I will confess up front that I am one of those long-term Apple customers, commonly known as Mac Geeks in the 90’s, who sometimes drive their non-mac friends crazy because I love my mac and other apple products so much.
However, I was not one of those who pre-ordered an iPad before it launched. I wanted to read the reviews and consider how I’d use the device before I bought one. Initially, I thought I’d need the 3G version, but after reading about the WiFi version, I decided that one would work for me (and save me a load of money since 3G meant another monthly service fee to AT&T). Of course, they were out of stock by then because demand was high, so I placed my order and waited.
My wait was perhaps eight days for the iPad. The accessories (except for the case) all arrived days before the iPad. I set them out in their pretty little uniform Apple boxes on the dining room table, like a little Apple Shrine, waiting for the mother ship to arrive so they’d have some use. Meanwhile, I checked the Apple store shipping status every day. I became very excited when I saw “preparing for shipment” on Thursday morning. By Thursday night, I had a UPS tracking number and I followed my iPad’s rather rapid progress from China to Hong Kong on Friday. By 9:15 Saturday morning, it made stops in Alaska and Kentucky before landing in Maryland for delivery. I was elated when the UPS guy showed up at my Washington, DC home shortly after noon with that little box. He knew as well as I what was in the box.
I excitedly went up to my office and opened the box. Just as I expected, the iPad packaging was as elegant and uniform as everything else I’ve bought from Apple in recent years, but that didn’t stop me from near giddy anticipation as I opened the box and removed the uniformly wrapped iPad from its cradle.
Elegant, gorgeous, and lightweight were the first things I noticed about the iPad. It is thin, but not too thin, which for me means that it is still substantial enough that I don’t feel as if I could break it easily. It is, in fact, as zen-like in design as every other apple product I’ve purchased in recent years.
It powered on the minute I hit the on button and I smiled as it prompted me to connect to iTunes and register. So easy. It actually imported all my iPhone apps, which may seem logical but I ended up deleting the ones that didn’t format properly for the iPad, then spent a couple hours downloading the apps I’d decided I would need (and a few I found that looked intriguing as I reviewed all the app offerings).
One surprise for me was the fabulous way some iPad-specific apps use the device’s size and functionality. I expected the New York Times to be more readable and navigable on an iPad (particularly in comparison to the Kindle version, which just didn’t work), and it lives up to my expectations. I love reading the NYT on the iPad!
I hadn’t expected NPR to come out with what may be, in my opinion, the best use of the iPad screen navigation for checking news stories and following through to audio and visual reports. Yay, NPR! Their technical team is top-notch when it comes to social media. The NPR app has three horizontal bars, one for News, another for Arts & Life, and the third for Music. You can scroll across to see recent stories and click on links to play reports in each area. It is incredibly clever, in part because not only does it link to “regular” NPR programs, but also to affiliate reports, particularly in the music section, where I saw links to my favorite KEXP as well as many others, thereby expanding their music news even further than before.
I purchased this iPad not just because it is another cool Apple product, but because I believed when I bought it I could load my manuscripts onto it and read and edit them using Apple’s iWork Pages program. That is true, but as it turns out, only if you have iWork’09. My version was ‘08, so I had to spend another $79 on the ‘09 version to make that work for me. Since it was an incredibly important part my planned use for the iPad, I made the additional purchase, but that was a surprise. I don’t think any of the reviews I had read mentioned this specification.
Manuscripts loaded, I started reading through one. Editing is a little clumsy, but it is made easier with the bluetooth keyboard (which is both cute and functional). In the absence of a mouse, I had to touch the screen a lot to get the cursor in the right place when I made edits. Like I said, clumsy, but usable. (Note, this is a feature totally lacking in the Sony and Kindle readers because I can upload my manuscripts to them through somewhat convoluted processes, but cannot download any notes or edits I may make on the reader).
I’ve had the iPad about 12 hours now, which means I’m still digesting what it can do for me. Someone asked why I like it, and I think the simplest answer is that it is an elegant device that delivers fabulous content and enables some basic applications, through Apps, to do creative things, but it doesn’t dive deep into content manipulation. Rather, it skims the surface and picks the things we are most likely to do. This is not a device that does everything, but what it does, it does well.
