I have spent about 24 hours with my iPad (well not really….I did not take it to bed).  I have found it to be a profound experience for me personally.  For those of you the regularly read my blog (all two of you), you know that I have been working closely with computers since 1966.  My first computer, a PDP-7 had less memory the the photos I take with my camera.  The first computer I designed (the ill fated Profession 350 from Digital Equipment Corp), had the first winchester hard drive in a personal computer. It was 5mega bytes.  Now I am hold in my hand a iPad with 64 gigs of flash memory.

It too me about two minutes to get my iPad at the Apple store.  I had a reservation.  There was a long line of people that did not make a reservation.

Lots of my friends are asking me about my experience with the iPad.  It is hard to express because the most profound part of the iPad is really what one experiences in the interaction.    I have to use the word intimate to describe it.  While I think the iPad is a work in progress, one can really see/feel the potential of this kind of device.  For sometime I have felt the iPad would become the black-hole of media and all media would be sucked into it. We will watch movies and TV shows , read books, play games and listen to music on it.  But as far as I can see most applications that we use to get information from web searching to maps will be a better experience on the iPad than on a normal computer.  This will certainly be true for shopping.  And I think the iPad will bring back the opportunity for brand advertising.  It will be very interesting to see what place in my life the iPad will take.  I know it will between my Mac-book Pro and my iPhone but how much it will take from both is still not clear.

But the iPad in this current generation can not replace my desktop or notebook computer.  It will not be able to do that until it really supports multi tasking.  For instance, when I am reading a email on the iPad (love the mail program) which has a link and I click on that link I find myself in the browser and the mail program is closed down.  I have to push the home button to get back to the main page and the select the mail program.  I also got a blue tooth keyboard.  I set it up in less than two minutes.  It works wonderfully but since there is no mouse I have to reach over to the iPad’s screen and touch what I would normally click on with the mouse.

I managed to use logmein on the iPad so that I could actually run all my desktop mac software remotely.  This is important if I am to go on a trip without my mac notebook.  I have some programs like Quicken that are not on the iPad but which I really need.  This worked pretty well although I did not like the iPad client very much.

I like so many other’s wish there was a front facing camera so I could use the iPad when I do skype with video.  Skype with voice worked fine.  Syncing with iTunes turned out to be a pain (I am really getting to hate iTunes),  For some reason applications that I had removed from the iPad when I first sync up kept coming back.  The transfer rate between my Macbook pro and the iPad seemed very slow.  Transferring photos took a lot longer on the iPad than the iPhone but I suspect that is because the iPad takes higher resolution  versions of the photos.  It took me a while to figure out how to move TV shows and movies.  The iPad uses the same format as the Apple TV which is not what your iPhone or iPod uses or what your desktop or notebook uses.  You have to get iTunes convert the video to the right format (or you can use programs like Handbreak or VideoDrive2).

I have purchased Pages and Numbers but have not tried them yet.  I was delighted to see that I can read my kindle books with no problem.  I will probably continue to by books on the kindle at least for a while.

I wish I had the patience to by the 3G model especially since it is the only model that has true GPS.  But I could not wait and I also think my usage will be primarily in places where Wifi is available.  I can also use a MiFi.

It was impressive that all my iPhone apps seem to work.  I was glad that I could use my Sling box application.  Now the iPad is my portable TV.