the default Photo or Music application to pick up media files in a particular folder, just add a blank text file name ".nomedia" in that folder.

Install Voice Search and Voice-to-Text. For whatever reason, HTC decided to leave these 2 amazing features out.
1. You'll need a file explorer application from the Android Market. Astro works for me.
2. Download and install Voice Search.
3. Download and install the HTC_IME mod.
4. Go to Settings > Language and keyboard
5. Toggle on "HTC_IME mod"
6. Long-tap on a text entry box.
7. Select "Input method" from the popup
8. Select "HTC_IME mod"
Edit: This is no longer applicable. The official Froyo update includes Voice-to-Text and Google has since made Voice Search available on the Android Market.

Music controls on the lock screen autohide after a few seconds. Swipe up to bring them back.

To get your Google Reader feeds on to the HTC News application:
1. Export your Google Reader subscriptions as OPML file.
2. Save this file onto your device. (If necessary, rename the file extension from xml to opml.)

3. Import this file into your News application.

If you are locked up in a loop where HTC Sense acts up and starts to force close, use the search key and type the first few letters for "Applications". You should be able to access the Applications settings menu. Go into "Manage applications". Go into "HTC Sense" and tap "Clear data". This will erase all your Scenes but it's better than doing a hard reset.

Fastest way to soft reset is to press Power/Standby key + Volume Down key + trackpad. Not recommended if your device is still responsive.

When composing an email using the Mail application and you have multiple email accounts configured, you can select which account to send from. This applies even if you are replying to an email. For example, if someone sends an email to your Gmail account, you can reply to it with your Hotmail account.

In the email composing screen, scroll all the way to the top. Above the "To" field, there's a button that indicates which account the email will be sent from. Tap that button to pop-up a menu that lets you select an alternate account.

If you are listening to music via the default music player, pulling out the headphones will stop the music playback. So you don't have to stop the music before pulling out the headphones.

Chrome-to-Phone. Anyone who has used it will agree this is a killer feature of Android. See here for installation. It connects your desktop Chrome browser with your Android. Allows you to send several different items to your Android.

Text: Select any text in the browser and click the Chrome-to-Phone button to copy the text onto your Android's clipboard. I use this all the time if I want to type out a long SMS on my desktop. I just go to Google.com and type it in the search box. Then I select the text and hit the Chrome-to-Phone button. Then all I do on my Android is to paste the text onto the Messaging application.

URL: Go to any site and click the Chrome-to-Phone button to send the site url to your Android. Depending on your settings, the site will automatically start loading on your Android browser or you'll receive a notification which will open the site if you click it.

Phone number: If you select a phone number in the browser and click the Chrome-to-Phone button, the number will appear in your dialer.

Map: If you've navigated to a location on Google Maps, clicking the Chrome-to-Phone button will open up your Android Maps application and navigate to the same location.

Youtube: If you're on a Youtube video page, clicking the Chrome-to-Phone button will open your Android's Youtube application and load the same video.

In the browser, enable "Open in background". This allows you to stay on the current page as you open links in new windows. You'll be able to browse much faster this way. For example, let's say you want to open 4 links from the site you're visiting. Just open up the first 3 links in a new window and the 4th link in the current window. While it's loading, switch to the next window to view the 1st link which should have loaded by now. Then you can continue on to the next windows without waiting since they would have loaded by the time you finished with the first window!