My first week with the iPad

The iPad, the must-have tech “toy” of 2010. As many who know me have pointed out, I tend to suggest that you should avoid 1st Gen Apple products. More often than not you end up the real-life beta tester for a brand new device that may or may not have been ready for the real world. While in the US on holidays this week, and with all this in mind, I went hunting to see if I could track down one of these fantastically sexy looking devices.

A few phone calls & some twitter queries later, I had located a local best buy that had all models on display for the world. I hopped in the car & 5 minutes later was playing, dragging, touching and pondering this new product from the minds at Apple.

10 more minutes passed and I was hooked. Convincing myself that we needed one at the office for “testing purposes” I plunked down $500 for a base 16GB model, the only one they had left. Jazzed & excited I headed back to the hotel to get in some geek time before the family returned to discover what I had done.

In the interests of simplicity, here are the good and bad observations about the device so far. At this point I am mixed – it does everything that was promised (and more) but the shortcomings that made me want to avoid it are VERY present and quite annoying. Overall, I am sure this device will find a place in my life, just not sure exactly where yet. On the Real Estate front – wow, my wheels are spinning. Technical challenges aside, I think that the iPad has the potential to become one of the most powerful tools in a REALTOR®’s arsenal. More on that later…

The good:

– the unbox was great. all Apple, all the way. The manual is literally a 4×6 postcard, double sided. It essentially says turn it on.

The bad:

– When you turn it on, you get the (often dreaded) “connect to itunes”. Period. Hmmph. What if I don’t want to connect to iTunes? What if my laptop doesn’t contain the appropriate Music etc. that I want on my new toy. What if I don’t HAVE a computer. According to Apple, tough luck.

The badder:

After deciding to finally sync the thing & see if I could get it working, i quickly realized we were going to have problems. First, iTunes kept trying to re-wrtie my iphone backups & settings to the iPad, but then just kept crashing & quit. Figuring this out, I managed to get the first sync going & ended with a wifi-enabled ipad, including all 8 of its standard apps.

The good:

Once working, the touch was fantastic, the device was fast & responsive. I quickly dialed up some fave websites, and they looked great.

The bad:

Unfortunately some of my favorite sites have flash competent, and as per the Apple mantra of “flash=bad”, they did not work.

The badder:

Quickly tiring of the limited apps available & desiring something sexy to try out on this thing to see what I could do, I tried to connect to the Itunes store. More trouble began. Apparently, as a Canadian with a Canadian itunes account, I was not allowed to buy any apps (free or not). Without getting into the nitty gritty of this one, google can help you circumvent this issue, but it did become a fairly royal pain in the “ahem”.

The good:

Using my new California iTunes account, and some iTunes gift cards purchased at the local grocery store, i was now ready to finally get this puppy humming. Apps a plenty have been updated with iPad goodness, and there is a daily influx of new things to play with on the iTunes store.

The bad:

Keeping in mind that this device has only been out a week, I attempted to load a few apps relating to my day to day worklife. Tried out tweetdeck – looks great at a glance, but would be much better if it actually worked. Tried some games which were fantastic, then bought Jabba (chat client) to try & get my mobile chat working and keep in touch with the office. Still have not got that functioning either. All told, have spent far too long troubleshooting silly little problems which do not plague me on my laptop, hence the return to my laptop for the time being.

The Summary?

Two words come to mind – very sexy. Other than that, I am mixed. It is most definitely a big iPhone. A big & quite heavy iPhone. One without 3G service or a camera. But I do look very chique while sitting in bed while web surfing my fave non-flash websites. It is not a computer, not even close. It is very similar to a Newton (for those that remember) in almost all aspects, minus handwriting recognition. It is nothing more than an extension of your desktop for those who would prefer to surf and/or play their games, facebook etc. on the couch.

The potential…

This is the area that excites me. The iPhone was a revolution in mobile app technology & we have seen a massive amount of innovation in this space as a result. The iPad will help this revolution by providing more screen real estate for those who need it (think medical, real estate, sales, presentations etc.) but I doubt will be as dramatic as the iphone on the overall marketplace. HOWEVER, with all of this extra screen, there is finally room to develop applications that need the screen space yet still need to be mobile. Thinking “geo-fencing” or proximity based Real Estate searches, and other mapping / info heavy type mobile needs here [more on this topic to come in my next post]. There is lots of room, lots of potential. Personally I am still mixed, but I am excited about what the future holds in this space, and it is nice to see some new apps developed for this very large, very sexy iPhone.