My Review of the Apple iPad

I’ve had my iPad for over 24 hours now. After many, many hours of playing games, watching video, listening to music, surfing the web and posting on Twitter, I’ve compiled my thoughts on the device which is predicted to sell over 7 million units this year.

My very first impression was that the iPad was not packaged nearly as delicately as the iPhone is. I wondered why that was, but once I took it out of its box, I understood why. This thing is sturdy. Sure, it weighs only 1.5 pounds, but evidently 1.5 pounds in my mind is a lot lighter than in real life. I’m not saying this thing is heavy at all, but it’s certainly not the feather I assumed.

Before you can do anything on the iPad, it must be synced with iTunes. Not that I really minded much since I’d rather have it set with all my apps right away so I can really dive in and play with this thing. Unfortunately, this step was extremely slow. Adding my apps and music wasn’t bad, but importing my iPhoto library took what seemed like forever. The photos are all optimized for the iPad and this can take quite a while. My iPhoto library isn’t even that huge coming in at nearly 3,000 photos. (I can only imagine how long this will take for my brother the photographer!)

After about 45 minutes, I was ready to start using the iPad. I was a little worried that holding it would feel a little awkward, but I was completely wrong. It feels so natural in your hand. Typing on the larger keyboard takes a little getting used to after three years of typing on the iPhone’s small screen, but after 30 minutes or so it was no problem.

Applications that are optimized for the iPad are beautiful. Unfortunately, iPhone apps not upscaled yet leave a lot to be desired, especially ones that are very text-heavy. Luckily, some of my favorite iPhone games such as Bejeweled, Peggle and Rock Band still look really good enlarged on the iPad screen.

Using Safari to surf the web on the iPad is a total delight. It displays web pages the same way my MacBook does, which took some getting used to as I was so accustomed to seeing mobile-optimized pages. Thankfully, the lack of iPad versions of some of my favorite apps won’t be that hard to live without until they are updated knowing that I can access them in their original form through Safari. This is especially true with sites like Facebook and Digg.

Another area that the iPad really excels in is battery life. Finally Apple’s promise of long battery life on a device is true! I had my iPad going for many hours yesterday before heading to bed and the battery was only down to 50%. Getting 10+ hours of life on a full charge is absolutely possible.

Apple’s iBooks app is wonderful. I’ve only had the chance to read a chapter of an ebook but it was very pleasurable and easy on the eyes. I don’t foresee any eye fatigue issues with an extended amount of reading on it, especially with the convenient brightness display option right within the app.

The only problems I have with the iPad right now are basically the fault of developers. For example, I find it insane that Major League Baseball’s iPad optimized app is a separate purchase from their “At Bat 2010″ app for iPhone/iPod touch, which sells for $14.99. They never said that it would be a separate app at the time I purchased “At Bat 2010″ for my iPhone since Apple has touted the universal nature of apps as a way for developers to hit all devices with one version. MLB isn’t alone in this practice, but they’re the most annoying right now given the fact that it’d cost me $30 to run both apps on my iPhone and iPad and still not have access to all the streaming video.

All this being said, the best quote I read last night on Twitter described the iPad perfectly: “It does not feel like a big iPhone, it feels like a small MacBook.” After an hour with this devices you will see that it’s truly a touch-screen computer.

If you’re someone like me that mostly uses their computer for music, video, social networking, email and surfing the web, the iPad is perfect. It truly is a new category of device that absolutely has a market out there. Obviously, power users that use their machines for coding, design or heavy spreadsheet work will not find the iPad fitting their needs.

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m an Apple fanboy, but I do have the ability to step back and call Apple out when they do something wrong. You know, like trying to get record labels to stop doing the AmazonMP3.com “Deal of the Day.” (Not cool Apple, not cool! ) With that said, I truly believe the iPad is a home run. I can absolutely see how someone that hasn’t used it would ask themselves “what do I need this for if I already have an iPhone/iPod Touch and a computer.” This is a perfectly normal question when a new category of device enters the market. I imagine that many had similar thoughts when laptops first hit the market, being unable to do everything that their desktop counterparts were capable of. Look at where we are today with countless households running only laptops.

Ultimately, what’s going to make the iPad a success is the developer community. The iPhone is an amazing gadget that completely changed the mobile phone market as we know it, but the thing that really pushed that growth was the community of app developers harnessing the true power of the iPhone. There are already some phenomenal iPad apps available now and once these developers become more accustomed to the platform, I can only imagine the type of innovation we will see.