The weirdest thing about using the iPad is that it makes using the iPhone even more enjoyable.

I’ve had the iPad for a week now. I use it for just about everything. I’m typing this post out in the Pages app as I my wife drives us to dinner. The experience has been great. There are definitely some things that seem to be lacking and I have a small feature wish list that is growing. But overall, the iPad is amazing. 

As I have immersed myself into the iPad experience and integrated it into my daily life I have made many observations about how it is affecting me, but one particular thing stands out more than any other. 

The weirdest thing about using the iPad is that it makes using the iPhone even more enjoyable. Now I don’t want that statement to be misconstrued. It’s not that using the iPad is bad in any way and therefore it makes going back to the iPhone a breath of fresh air. Like I said previously, I love using the iPad. But for some reason when I pick up the iPhone now, it seems even better. 

This could be partially due to the fact that it is so much lighter than the iPad. I’m not one of those people who are complaining that the iPad is “heavier than expected.” That’s a pretty ridiculous claim seeing as how we knew it was going to be 1.5 lbs since they announced it. So anyone who says the iPad is heavier than they expected clearly hasn’t ever held anything heavier than 1.5 lbs. And anyone who says that’s too heavy really needs to eat their Wheaties. My wife picked up the iPad for first time and her first comment was on how light it was. It’s not like she’s one of those weightlifting chicks. She’s almost as weak as I am. 

But in contrast the iPhone is less than 5 ounces, so it feels extremely light by comparison. 

The iPad’s touch screen is super responsive and downright magical. And for some unknown reason the iPhone’s touch screen feels snappier after using the iPad. That doesn’t make sense! Logic would tell us that if you start using a superior device, and then switch back to using a still-awesome-but-not-as-good device it should feel more sluggish, harder to use, and overall just less useable. And yet…it doesn’t. 

I don’t have a good explanation for this. I’ve racked my brain trying to come up with some sort of logic for this. I’m just going to have to chalk it up to the Apple Magic.” 

My Macbook Pro has become my “desktop” computer. My iPad is my portable computer. Someday my Macbook Pro will live out it’s full life and be ready to call it quits. When that time comes I’ll replace it with an iMac and then I’ll have the perfect Apple setup. Everything syncs with MobileMe. Everything is light and easy to use. Everything just works. 

Something very exciting happened this month. Apple released a new version of their MobileMe Mail interface at Me.com. It’s so fresh and new that they released it as a Beta which is becoming an increasingly more prominent tactic for Apple (i.e. iWork.com). I for one was very excited to hear about the new Beta version of MobileMe Mail and signed up for it right away. The irony is, I never really have a chance to use it.

The new MobileMe Mail has added some important features that have made me very happy. In fact the two main feature additions are two elements that constantly tempt to lure me back to Gmail. The first one is an archive button. Now this might sound like a little thing, but I truly love it. Gmail runs on a system where you can automatically archive any message with the click of a button. One click and it’s out of sight, but still accessible by simply searching for it. I like this style so much that I created an archive folder in my MobileMe account. There wasn’t a single-click way to archive my messages, but I could drag and drop the messages and that was good enough. Well now MobileMe has an archive button. I love it!

For most people that will still feel like a cosmetic change and won’t be a big deal. But the next new feature is a big deal. You can now create mail rules at me.com and those rules will filter down to all of your devices. By that I mean, you can create a folder titled “ninja” and then tell MobileMe to filter all messages from that “how to be a ninja” website you subscribed to. You can already do this with the Apple Mail program, but it only filters messages that arrive on your computer. So messages don’t get filtered when you view them directly on your iPhone (unless you view them after they’ve been downloaded to your computer and then the SMTP folder syncing will come into effect).

This new feature is really important and puts MobileMe a step closer to being as strong as Gmail. There’s still a lot of steps before MobileMe gets to that point, but then again Gmail has a long way to go to being as stable and reliable as MobileMe.

There are some other nice changes to the MobileMe Mail interface as well and you can check them out at apple.com/mobileme. That being said, here is the irony. I may never actually use it.

Ever since the iPad came out all of my emailing has been done on the iPad or the iPhone. Before the iPad came out all my emailing was done in the Apple Mail app on my Mac, or on my iPhone on the go. I would occasionally also use the Me.com version of MobileMe Mail, but when you have such a strong Mail app on the Mac, why use a web app? The only time I used the web app was at work (I used to work in an Apple Store). I now work in an office with all PCs, running Internet Explorer 7, which is not fully supported by MobileMe. So rather than deal with the bugginess of that situation, I just use my iPhone which is as solid as can be.

So at home, I use the iPad for all emailing. On the go I use my iPhone. I really don’t know when or where I’d have the chance and the desire to use MobileMe Mail. I have played around with it because of my pure enthusiasm for it. And I have opened it up specifically to create some important mail rules. But other than that, I have no need/opportunity to use it.

It’s too bad really. It seems like it is going to be really great. Then again, the iPad Mail App is so good, who cares?