So, who else grabbed an iPad this weekend?

[CTScott]

I had been contemplating getting an iPad since the announcement. I am overall not a fan of Apple, but I really like my iPhone. A week or so ago (after some promising announcements from some of the people who create the jailbreaks for the iphone, about the serious potential for a quick release of a jailbreak for the iPad) I decided that I would go ahead and pre-order. I didn't make the first preorder run, so I was not due to receive mine until April 12th. Last week I was talking with a friend of mine and he suggested that we go Saturday morning and see if we can actually get one. We headed to the Apple store at our local mall Saturday morning and arrived 7:40 AM; An hour and 20 minutes before opening. We were about 10th in line (for the non-preorder line). By the time 9:00AM rolled around there were 100+ people behind us.

I give Apple some serious credit for how they handled crowd control - Everything was very friendly and organized and they had people moving up an down the line offering free coffee, water and cookies. They also checked with each person in line to see what they wanted to purchase, so they could compare it with their inventory and be able to tell you if what you wanted would be available once you entered. You were allowed to purchase two, and I decided on the spot to grab my 64GB one and to also grab my wife a 16GB one (as an anniversary present to replace her Kindle).

Once the doors opened, they let about 10 people (5 preorders and 5 non) enter at a time, each one with an employee escorting them through the process. When my turn came, I was in and out of the store with the two ipads and cases for both in less than 5 minutes.

After a weekend of monkeying with them, we are both really liking them. She will use hers most of all, as an eBook reader. She reads 2-3 books a week on her Kindle now. She will also use it for email (so she doesn't have to go down stairs to her office to check her email), web browsing, patient scheduling (synced with Outlook on her PC), and for doing presentations via the optional VGA adapter (she does some community lectures on nutrition, as she is a registered Dietitian).

My primary use will be as a digital notepad. I currently use the graph paper steno pads for taking meeting notes, hashing out ideas, etc. and have hundreds of them on the shelves in my office. Finding anything form the past in them is a real feat and deciphering it once I do is nearly impossible (with my handwriting, I think I was destined to be a doctor). I prefer typing to writing, and I found a couple of apps that I am experimenting with that allow you to add sketches within the text. I really like email and web browsing on it (and the lack of adobe flash isn't a huge deal to me). Watching movies on it when I travel for business is going to be awesome, especially with the battery life.

Positives thus far:

Screen - Nice size and looks excellent. Daylight readability is better than I expected as well.

Speed - Instant on, super fast app launching, and performance within games is excellent (I had to load some to do proper testing).

Battery life - I used it out of the box (without charging) for about six hours on Saturday and the battery was still at 79%.


Negatives thus far:

"Accessibility" - My wife has some visual impairment and the advertised accessibility features sounded great. They could definitely use more work - The principles are sound, but the implementation is not ideal. The screen reader mode is a great idea, but you have to learn about 20 gestures (one to three finger tap or swipe combinations) and not all third party apps work well with it (the Amazon Kindle app for example doesn't work well with the gestures required when it that mode, and Kindle books won't play in audio mode on the iPad). Also, the high contrast display mode doesn't make apps like the calendar any more readable. The calendar uses very fine, light gray on white in normal mode and dark gray on black in high contrast mode. Neither of these is super readable, even for me with 20/20 vision.

"Voice quality" - In the Apple iBooks app (their equivalent to Kindle) the iPad will play the books if you have the Voice over mode turned on. There is only one voice (female, whereas the kindle lets you chose male or female) and the reading is a bit more mechanical and choppy as compared with the Kindle.

No calculator - Both of us see the need for one and were surprised that there wasn't one built in (although we found a free one that suffices).

No true "notepad" app - With my primary use case being to replace paper pads, I would have liked to see a text and sketch combo app built in (like the one that comes with XP tablet edition). I have found a couple of apps for $5 or less that I am experimenting with, but it would have been a nice factory feature.