Nerve Endings Firing Away

There was no standing in line outside the Apple store but merely waiting for the guy in brown on Saturday morning. We had the UPS shipment release authorization signed and clipped outside the door in case he made an early morning call. But he sauntered up to the front door and was slightly puzzled to see the door open before he knocked and also to see two people at the door for a small light package. The Apple iPad had arrived.

I had pre-ordered the absolute base 16GB WiFi-only device online on March 12th as a gift for Ash on her birthday. We cut through the box eagerly resisting the temptation for an unboxing video although I did share some pictures of our glee on Twitter. Ash had downloaded a few iPad-specific apps to her iTunes yesterday. Since it is Ash’s iPad (she makes it a point to cite it as often as she can to keep my prying hands away from staking any claim), we synced it to her iTunes. As with all Apple products, the iPad doesn’t come with any instruction manual and all the instructions are on a single piece of paper that basically says, attach iPad to computer, sync to iTunes, and follow the instructions onscreen. The iPad synced perfectly, copying the apps for the iPad and the ones for her iPod Touch. If you’ve used an iPhone or an iPod Touch, the rest is easy and exactly the same. You can drag upto six apps to the bottom menubar and the rest are aligned neatly on each screen spaced out more than that on the iPhone.

Your first impression is wonderment at the screen quality (9.7″ 1024×768 resolution). Also, it isn’t as heavy as I thought it would be (tech specs says a pound and a half) and definitely less than some hardcover books I’ve read. The display is crisp and clear. Colors render perfectly and are just right in terms of brightness and contrast. The touch screen is highly responsive and probably much more sensitive to the touch as compared to the iPhone. And it is lightening fast. Absolutely no delay in opening apps or switching to the next screen although in some apps, I did notice a delay in switching from the portrait mode to landscape. The screen lock button on the side not included during Job’s keynote address is a welcome relief and much-needed when you are reading lying down. Safari browsing too is fast and smooth. You can zoom in with the same pinch-in pinch-out gesture and double-tapping on a non-link section of a website zooms in to that section.

Ash has not yet loaded any music or photos but she downloaded an app for wallpapers called Backgrounds HD which displayed photos perfectly in all their glory. Accessing Flickr (no iPad-specific app yet) through Safari also displayed my pictures with no distortion in color or sharpness. The music from Pandora was crystal clear and loud enough to hear from across the room. You can hook it up to your speakers to get much better output. The GMail interface for the iPad released earlier this week is excellent and takes full advantage of the screen orientations. Typing on the onscreen keyboard was surprisingly easy although it is much better in the landscape mode. However it is much easier if you are a finger-typist because I found myself trying to hit the spacebar with my thumbs as I do on the regular keyboards. The settings, as I said, are the same as the iPhone so in fact Apple’s claim that 40-70 million people who already use an iPhone or an iPod Touch will have no learning curve is quite true. You find yourself using the iPad as efficiently as if you have been using it for a long time. The WiFi-only model has some kind of geo-location feature that let apps use your current location. I understand that it uses WiFi triangulation as opposed to GPS that a 3G-equipped iPad will use.

The best part about the iPad, as with the iPhone and iPod Touch are the apps. Right now, there are not as many apps for the iPad specifically as they are for the iPhone. Sure, you can use them on your iPad but the experience is unsatisfactory. However, the ones which are made for the iPad are mind-blowing; some of which include NetFlix, Tweetdeck, iBooks, Feeddler, USA Today, Pandora among others (screenshots displayed below). I’m sure app developers are scrambling to upgrade their apps for the iPad and hundreds are being added as you read this. The apps that I eagerly await and bought the iPad (for Ash, of course) for are the magazine apps. There are plenty of prototypes and sample apps from Conde Nast that appear to maximize the potential of the iPad.

The iPad has lead to reactions in the extreme and drawbacks such as no Flash (websites are converting rapidly to HTML5) or no multitasking are hurled at the device in deriding it. Strangely price, a perennial complaint against Apple, isn’t mentioned much these days. There are arguments to be made for Apple’s decisions in excluding the above two features; latter of which is rumored to be included in the next OS upgrade although Andy Ihnatko makes an attempt to defend the status quo on a technical basis. Apps like Feeddler (for your RSS feeds; syncs to Google Reader) and Tweetdeck open external links within the app making exiting the app and opening Safari redundant. This first-impressions review is not aimed at making those arguments. It is merely to show off our latest gadget for which we have a perfect fit in our household. Personally, I see the logic in Job’s contention that the iPad fits perfectly between a laptop and the iPhone. There is a place and reason for the existence of all three devices depending on your usage although some are arguing that the laptop is now dead (and desktop is alive once again). Most apps available for all three offer syncing abilities over the cloud which I consider as the future of computing at least in countries that have reliable and ubiquitous Internet connectivity. If you are not an Apple enthusiast or don’t have a need for such a device, the iPad is not meant for you. And that is fine. It is still a free world out there and you are not compelled to buy anything against your will. Netbooks are fairly popular and in a free market, both shall co-exist in peace. No judgments made either ways </disclaimer>.

The screenshots below are self-explanatory and show different features and apps as seen on the iPad.