Our first few weeks with the iPad

May 26th, 2010 by Daniel Kagan

Its been a few weeks now since Pat and I received our brands spanken over inflated (thanks to eBay) iPads. My  first thought was, ‘where are the instructions’? It quickly dawned to me that Apple elected not to include  instructions in the box. All you receive is an iPad and a charger – this one act sums up the functionality of the  iPad. Simple and intuitive. As cheesy as it sounds, the device really does direct you to how it should be used.

Next was working out what do with the device and this has been an ongoing adventure. For example, I spent  the last week up north and found that I would use my iPad for reading the newspaper, checking emails,  downloading and watching Mad Men season 3 (best series of all time) and playing Real Racing. The device  just works, especially when you are lying back, sipping on your coffee and looking out at the view. Coupled  with my home and office use of the device, I have come to one clear conclusion. The device  is truly a content device and I cannot see myself using it for any other purpose than to read, watch and play. I  tried sending emails but found it a little frustrating and i tried writing documents via Pages and  lost interest  after 5 minutes. However, as soon as I opened the web, explored ‘The Age” or just surfed, I found  the  experience seamless and instant.  In addition, I found myself downloading a heap of podcasts and TED  talks  (www.ted.com/)and found the viewing experience to be a delight.

The iPad App Store: I have not been too excited on this front. There is a long way to go and for the success of the device, the App Store needs to improve. I have found a lot of the newspaper apps to be underwhelming with the New York Times disappointing me most. The app as Steve Smith describes ‘just curates a few sections of the newspaper/Web site and pastes select stories into a nondescript pair of screens for four main sections’. To me, the app is confusing. On the flip side, AP News and BBC news, caters to the iPad touch interface with a set of clear, animated and floating rectangular tiles for easy access to articles – they have done a great job utilising the native interface the iPad offers. It will be interesting to see which design formula works but I have no doubt that a user friendly newspaper app will be achieved with a lot of trial and error with a heap of effort and time.

From here it will be very interesting to see how succssful the iPad will be. Frank McPherson cited a few relevant metrics to go by (http://bit.ly/a2ldU7). Firstly, will the iPad impacts personal computer sales…? ‘If there are significant decreases in PC sales and high iPad (and other tablet computer) sales, then clearly the iPad will have had an impact on redefining personal computing’.  The second measure will be, ‘how many people buy an iPad or other tablets who never had, nor will, buy a personal computer’. This measure will illustrate whether the device draws ‘people to personal computing in a way that actual PCs were not able to achieve’.

In anycase, I have had not received one negative comment from family, friends and clients when I hand over the device to them for a play. In fact, everyone has been blown away.

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