IPad thoughts so far

So I’ve had the Shiny for a day or so now and am beginning to have thoughts about it.

Things I don’t like:

  • The mail app has a preview pane I can’t turn off.
  • My laptops USB ports are apparently not powerful enough to let the iPad charge when I have it plugged in for syncing.

Things I do like:

  • The on-screen keyboard is a little weird, but I can work with it. Between that and a reasonable amount of screen space, I am fairly sure that I will be able to write on this thing, although polishing of format will likely still have to be done on the laptop.
  • The smart cover is pretty nifty, and I think I chose well when I chose the brown leather one. It’ll look nicely natural as it gets more use.
  • It is amazing how cold the back of the device feels compared to my laptop, especially if I am carrying them both from room to room. And it’s pretty cool having the thing in my lap right now as I write this post, and to not have heat radiating off of it.
  • About half the apps I had put onto my phone are universal binaries that also work on the iPad, and of those, several of them look way nicer. The WordPress app, which I’m using right now, is a nice example.

I’ve been doing a bit of reorganization of my apps in iTunes, trying to determine which ones need to stay on the phone and which ones will move primary operation to the iPad. So far the book reading apps and the HD games are the big things I am moving over. And I am a sucker for those damn birds (SO ANGRY!) and zombies (brains), so I bought the HD versions of both of those games. I’m downloading a lot of Big Fish’s shiny HD releases too–as a proud Big Fish employee, I feel that is my beholden duty. :D I’ve played a bit already with Hidden Expedition: Amazon, which I’d previously played on the computer. But it looks REALLY good on the pad, and it also has a multiplayer mode in this version, where you can have two people on the same device searching for hidden objects at once, either competitively or cooperatively. I want to try that!

(switching back to the laptop)

It looks like the WordPress app has got some problems (it can’t handle HTML tags well right now and it seems to be stripping out all my damn quotes, which is not helpful), so I’m having to finalize this post via the actual web UI on my laptop. But that’s the fault of the app and not the fault of the iPad; I had the same problem using the WordPress app on my phone.

Anyway, still getting everything the way I want it on the device, but so far so good so shiny!