I displayed restraint, really I did: I waited a whole 48 hours before giving in to the raging torrent of “must have” demands surging through my little self. More than 48 hours, actually — more like 56.
But there was no question but that an iPad was in my immediate future. From the moment of the gizmo’s announcement I hadn’t the slightest doubt that I would get one. Am I that much of an Apple fanboy? In a word, yes.
I hasten to add, however, that I didn’t pre-order from the website. Nor did I camp out on Stockton Street in order to go dashing into the Apple Store, credit cards agape, just itching to be among the first to have Apple’s shiny new goodie. I waited until Monday afternoon, made my way sedately to the Apple Store via the Muni Metro, walked in, waited in line for about 5 minutes, and walked out a minute later with a brand-new 64GB, Wi-Fi only model.
Monday afternoon was an excellent time to buy the iPad given that I had nothing in particular scheduled for Monday evening, which is a good thing since I knew I would doing little else but examining my new toy. I’ve already given it a pretty good shakedown — and I should mention that I’m writing this post on the iPad, using an external Apple Bluetooth keyboard. The onscreen keyboard is perfectly OK, but I really do prefer keys that go *click* when I’m writing.
Verdict overall: bravissimo. Maybe I don’t need this puppy in some kind of absolute sense, but I can find a ton of practical uses for it, in addition to the abundance of sheer geek factor involved.
Item: over the years I have worked out a compromise between keeping my grade books in a spreadsheet app and the awkwardness of hauling a laptop into class for in-class grading, such as is necessary with Musicianship classes. My compromise has been to begin on paper and then transfer my paper markings to the computerized grade books from time to time. Since Apple provides a very nice version of Numbers for the iPad, the same spreadsheet I use on my computer, I can now take the tablet into class and do the grading there — it’s convenient and in a lot of ways easier than working with paper.
Item: it’s a phenomenal e-reading device, and I’m speaking as a person who owns a Kindle DX. It doesn’t have the Kindle’s battery life, but from what I can tell the claims of 10 hours to a charge are valid; I used the thing nonstop yesterday from about 4:00 – 11:00 PM, and I still had a 40% battery by bedtime. The thing I love about the iPad as reader is the sharpness of the text, the speediness of the response, and its vastly better graphics capability in comparison to the Kindle. Using it is also much, much more appealing and elegant — no clunky buttons on the side of the device, no laborious moving a cursor around to select things.
Item: movies and TV shows. You could view those on an iPhone or iPod already, but the tiny screen always made it something of a chore. An iPad is the perfect device for watching the evening news in bed. I also played around with watching a movie on it (Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince). Delightful experience.
Item: web browsing is marvelous, pure and simple. The screen is big enough so you’re not squinting at anything, and since the iPad has the same OS as the iPhone, you use the old pinch-and-zoom finger techniques to enlarge things as you wish. It’s also much, much faster than the iPhone.
Item: the iPad-specific applications are going to be what propels this device into the must-have stratospheric level. I’ve already discovered the wonderful Reuters news app, which reminds me vividly of Arthur C. Clarke’s “newspad” device that he described in some of his novels. I’ve also picked up the Scrabble for iPad (spiffy), and I’m using the new iPad version of BlogPress to write this entry.
Item: you aren’t limited to just Apple’s iBook store for e-books. Amazon’s Kindle app has been updated for the iPad, and so all of my Kindle books are now available to me on one device. Personally I don’t think that Amazon cares that much whether people are reading Kindle books on an iPod, Mac, PC, or iPad. They’re selling the razor blades (the books) and so the devices to hold those books don’t really matter. In other words, I don’t think that the iPad is the death knell for the Kindle; in my opinion, everybody is going to profit.
Item: there were some early reports of difficulty with Wi-Fi connections. I haven’t had any problems at all. Also there appear to have been some initial confusions about using Bluetooth devices, but also I’ve had no trouble. (If you’re going to use a Bluetooth keyboard that was paired with a computer, you need to unpair it first before pairing it to the iPad.)
In short: it’s a dazzling new piece of technology that promises, like the iPhone, to get better and better as developers come up with more uses and Apple upgrades the operating system. I can see it as a sheet-music reader, with a Bluetooth pedal device for turning pages. As an interface to a smart classroom, with all one’s lecture and class notes right onscreen. As a music composition tool once either Sibelius or Finale comes out in some iPad-designed version. Although some of the computer-industry pundits have been emphasizing that it is a device for consuming content rather than creating stuff, I can see it serving in both capacities.
At any rate, the future for the iPad is incredibly promising — and the present ain’t so bad neither.