“It strikes you when you first touch an iPad. The form just feels good, not too lightweight or heavy, nor too thin or thick. It’s sensual. It’s tactile. And that moment is a good way to spot a first-timer, too, as I observed with a few test subjects. The dead giveaway for an iPad n00b is a pause, a few breaths before hitting the “on” switch, just letting it rest against the skin,” Xeni Jardin reports for Boing Boing.
“Flick the switch and the novelty hits. Just as the iPhone, Palm Pré and Android phones scratched an itch we didn’t know we had—somewhere between cellphone and notebook—the iPad hits a completely new pleasure spot,” Jardin reports. “The display is large enough to make the experience of apps and games on smaller screens stale. Typography is crisp, images gem-like, and the speed brisk thanks to Apple’s A4 chip and solid state storage. As I browse early release iPad apps, web pages, and flip through the iBook store and books, the thought hits that this is a greater leap into a new user experience than the sum of its parts suggests.”
“Tapping and swirling my way through iBooks (the store includes free, public domain titles in addition to the $9.99-$12.99 bestsellers), and iPad native apps provided at launch such as the spectacular, game-changing Marvel Comics app (crisp, lucid art, the ability to navigate frame-by-frame, rendering spoilers down the page obsolete), the Epicurious recipe browser, and the news browsing app by Reuters (free app in which video is, again, a seamless delight), the idea hits. This is what we wanted e-books to be all along,” Jardin reports. “Rich, nimble, and dense with image and sound and navigability, right there inside the flow of the story. And this is what we wanted the web to feel like all along. We just want it to work, and we don’t want to be aware of the delivery method while we’re enjoying what’s delivered.”
Jardin reports, “Manic, nonstop use revealed a number of things: battery life is better than I anticipated. I got a full day of constant internet-connected use (it did not leave my hands) on one charge. More than 12 hours, with heavy video and gaming, and screen cranked up to full brightness… No, there’s no camera, but it doesn’t seem like as much of a big deal as when I heard that news back at the January unveiling. iPad is more about experiencing media, and light sharing, than heavy-duty media production.”
Full review – recommended – here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “GEF” for the heads up.]
Anybody think Steve Jobs doesn’t have the best sense of humor?
Happy Birthday Apple !!!
April fools doubt. !!
Steve jobs has a great sense of humor – the icon for a networked pc on my mac is a bluescreen of death.
Anyways, I don’t think ballmer, or the CEO’s of lenovo and hp are feeling too good today. Those netbooks and that microsh*t aren’t going to survive long…
They will survive just fine because the vast majority of people are lemmings and they will ask their IT department for advice. They will tell them that macs are toys and if you want to run real programs they should buy a windows machine.
This drives me crazy!
Oh, I want an iPad so bad but my wife would kill me. I should wait for iPad 2.0 anyway.
@deepdish: now that you say that, the realization does hit home. 🙁 sadly its true… maybe if jobs sent a few ipads to random IT departments, it would at least convert a few of those idiots…
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and yeah, lol waiting for 2.0 seems like a good idea, but these amazing reviews are going to taunt me to no end :O
This is a device that will be pushed into all sorts of commercial uses where a touch screen is a real advantage. Over time it will form another front in attacking those IT bigots and their dated attitudes, it won’t be quick but the iPad is a massive weapon in making this innate IT ignorance increasingly untenable.
I remember that lemmings games. It was fun…trying to save their asses. Eventually, I got feed up with it and let them die to their inevitable death. Hopefully, this is the way of M$.
Okay, this is the first review that has made me think I may want an iPad. I’m an avid reader, but I work in a library. I haven’t purchased a book for myself in about four years. But the description of the Epicurious browser and especially the Marvel comics app have piqued my interest. Reading comics on this thing would be pretty sweet. Damn, Jardin hit two of my weak spots. Well, two of many, admittedly.
Ya think Steve sent a pre-release iPad to Gates and Ballmer? Just to show them how futile their efforts are to stem the flow of the bright side?
@deepdish
get your wife one… hehe
Another review of battery life lasting 12 hours.
Hello….
Where are those that scoffed at Apple’s claimed 10 hour life?
Yes let’s hear it from that Gov. expert who practically accused Jobs & Apple for LIARS regarding battery life. Come out wherever you are and write a big fat SORRY article for being a Windows/PC clueless drone about Apple products.
I’m reminded of a conversation I had with my IBM PC-devoted boss in 1984 when I showed him the Mac. He declared: “You can’t do serious work on anything that has a mouse!”