April 4, 2010 – The internet was buzzing on Friday with the anticipation of Saturday’s release of the Apple iPad. Without a doubt this was the biggest story of the week and will probably be all you hear about for the next week. Being a huge Apple fan, I of course had to get one but rather than braving the Apple Store on Saturday I opted to have mine delivered. I waited eagerly for a good portion of the day then finally UPS showed up at about 2:00 pm.
I asked the UPS man if he had a lot of these to deliver and he said “only about 6 in his area but the other drivers had about 40 to 60 each in theirs”. I’ve heard estimates that 90,000 to 120,000 iPads were sold, but Apple’s not confirming the numbers just yet.
I was so excited and wanted to rip open the box and start playing but I couldn’t. I had chores to finish and my wife wouldn’t let me play until they were done. Finally at around 9:00 pm it was time. I flipped on the lights in my studio and cranked up the HD video camera and recorded the occasion to share later on CurrentPhotographer.com.
Since I only had short time to play with the iPad, I couldn’t really dig deep into it and give you many details, but here are a few of my initial thoughts. As with all Apple products, the packaging is beautiful. It comes in a white box with a full color image of the iPad on the lid and once removed revealed the device wrapped in protective plastic and fit snugly into a molded tray. Underneath was a small folded insert that held the instructions, product information guide and of course the Apple stickers. Below that was the USB Dock cable and an AC outlet adaptor.
What initially impressed me about the device was it’s fit and finish. The smooth and tapered aluminum back fits precisely with the glass on the front and it feels solid in your hands. Because of this build quality it has a bit of weight to it, 1.5 pounds to be exact. It’s not heavy but heavy enough that you really feel like you’re holding something.
There’s only two plug openings on the device, the 3.5 mm headphone jack and the Dock connector. The buttons on top and side fit close to the body for a streamlined look and to avoid accidentally being pushed. The speakers are small and recessed in the bottom edge of the case. The sound quality is fair but for optimal listening you’ll definitely want a set of head phones or speakers.
The iPad came fully charged and once registered with iTunes was ready to go. I went through the 12 applications that it came with and I must say, the apps have been completely redesigned and optimized for the iPad to look great and take advantage of the larger real estate.
The Calendar and Contacts apps resemble the look of a traditional day planner. They have left and right facing pages and when advanced look like you are flipping the pages of a book. The Notes app pretty much look that same as the iPhone only larger. Viewing maps is so much nicer on the larger screen and watching YouTube is easy with it’s clean navigation and optimized videos for full screen viewing. The iTunes and App Store are really well layed out and make it easy to find what you’re looking for.
Web browsing is very nice on the larger screen especially in landscape mode, but as we all know, Flash is not supported and can really make the pages look and function differently than intended. For example, the embedded YouTube videos on CurrentPhotographer.com display and play great, but the one embedded Vimeo video doesn’t even display, there’s just a blank space in the layout where the video would go. Overall it’s not to bad and once more web sites transition over to HTML 5, the browsing experience should greatly improve.
Unfortunately I didn’t have time to sync up videos, photos, music, podcasts or other applications to test. That’s going to be my project over the next week, so if I find out anything exciting I’ll be sure to let you know. I’m also planning to do a lot of photography application reviews so stay tuned for those as well.
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Founder of Current Photographer, co-host of The Digital Photography Cafe Show, Designer, Photographer, and overall tech geek.