iPad limitations? Is it really a Mac?

I think you're missing the whole purpose of the iPad.

The iPad was NEVER intended, nor advertised to be a replacement for the Mac. While the two devices can and do share some functions, each has its strengths and weakness.

What you're missing is researching a product before buying.....

Hi,

The iPad runs on iOS, the Mac runs on Mac OS X, two difference operating systems.

There is a Dock. It's at the bottom of every screen. You'll see the default apps there. Mail / Safari / iPod etc.

There are hundreds of iPhoto "how to's" available on the net.

http://apple-ipad-tablet-help.blogspot.com/2010/03/create-multiple-photo-albums- on-ipad.html

I think you would benefit from perusing the iPad online user guide available here.

http://manuals.info.apple.com/en_US/ipad_2_user_guide.pdf

Safari will not work on the iPad as it does on a Mac or Windows based machine. It's been "optimized" for the iPad. Same with iPhoto.

iPads work "out of the box" ... give it some time since you've only had it a week.

Carolyn 🙂

"What you're missing is researching a product before buying....."

Darn you beat me to the dead-on snarky reply. ;-)

I don't like the word "snarky". The OP has obviously no concept of what the iPad is, or anything about it, and has not bothered to find out before spending a substantial amount of money blindly.

Is that snarky?

The other commentors here have a point, although I'm not sure where the animosity (snarkiness?) comes from.

The iPad is meant to be a "bridge" device between something like a smartphone and a full fledged computer. Although the applications that are available for the iPad are not necessarily "full" versions of their computer counterparts, the iPad offers a way to access some of the capabilities of these apps using a more mobile, and most of the time fun interface.

It's a device that everyone can use without discrimination. It's intuitive and it is exactly what a lot of people are looking for.

Hope you learn to see the value in your iPad and if you don't, feel free to send it to my address :)

I also hope to use my new refurb orig iPad as my defacto main Mac. Funny that my 2nd gen iPod touch does so much more than my iPad does right now. In a way I am now like you after only owning for one week having to force myself to use it to get anything done. I even restored it from my iPod backup to kinda sync them. Only 121 of the 140 apps were compatible. It IS different. But just keep using it. It's kinda cool too. Now how do I turn off the damm auto-correct so I can type in peace?? Dammit.

Go to Settimgs<General<Keyboard and turn off auto correction.

I had the opposite experience from the OP. I bought my iPad 2 on a whim and haven't been able to stop using it. Sitting in a boring meeting last Friday and making notes on PDFs of the documents we were discussing (using iAnnotate) and not having to lug around paper or my laptop *almost* made the meeting fun. (I was using a sytlus and a few drawings and a glance at MLB At Bat may have also crept in.)

I can write (iuse the Apple wireless keyboard for anything longer than a blog comment), i can research, I can sync with my laptop and with apps I love like Scrivener, I can print--I can do most of what I need to do except heavy image editing or work with a topographic mapping program I use.

ETA--please replace the garbled carets--the new forums won't let us iPad users edit our posts! It's laughable, really.

Having bought the iPad expecting a 'Mac-like' experience your confusion and disappointment is obvious but your expectations were incorrect. At this point you have two realistic choices: sell it (that shouldn't be a problem and you could even make a profit) or adjust to the iPad.

If you accept that the iPad isn't a mouseless Mac but something akin to a large Touch you might still find out that the iPad is magical. But if you really want a small light Mac sell it and look to the MacBook Air instead.

As for me, I had little idea what to expect when I pre-ordered mine last year. I knew it wasn't going to be a small Mac and that it was going to be a large Touch but I had no idea how much more than the Touch it would turn out to be. A year ago I used the family iMac about 20% of the time and my MacBook Pro about 80%. Today it is iMac 15%, MBP 40%, and iPad 45%...and the iPad keeps gaining time.

Halle wrote:

not Snarky

What I wanted was a small, light weight machine, that acted like a Mac, not an iPod Touch. One that has a real dock, a real finder, that can run PS, not a bunch of work-around apps. I think what I want may be called MacBook Air!

Yes, the air would be much better suited. It would have been a good idea to research ahead of time and you would have come to this realization. The iPad is a great device, but it won't suit everyone. I disagree on the notion of it being a big iPod Touch. I had one of those and sold it because the iPad is much better, where the other felt like a toy, this is a true multi-media device and creates a great bridge between my desktop and phone.

Thank you Elizabeth.