I got frustrated with apple slipping the launch of the iPad in the UK and bought one from the US. First impressions are very favourable as I like the big screen. It keeps disappearing from my office though, and even found its way to doing a weekly tesco.com food order. The real boon for me is that it makes email great when sitting in the house or away from a computer, where I might have once used my iPhone. The fact that tweetdeck has already launched an ipad app is great, as of writing though i’m still waiting for a facebook app.
What I don’t like however is that the screen gets really grubby quickly so if like me you might watch a movie, write an email, go to a few websites etc. then you tend to notice the finger marks build quickly. Given the size of the screen you notice this more so than on an iphone.
In order to kurb the imports, apple have very kindly locked down the app store on the ipad, so anyone thinking of buying one from the US – you’ll have limited app availability and you won’t be able to update apps directly from the ipad. Fear not though as you can just open itunes on your PC or Mac, and look around for ipad apps. There are a number of them.
Even more frustrating though is that I can’t get the iBooks or iWork apps, so am going to wait until the official release in May, depsite my best efforts to get a US apple account. Kindle have their reader working, so at least you have the kindle book option in the interim. I’m not sure whether I’d use it for productivity apps such as spreadsheets and document editing. Time will tell as to how this new device settles into its use.
Another gripe for me is the lack of flash support. With a larger screen size you would expect an almost full browser experience, however thankfully you aren’t taken off to a mobile version. Apple do need to get their flash position sorted out as this will be one of the big let downs and frustrations, compounded by the recent CS5 debacle with Adobe withdrawing support for their flash conversion tools.
Overall though – I can’t wait for more app support, oh and the UK release so I can finally get into updating things without going via iTunes.
