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So I’ve been a proud iPad owner for about a week now and I suppose it’s time to sit down and sort out my thoughts on it. Part of this review is to brag about having a new toy, but part is to sort of come to terms with my feelings on it. Ok, here it goes…

As always, it comes down to pros and cons. Everybody is asking if it’s worth it, well let’s get the pros and cons listed out:

PROs
* Extremely elegant device, not only in appearance, but to use. It makes using a laptop feel like a clunky obsolete experience.
* Similarly, there’s a real appeal to touch interface, using websites by touching them sort of connects you to it, in a way you don’t get with a laptop or some intermediate machine to communicate with what’s on the page.
* Typing is perfect on it.
* Easy to use, very intuitive interface.
* Fast and responsive, beats the heck out of my Netbook in terms of performance.
* Syncing with google calendar, or any of the iLife apps is an extremely nice feature.

CONs
* Biggest con: the app store. Apple has firm control over the apps on it, and many apps aren’t free. It’s a huge bummer. As a geek, I want apps like SSH, FTP, RDP, but none are free. Emulators are completely out of the question.
* No multiple users
* The iPhone OS does not support multitasking yet. So, I can’t surf the web while listing to Pandora (although I can listen to iTunes and do other things)
* No camera
* No SD
* Needs better syncing to iTunes, over bluetooth would be nice. Even streaming media would have been cool.
* Crashed once on me already, just watching a movie.
* No Flash, but with more sites embracing HTML5 it’s not as big a downer as it sounds.

So let’s wrap everything up, there’s a lot to take in here. There are some serious cons to the iPad, sure. There isn’t a reason to give you on why you can’t live without one. A laptop does everything it can do, and so can a lot of cell phones. What it does have going for it is style, presentation, and experience that more than makes up for its faults. Using it is literally so elegant it is preferable to pick up this tablet on the couch to check Facebook, or whatever - than to fire up the ol’ laptop. It’s a true consumer appliance. If you’re a geek and you want to play ROMs and hack wifi networks, it’s not going to do it. To an average user who is viewing photos, checking stuff online, and maybe working on some basic office documents, this will sure as heck cut the mustard.

Frankly, Apple couldn’t have made the iPad any other way. If they started to load it up with too much it would have become cumbersome. The iPhone OS is ideal for it, desktop OSes are meant for desktops. The iPhone OS was the only way to go, it’s meant to be mobile and touched. Just like the original Mac, it had people saying it didn’t do enough - but what it introduced changed everything. And that’s exactly what’s happening here - it’s out there to blaze new trails and redefine the market. The killer apps for iPad haven’t even been written yet.

So in summary, it’s something more than the sum of its parts. It’s captivating and elegant. It’s also new, and I’m sure there’s a bright future of new models, features, and upgrades ahead of it.

So the news is out, and Apple has finally unveiled the iPad - it’s tablet device that fills a whole new role in the marketplace. Well, here’s my take on it.

At first glance it was both amazing and exactly what I expected. Creating a product between the iPods and MacBooks makes perfect sense, and I think the tablet couldn’t be done any other way. Apple has always made consumer appliances - just plug it in and go! This is exactly that. As a techie I’m a little disappointed that it won’t run the real Mac OS X, and sure enough the cynical geeks online are going to start complaining about having to jail break it or that it’s just an oversized iPod touch. But that’s missing the point - it’s a consumer product and it fills a gap in the marketplace. And it wouldn’t work any other way. Tablets have never really taken off with consumers because of these things - the desktop metaphor based OS, trying to tack on a mouse and keyboard, that sort of thing.

So pros and cons. It’s hard to say without using it firsthand, but here’s my take:

CONS:

* Meant for consumers, not geeks (who probably want a tablet the most right now)

* No camera

* Low storage

* No means of using a desktop OS on it… you’re stuck with the app store!

PROS:

* Highly affordable

* Should have very high market appeal (status symbol)

* Prepaid plans will bring in a flood of people who wanted the iphone but wern’t At&t customers

* Elegant, looks responsive, decent specs (10hr battery life, etc)

So what’s next?

I think we’ll see a flood of “i know better” type people claiming it sucks because it misses a feature they wanted, although some of these features would over complicate it and kill it in the marketplace.

It’s going to start shipping in a month or two. There’ll be the lines, the camp outs, the works.

I want to grab one as soon as I can too, but sure enough there will probably be a new version that comes out a year later that has features we early-adopters can’t live without! And then people will complain about that too!

But the thing is, if this takes off, it’s really a game changer. It’s going to create a whole new market, and redefine what netbooks and tablets are all about. The success isn’t in pleasing the nerds who want multitasking, it’s changing the tech universe with a new way for users to access technology. And that, it appears, the iPad does very well.