Yesterday, I had the awesome opportunity to demo an iPad on release day! Needless to say I felt very privileged. I was helping a friend shoot an interview at a house near the Kenwood Mall so we decided to stop by afterwords and check it out. Needless to stay the Mac Store was the most popular store in the mall yesterday. It was a great atmosphere! Anyway… on to my thoughts. I'll try to keep it somewhat brief.
I got my hands on the device shortly after walking into the store and I have to admit, it was a bit magical. A multitouch screen that big and that hi-res is something great to experience for sure. I spent some time with the stock apps and I really loved all the interfaces, especially the Calendar interface. It will be so much easier to stay organized with an iPad. Web browsing in Safari was beautiful. Full web pages with little need for zooming (even though that is of course an option) were a beautiful thing to see.
All the iPad designed apps looked great as well. The screen space brings the speed, interface, and portability of the iPhone and iPod touch and the accessibility and view-ability of a laptop together into one "magical" device.
The keyboard was also great to use. I tried using the four finger typing that Steve Jobs used in the release keynote and it worked great! Still not quite as easy as using a full keyboard, of course, but much more functional than I had thought it would be.
One downside, and I think a pretty big one at this point, is the look of iPhone/iPod Touch apps on the iPad. In their original size, the device makes them extremely hard to use. It's nearly impossible to hold the device and interact with the small center screen app with the same hand, and the device is just a bit to large to constantly hold with one hand. When expanded to the 2x view the few apps that I had the chance to use completely lost their luster as they became extremely pixelated. I felt like I was suddenly interacting with a touch screen N64.
All that to say, Apple has done it right (although I would appreciate a camera for video chat purposes.) They have yet another excellent product on the market that you really do have to experience to truly appreciate. The only thing it will take for the iPad to completely take off for me is a majority of developers writing new versions of their apps specially for the iPad.
Well, I think I've written enough for now. I may write another post regarding my opinion on the specific uses for an iPad in the next few weeks. But for now I'll post some pictures and videos below of my first experience with Apple's latest in innovation.
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