I expect that app developers will soon make this observation seem shallow and near-sighted with their array of spinning whirlygigs and motion-sensing magic, but for now, for me, I am most excited to use the iPad as a better way to read.

Perhaps I should be saying "consume content," since that is at least more hip, if not particularly more descriptive.

But the simple fact is that I spend an exceptional amount of my time reading. And with each passing day, the percentage that takes place in front of my Mac grows. It crossed over the 50% mark a few years back as I dropped my magazine subscriptions, canceled the Sunday New York Times and bought my first electronic book. 

Today, not just the form of my reading has changed -- now easily 90% or more takes place on my computer -- but the number of sources has exploded. Traditional news sources like The Seattle Times live alongside 'new media' like The Huffington Post and my friends' blogs. My daily visit to my Google Reader account patches me into a pipeline of over 320 information sources. And the aggregate of Twitter, Facebook and Google Buzz mainline a new form of content to me that was unimaginable just three years ago.

The challenge, however, isn't "information overload." I don't find this avalanche of information to be crippling;. On the contrary. The vastness and variety offered energizes and inspires me every single day. Like many, I struggled to "manage" my information for years, but no more. That problem was licked a long time ago, and my "system" (don't we all have one?) is handling scaling up and out just fine, thankyouverymuch.

This isn't about the tools and techniques of reading, either. It's about the place. More specifically, it is about my desk chair, and the unholy alliance I've forged with it over the past decade. 

I hate reading at my desk, but I love reading on my Mac. My chair bulges and tilts in all the wrong directions. It forces me into an eyes-forward, head-up, chest-out posture regardless of what I am reading. From whitepapers and blog posts to books and Twitter Trends, I assume the standard school-boy pose. It's been a compromise I've been willing to make because reading on a computer is so clearly superior. I can save my place. I can amass a gargantuan pile of reading in no space at all. I can zoom and pan, note and share, blog and delete in less time and with less effort than any other scheme. I just need to do it contorted into a particular shape and in a particular location.

But not any more.

I had a Kindle. And yes, it was a reasonable experience for reading a book. Immersive, even, living up to the promise of the device disappearing in my grasp as I fell into the story. But books represent maybe, what, 5% of the information I consume? If that? And pay for blogs to be delivered? Seriously? How that ever was considered an idea worth launching still baffles me.

And sure, laptops are portable, but they are no better for reading. I still need to sit up to really get the most from them, and their keyboards make them as much about content creation as content consumption. In effect, they simply let me take my desk on the road, to recreate that experience at a café, airport terminal or meeting room when I need to. Incredibly valuable stuff, but reading at a 'remote desk' is no better than the real one.

The iPad is different. It changes the entire experience in a way the Kindle -- and I'd argue the iPhone -- never could. It frees me from my chair and from my desk, sure, but also from chairs and desks and tables entirely. More importantly, it elevates reading to a core scenario beyond even the Kindle because I can access all of my reading on it, not just books. 

Which brings me to Instapaper. I've used this simple and wonderful web app for over a year to collect things for reading. Anytime something captures my attention and I have none to spare, it gets tossed into Instapaper. It's quick and mindless and perfectly designed for exactly this scenario.

And, with some regularity, I return to it on my Mac or iPhone to work through my growing pile. But I don't want to read everything at a desk. It just feels too formal. And while their iPhone app offers the portability I seek, reading long form text on it feels like watching a film through a peephole. Sure, you can see it, but, really, it kind of sucks. Convenience over experience.

So, yesterday's announcement that Instapaper is coming to the iPad is exciting stuff. Sure, it's hardly a surprise. And a screen shot of a page of text won't get it amazing placement on the App Store home page. But for me, it's one of the most important apps to have. 

The iPad promises to let me take all of my reading with me -- books, news, blogs, web sites, RSS feeds, the works -- and read them in a pleasing form when and where I want. In any position I want. Tell me again why this thing won't be a huge hit? 

Sometimes, I don't know why I run these tests. 

I recently read a post by David Alison about a failing hard disk. I figured I'd download and install the SMART Utility for Mac he references, just for the heck of it. This $25 tool scans your hard disks, collects the hardware information and gives reports of any problems. Of course, it just so happens that one of my drives has started to throw off bad sectors:

This is my primary drive, and contains everything except my iTunes library, so this is not a good thing to see.

Now, I am backed up to the hilt, with a copy of my data on my Time Capsule, an offline backup to BackBlaze and a mirror image copied to a second hard drive with SuperDuper each night (that's the /dev/disk1 in the screen shot above).

But who wants to wait for a drive to fail before doing something? Not only might I lose some data due to corruption of my backup, but with my luck, the drive will die an hour before a deadline. 

The good news is that a fast 1Tb hard disk is available for less than $100 now. Looks like I've got a new weekend project.