epic ipad unboxing and impressions
Saturday, April 3, 2010 at 9:52PM 
You have to hand it to UPS. After a few thousand miles, the box was immaculate.
The packaging is classic apple: clean and minimal. White is the new black. This is the 32gig WiFi only version.
After you remove the iPad, you find the only documentation in the entire package. It is seriously only like two pages long. Apple is confident, as always, that you don't need instructions to operate a properly designed piece of hardware. This tends to be correct. For more confirmation of this theory, I suggest reading The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman.
The only other bits in the package are the connection cable and power block...the very same ones that the iPhone ships with.
The device really feels great in your hands. It is a bit heavier than you would expect, but still quite light.
The back is the clean brushed-aluminum look of the original iPhone. The logo is not backlit.
I'm using the option dock to sync for the first time with my Mac Mini running Windows 7. This process goes exactly like setting up an iPhone.
Viola! After setting up my WiFi connection, I was up and running in no time. Proper syncing took a good bit of time, as 32 gigs over USB isn't a zippy process. I did encounter a couple of syncing problems due to my MobileMe extensions being buggy. But an uninstall/reinstall of MobileMe fixed any issues I had.
Now for the impressions.
It is no secret that I am an Apple guy. I love my Mac. I love my iPhone and all my iPods. But I've had my reservations about the iPad. I thought, "what was the point of a device I couldn't really do any work on?" But I also can't resist the call of such sexy products, of which Apple tends to have a monopoly on. And the hype around the device was equal to any device launch I've ever seen. Would apple's next big thing live up to the hype?
In short, it depends on what you want to use it for. I came to peace with the fact that this wasn't a content creation tool, but a content CONSUMPTION tool. It could have as easily been called iPlate, because it is, in many ways, the best way to consume media I've ever seen. If you are ok with that being its primary function, you will have little to complain about. If you insist on it being more akin to a MacBook, then you will come away disappointed. It simply wasn't meant to be a workhorse machine.
But as I said earlier, what it does do, it does exceptionally well: present media in compelling ways. Web content, despite the lack of Flash support, is quite beautiful on the machine. Pages load and scroll with fast responsiveness. Holding the internet in your hands, it turns out, is the best way to surf the web. But where the iPad truly shines, as media device, is with the wide variety of Apps. On launch day, there were over 1,300 iPad specific apps available. That, added to the 150,000 or so iPhone apps that it runs flawlessly, you have an overwhelming amount of options with which to put the iPad to use. Media apps such as Netflix, ABC Television, Time Magazine and many others provide a near endless amount of content. eBooks and online Zines are vibrant, with interactive video and image content that sets iPad far, far ahead of the Kindle-like eBook competition.
On the subject of apps, this is where the device really becomes more than a big iPod Touch. The greater screen real estate and zippiness of the processor allow for apps that feel far more like desktop apps than iPhone apps. Once you load up Pages, Yahoo Entertainment, or The Elements, you will notice immediately greater fidelity and options available. It is at this moment that the machine you are holding feels quite powerful.
As a gaming device, it is surprisingly competent. The larger screen allows for much more detailed graphics on the beautiful LED LCD screen, as well as providing extra space for on-screen thumbpads to provide an almost console like control experience.
All these options for entertainment makes for a pretty compelling device. But what is truly exciting about the iPad is the potential for the future. As app makers discover the limits of what the faster processing and larger screen provides, the possibilities seem nearly endless for the functionality that could come. Content creation could very well become a viable option through software that truly makes use of platform's strengths. Power users may then have a reason to consider the device as a supplement to the traditional laptop/desktop combo. And for the average content-consuming computer user, well, they may very well find a reason to get rid of their desktops and laptops all together. Like the iPhone forever changed the concept of what a phone is, the iPad could very well change how we think of mobile computing.
Reader Comments (3)
Good review and props for including your own photos. Everyone I've talked to that have used it have said its really zippy. I could really see this as a device Kelly (my Kelly) would use a lot and enjoy.
Internet consumption from an desktop computer is quickly becoming something less common.
I played with one late Saturday briefly and was pretty impressed. I still think I want the 3G, but that makes sense in some work areas I'd be using it for. BTW, check out the iDisplay app, letting you use your iPad as an external monitor. Oh, how we can use THAT on shoots!
When, oh when, will S. Jobs let his designers realize the full vision of what truly mobile devices could be?