Two weeks with the iPad, … the good, the bad, the honest.

I've now had the iPad long enough such that I finally feel comfortable writing about the thing.

Initial reaction was good. It's basically a giant iPod touch, so there were no surprises as far as shape, fit & finish, etc. It's kinda heavy, so that, coupled with the smooth glass screen and smooth aluminum case makes for something of a precarious user experience. I'm always afraid that the thing is going to squirt out of my hands like a giant bar of soap. And at $700 for the 64GB model, dropping it is pretty much unacceptable.

I got a great leather slipcase for it, which is an lovely way to store the thing, but I'm most looking forward to the Apple case I've ordered, which is more like a notebook cover. That style of case seems far more useful. I'm kinda disappointed about just how tough the naked iPad is too hang on to; I don't want to pinch the edges of the screen for fear of damaging some delicate internal stuff, but I want to drop it even less.

Onward. It took all of 10 minutes to set up to my liking, as it's pretty much exactly like my iPhone. There are some nice interface tweaks in the menus, such as settings (pictured), and mail, which I'm still not sure I completely like but they all do work nicely.

All my iPhone apps work on the iPad, save for those relying on GPS or cell-tower triangulation, so Navigon is useless, but it would be really cool to see Apple add GPS to a future iteration so we can navigate from the large screen.

Apps that have not been optimized for the iPad show up iPad size at first, but there's a button labeled "2X" that scales the app to fit the iPad's much larger screen. While this is cool, the scaled app looks like hammered shit; everything is pixelated to the point that it offends my eye so much I go back to the smaller native size.

And don't get me started about Flash not working. I can't view my expensively-designed, beautiful portfolio Web site on my iPad. Well, at least not the Flash portion. I don't really care why Apple is in such a pissing contest with Adobe over Flash. I'm not a developer, I'm not a designer, I'm a photographer who wants to show off his work, and Flash does an amazing job. I rely on my designer to make decisions as to what technology to use in order to provide the best, most consistent viewing experience possible, and he chose Flash, just like the zillions of other designers who've done the same. 

From what I've read, the much-vaunted Flash killer that is HTML 5 will be really good, but it's gonna take years, as in three to five years, in order for it to fully supplant Flash. So why pull the plug now, so far in advance? This is the angriest I've been with Apple since I owned a Performa. And not even Steve Job's recent explanation of why he hates Flash can soothe that frustration.


Enough about that. The iPad is a lovely device, filling a niche squarely between my iPhone and my MacBook. The iPhone is a device I would prefer not to be without, like, ever. I'm still not so sure as to whether I'll get to feel that way about the iPad. Perhaps next week when my iPad Camera Kit arrives in the mail next week (it's been shipped; the tracking info shows it as having left Shenzen, China, a couple days ago and it's now sitting in Hong Kong, no doubt awaiting customs clearance). I've spoken with folks at Apple and the kit is supposed to support Canon RAW files, so perhaps it'll at least make a decent photo-storage device/viewer. I'm a relatively deliberate shooter, so it'll take a long time to max out 64GB of space.