An update on my use of iPad for go study + some points for discussion
Top ten applications used:
* Smartgo Kifu (practice)
* Dropbox (upload my games to Smartgokifu)
* Goodreader (read / comment go books)
* TouchBB (access the life in 19x19 forum)
* Twiterrific (keep in touch on latest news)
* MaxJournal (write down notes following my go sessions)
* Weboffline (record some go-related webpages for offline reading)
* Mover+ (to share SGF via bluetooth)
* My library (to keep a list of my go books with comments)
Note that I'm not listing any Tygem or Tengen Go. I've been using them quite a lot but I feel like playing long games is not great on the iPad and playing short games is not good practice for me. I would like to play less on those applications to focus on KGS.
I like Boardz but with an ongoing offline, my mind is always going back to the game and the stress of a game which usually last for 1h30 online or face to face tends to linger. It's not very good for my nerves.
The main way I'm using the iPad today is to assist me in go books reading.
Since early jan, I've been reading Attack & Defense together with the iPad: repeating all diagrams as I was going through the book.
I feel it has 2 benefits:
1. First of all, you can explore variations on the go and better visualize the starting positions and follow-up from a diagram. It's pretty much the same as using a goban but you can carry it with you easily and you can come back quickly to a position you've seen (provided you did record it).
2. It forces you to slow your reading and make sure you take time to carefully understand every single section. While doing this, i noticed "golden nuggets" commentaries hidden inside small variations.
The downside is that it's quite slow to go through the whole book but I suppose there is no shortcuts here.
I've been using the iPad to solve problems but I must say I prefer plain books because you're too tempted to click where you feel instead of reading the diagram out and being pretty sure that you played it correctly. Therefore, I feel that my reading benefits more from books where flipping the page is something I can more easily refrain from doing than tapping on an intersection. I'm sure it's not the same for everyone.
Finally, accessing pro games and reviewing my own games is great. Pro games are easy to find and the feature to evaluate your accuracy in memorizing them is excellent. I usually copy paste a pro game I like into my own library to comment it and play variations.
As far as reviewing my own games and going back to past commented games of mind, the application is great. The only weakness is that it's getting difficult to navigate through variations when they are numerous : just because you can't see the variation tree as in KGS or Drago. I wish this feature was added to the application (which is still the best buy for a go player anyway). Another addition, I'd like to see is the capability to add / build problems.
Finally, something I'm thinking about is to use the iPad to build Flashcards to memorize certain situations. I'm not quite sure which application to use nor how to build them. I wish I could hear some testimony from other iPad users or other people trying out flashcards. I've been searching over the web but couldn't see any detailed comment of such use (nothing on Smartgo for example, beside the evocation of "flashcards").