iMac + iPad?

The announcement of the iPad has done a lot of things: it’s stoked up excitement in the Mac using community, it’s got a bunch of developers feverishly coding exciting new stuff, and it’s got retailers and cell phone companies the world over drooling over the money they can make from it.

And it’s also somewhat upset my plans as a Mac user.

You see, I had made my decision: I was happy with my 13 inch MacBook Pro, It worked beautifully, completed everything I asked of it when working in CS4 and xCode, it was great for watching TV, listening to music and surfing the net

All fine, then.

Not, really. I loved being portable.. but my life has changed this year and I have found myself more and more concerned with all things minimal - down to the finest detail it has to be mm perfect and as little of it as possible. The Macbook Pro is small…13 inches….but it is still to big and cumbersome for my tastes. It performs with xCode - but it’s screen is small and squinty for all that code - This is a problem…

And then Steve comes along with his iPad and suddenly, I have new options open to me. I have to start my thinking all over again.

The new theory was that I could use an iMac 27 inch and an iPad, and would cost roughly the same amount of money that the MacBook Pro cost me. Why would I even consider this?? Well all of my coding and heavy lifting like CS4 can be done at home on the iMac and with all that screen real estate it would make coding pleasurable and intensely productive, yet the iPad opens up new possibilities. Most of what I do is web browsing and iPhone apps while out. I have no doubt it will make an excellent web browsing device, although I wonder how it will cope with my particular web workflow. For example,  I like to use bookmarklets like Readability and Instapaper, so will I still be able to do so without fuss?

So for the time being, my finger is hovering over the Apple Store BUY button. As soon as the iPad is out, I’m going to go to my nearest Store and queue from midnight.

The reason I’m waffling on about this here is because I have a feeling that I’m not be the only person in this position. If you’re asking yourself similar questions, I’d be interested to hear what your thoughts are, both for and against the iPad.

But ultimately none of us are going to get any answers until we can get our hands on an iPad and put it through its paces. I can’t wait.