iPad - first thoughts

Mr O has bought an iPad for work purposes. No really. I'm typing this post on it now in my role as informal IT consultant. It's been in my life for about 26 hours, and I've played with it for about 2-3 of them. I mean, I've experimented and set it up.

After reading some online angst about how you need to have iTunes on a desktop or laptop (aka a 'real computer'), I thought the setup would be difficult. How wrong I was. Take it out of the box, plug it into the Mac and turn the iPad on. Within a very few seconds iTunes started up and we were off. Unhooked it - the battery was at 85% - and it found our closed wifi network. Entered our password and we were off.

It was a bit weird that the sync function is quite limited, but that's because you have iTunes and the App store loaded on the iPad. If you have MobileMe on your Mac or iPhone, you just open the settings on the iPad and enter the account data in email. Then you confirm you want to sync everything: apps, bookmarks, email, notes via the cloud. A few minutes later you check your contacts and there they all are.

So you only need to sync when there's new system software or if you want to do a major overhaul which photos or apps you want to sync.

I find the on-screen keyboard is fine. I can type nearly as fast as a hard keyboard. But, you know, a keyboard is hardly the point. The iPad has already convinced me it's a better way to surf the net: lighter and a bit faster because the OS isn't hogging capacity. It's a great media device. Browsing photo libraries and the net is more natural and intuitive. Tap on a thumbnail and it fills the screen. To go back to the thumbnails, 'pinch' the picture to close it. Flicking past pages or images is just more comfortable.

I also had a look at Books, the eReader and I find it a much more meaningful experience on the iPad compared to the iPhone. I have to say, size makes for comfort.

Mr O will use the iPad as a display book or digital catalogue. He'll also store multimedia files for presentations. It can attach to a projector with a standard cable. It's a lot smaller WMD lighter than the photo albums and folders currently being used for the same task.

I now understand Steve Jobs idea of a third device, despite my initial skepticism. I could see myself taking this in preference to my beloved iPhone in some situations. For travel, it would be a gem. If I didn't need to take a full laptop for the big crunchers apps I'd be a lot happier with this. Ok for emails and notes. Great for photos, web surfing and utilities like maps and online banking. If I'm not doing complex document layouts or coding, I don't need more than this.

The predictive text takes a bit of getting used to, but I can dimly forsee it ruining my touch typing. If I can just stop hitting n when I am aiming for the space bar...