The iPad: One Month In

May 12th, 2010Blog0 comments

A couple of days ago I went uptown to visit the holiest of the Apple sites, The Cube — from which Steve Jobs’ power emanates and flows across the galaxy. If you’ve been there, you know what it’s like: You descend into a 24 hour zoo full of people milling around, buying computers and hardware and watching tech demos. It’s loud, it’s noisy, and it never stops. It is iHell.

The big difference this time: The presence of several tables of iPads on display, all of them surrounded by tons of people poking and swiping and leaving a thin film of oil on their screens. I’m sure that someone needs to come by and Windex those suckers every couple of hours — probably not the most pleasant job down there.

So I’ve had the iPad for over a month now. It’s traveled with me, it’s served as a script reader and a video viewer. I browse the web on it, send emails every now and then. How has it held up?

I’m impressed. It’s a great device for media consumption — that is, reading and viewing stuff. I’ve read a couple of scripts and Huckleberry Finn on it. I don’t miss the Kindle’s E-Ink screen and I love the speed of the iPad’s PDF support.

Viewing videos: I used the iPad to watch the entire first season of Nurse Jackie as well as a bunch of Doctor Who episodes. It’s a great personal video player, although the aluminum back makes it a little slippery in your hands. It definitely requires a case. Walking around NYC I’ve seen various people on the train and on the street watching videos on their iPads. I wonder how ubiquitous this will become in the coming years. I have a feeling that soon they will make messenger bags with a flap-open compartment that allows you to slide in your iPad and use it while it’s in the bag. This would be great for viewing/reading stuff while you commute.

Email: I’ve jotted out a few short emails on it but I prefer using a physical keyboard. But it’s great for checking email while you browse the web — whenever I hear that audible email “ding” I hit the home button and switch apps to Mail — I read the message, then go back to whatever it was I was doing.

Travel: This is a perfect entertainment/media consumption device for traveling. It’s light, it gets all its media wirelessly (no lugging around DVDs, etc..), and the battery life is great. The lady that I’m renting my sublet from asked me if I wanted the cable hooked up — I declined. Why bother? The place has WiFi and I have Netflix Instant Play on the iPad.

I haven’t taken the thing out in public yet — I’m not as bold as those folks I’ve seen toting theirs around. Also, the one time I did take the thing out at a coffee place (to show our good friend Dave), it attracted a swarm of nerds faster than a booth babe handing out Star Craft II beta invites. I don’t need that — don’t try to sell nerds here: We’re all stocked up.

Verdict: iPad = good.