After using the iPad for a solid week now, it has really changed my work flow both here on iSquint and in my personal life. I have been pleasantly surprised how well the iPad is able to keep me connected not only via email, but also Twitter and the ability to write on the site via the word press app. I’ll speak more about that in a moment. As for the personal life, the iPad has become my device of choice for simple things in life such as google searches and quick updates view the multitude of apps available not only for the iPad but also for the iPhone.

Let’s begin with the design of the iPad. The screen is super bright, so bright that I have found that I keep it at half of it’s full brightness regardless of inside or outside in the sun. In either case, the screen is plenty bright to see and function.

One thing that I do love about the iPad is the ability to lock the position of the iPad’s viewing angle. I have found that I love working on the iPad in landscape mode. Not only does it give me a larger keypad, but in certain apps, like say mail, my inbox is always visible off to the left. That also holds true for some of the apps that have been specifically developed for the iPad.

Speaking of the keyboard, I mentioned in the unboxing write up about how the landscape mode displays a larger keyboard that is about the same size as the smaller USB or Bluetooth keyboard that apple offers for their mac’s. I have even found the familiar auto correction found in the iPhone functions just as expected and has already begun to recognize words that I am typing along with common words that I use over and over. Something that isn’t found on the iPhone but on the iPad is spell correction. If you miss spell a word that auto correction doesn’t catch, just like on a mac, you can easily see a red line under the word and hold down on that word and get a listing of words that might be correct.

Enough of my love affair so far with the iPad, what about the lighting apps?!  All of my lighting apps transferred over to the iPad just fine.  Since the screen is larger, Apple has given us the option to zoom in on the iPhone apps on the iPad.  You can also view them in the normal size from the iPhone, but there is a bunch of wasted space.  What I am a little disappointed in is the rendering of the entire app, even the UI native from the iPhone when zoomed in on the iPad.  Every iPhone app running on the iPad zoomed in is pixelated and not so elegant as if running on the iPhone.  You would have thought that at least the native UI elements such as the keyboard on the iPad would be correctly re-sized, but no.  It really is not a huge deal, but still a little disappointing.

To help put your nerves to rest, I have talked with a number of Lighting App developers and from what little I am allowed to mention, all I can say is be prepared!  We have already seen a screen shot of Synthe FX next app that will run native on the iPad and not just the iPhone app running on the iPad.  It will take some time for lighting app developers to port their iPhone apps to run natively on the iPad, so don’t hold your breath for anything any time soon, but they are working on it.

Over all, I am loving the iPad, it has a long battery life, excellent screen resolution and is quite pleasant to hold in one hand.  As an early adopter, I am loving the freedom that the iPad is giving me.  I find that I am not pulling out the MacBook more and more for simple searches, web surfing and writing on the site.  It is a mildly large investment depending on what version of the iPad you are looking at, but it might just change the way you look at mobile computing.

As for not waiting for the iPad 3G version, I am very happy with my choice of going with just the WiFi version.  Yes, it is a slight pain to wait for the Sprint MiFi to boot up and connect and then only lasting about 4-5 hours, but thus far it has been working like a champ.  Working off a MiFi is just like being connected to any WiFi like my home or office network and always available where ever I am.

One negative about the iPad is I am finding that when I switch back to the MacBook or the MacPro, I keep wanting to touch the screen just like on the iPad.  I have really become accustomed to just touching what I want rather then relying on a mouse.  It’s just something I have to remember where I am and what I can touch and not touch!

Update: Looks like i trusted auto correction a little too much! Thanks for the typo catches Mark!

One Week with the iPad

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