iPad Review!

After much anticipation, reading US reviews from Apple enthusiasts and haters alike, I was more than a little apprehensive about the iPad. Nevertheless I got up this morning, and after an hour or two trying to find my car keys I made my way into the shiny new Apple Store in Newcastle.

Outside the store there was temporary queuing bollards for the morning rush, now disused as the queues had subsided by the time I got there. But either way there was crowds of people squishing around the iPad tables, desperate to get their hands on one. So much so that they had Apple "Geniuses" abandoning their posts and running around with little Apple branded cloths to wipe the Geordie peasants grubby fingerprints off their new babies.

I had a vague idea of what it would be like. An iPhone thats a bit bigger with some higher resolution apps on. But once I had squeezed my way past I picked it up, and using it was just like second nature to me. I was proud of myself figuring out the screen rotation lock and finding my favourite websites on it etc.. But looking around the table, that was how everyone else looked. People who young and old, all figuring out the different apps with a massive smile on their faces. From just being around the table, you can tell that this was a device that was so well designed, that it rendered people of all ages to the same level, without patronising anyone.

So I did what anyone else does with it, checked my email, tweeted about tweeting from an iPad, checked out how nice my YouTube videos looked on its screen (fantastic by the way) and left Safari open with my blog, you know, everything someone does in the Apple store.

While I was there I had a chat with my friend who works there (Hey James!) and he told me how much he wanted one too, took me over to a spare one and showed me some of the features I might have missed. Quite a lot. I also played on the somewhat limited choice of apps available on each iPad: a Zombie Flower game and Flight control HD. Both stunning definition and colours so sharp!

Basically, I love this product. It just feels right to use, All the Apple Fanboys where right, you just love playing on it, surfing the internet is so easy and (probably from an extension of my iPhone) just touching the screen works for me, you don't feel like you are squinting through a hole at the internet like on the iPhone or other mobile devices, you feel like you are a part of it. And more importantly, I can see myself using it at home. And not even in a romanticised "just imagine what I could do with it" but genuinely wanting to use it every day.

Leaving the Apple store, I kind of felt like I was betraying myself by letting myself fall in love with a piece of technology and wanting it in my life. But sat here in my girlfriends bedroom, on her bed, blogging on my laptop, I can't help but notice how much my back aches, and think what I can possibly sell to get an iPad.

-Jonny