Taking a Bite of the Apple: Day 1

Much to my surprise, yesterday I received an iPad. While grateful for the gift (and frankly excited about the new gadget), my initial reaction was

“Great, now I can’t criticize it blindly anymore!”

Yes, there’s nothing that feeds a polemic like the lack of firsthand experience.

I contemplated returning it (for a fraction of a second), and then I decided that the best thing would be to use it and report on what I find (as well as getting to play with the new toy).

If the iPad is going to be a student and teacher machine, then it needs to do roughly all of the tasks that are completed on an office computer. So I have decided to use my new iPad as my primary computer for the next week. I will only turn to my desktop or net book when I can’t do something with the iPad.

This way I can best report on my impressions of the device and its ability to function as a stand alone machine.

INITIAL REACTIONS (in no particular order)
There are no bullets or numbering for these because I can’t make them with the iPad on this site

The screen is, of course, spectacular. It looks even bigger and brighter than I expected.

Typing with the on screen keyboard is easier than I thought it would be, though the landscape keyboard takes up too much screen real estate that things get cut off a bit. I keep hitting the n instead of the space…I expect I’ll get better at this.

I appreciate having the autocorrect (frankly, I’ve started to get really annoyed when I type a contraction and the computer doesn’t add the apostrophe). HOWEVER, I really hate the fact that “its” is always corrected to “it’s.” I’m afraid that I will miss one and a reader will smugly think that I don’t know the difference.

Doesn’t take long for the screen to be filled with fingerprints. I hate to think what the screen of a 14 year old boy will look like (to be fair, I’m only seeing what was always on the keyboard, but ignorance is bliss).

It certainly is much easier to carry than the net book. I like the case a lot.

Finally for this entry, I like reading with the Nook app, but the iPad is much heavier than it appears to be, and my arm gets tired holding it at reading length.

So, overall I am enjoying the experience, but there are clearly some challenges that I will need to solve, work around, or live with!

More to follow.