I've had my iPad less than a week now, and much less than that when you consider the time my daughters have played with it when I would like to be using it myself. If nothing else this thing is a marvelous diversion for the kids. I've actually gotten pretty good with the on screen keyboard. In landscape view the keys are very large and after some practice I'm able to type well in that aspect. In portrait I am able to hold the iPad while using my two thumbs to key in search terms and urls pretty quickly. It's a bit hard to keep your fingers in the proper location since you do not have a tactile sense to know if you have strayed. I'm typing this in Evernote and l see that it corrects my spelling and offers possible words as I type. If I agree with the word suggestion all I have to do is tap the space bar and it enters the word. If it is the final word in the sentence two taps of the space bar will insert the word and add the period for you. I discovered that in settings you can enable shift lock so two quick taps locks the shift key. It would be nice if there were some arrow keys to move the cursor. I've picked up on the hold and drag method, but I miss having some arrow keys. Also Apple left out a way to enable a right click. Some web sites have utilize contextual menus, and I couldn't discover a workaround for this, I give Apple a thumb up for making a decent on screen keyboard.
What truly amazes me about the iPad is the speed of it. It is incredibly smooth. Scrolling, loading apps and doing anything on it is remarkably quick. The device is quiet, never gets hot to the touch and is a decent weight. I suppose it would be preferable to me if it were a little bit lighter. I do a lot of book reading on it and the weight is a bit much for holding for reading. Reading is a joy on it, too. I have a Kindle and am not replacing it with my iPad, but certain types of books are preferable on the iPad. I read a lot of programming books and those never look so great on my Kindle as code examples require a lot of indentation and tables and diagrams. Using an app called GoodReader I am able to open my books in PDF format off of my drop box virtual drive. They are easy to read and the fonts are nice and smooth. The only caveat is reading in sunlight which is impossible on an LCD screen. That's when I pull out the Kindle. There is nothing like e-ink for reading in sunlight. I love the Kindle app on iPad. It pulls down whatever I want from my Kindle library and syncs to the farthest spot in the book that I've read regardless of whic device I've read it on. Apple's iBook app is pretty sweet, too. So iPad gives you a lot of flexibility for reading as iBook reads ePub format and Kindle will read .mobi. GoodReader makes for a really good PDF reader.
Mail app works wonders. It's extremely simple to set up multiple accounts for different server technologies. I have exchange, gmail and yahoo accounts set up. Exchange mail pushesnmail directly to my iPad. If I have my iPad sitting next to my Mac I usually hear the mail tone on iPad several minutes before I get my mail on the Mac. I remember watching Steve Jobs demonstrate exchange mail services running on the iPhone when it came out. I was a little skeptical at the time, but can say they have really nailed it. It works flawlessly. This goes a long way toward making both iPhone and iPad useful enterprise machines.
Safari is a real joy to use on the iPad. I suppose this is where the iPad fulfills a desire for those who have have used a phone for browsing the web. I've always wished I could see the page better. Now you have a portable device that you can truly see a web page as it is meant to be seen. I love that Safari senses the logical blocks on the page and when you double tap an area Safari enlarges that area and centers it in the viewport. This is true usability. Type ahead in the URL location field works well. Safari caches up to 10 pages so you can navigate quickly from one place to another.
iPad isn't without it's faults, though. Some of it may be remedied in future releases of software. Also since it is such a new device, I think there will be new apps to come that will fill many of the current gaps. The one that I really want to see is a working version of Google Docs. Currently Google Docs only works in read only mode. I want to be able to use my iPad to work on my Google Docs and be able share docs in edit mode with my Mac. If that were available I would be typing this there instead of in Evernote. However, let me give Evernote a plug. The app works great on the iPad and is now my chief way of sharing data between various devices. I would also like to see a better method of file sharing than the week method that Apple has given to apps through iTunes. I would rather have a share mount on my Mac desktop that I can save to from my iPad or my Mac.
I like the Apple app store. It's easy to use. I'm looking forward to it filling up with apps for iPad in the same way apps for iPhone. Apple has released a nice suite of productivity apps. I haven't tried them, but it is encouraging to see them. I'm going to wait a while to see if I can get a hold of some Google Doc apps.
I have my NetNewsWire RSS reader installed and I have National Geographic World Atlas, NPR news, Yahoo Entertainment and NY Times Editor's Choice installed. I think Apple has created a magical and wonderful device. It needs improvement, but what doesn't. I'm quite sure when Google releases a tablet they will be trying to improve on Apple's which sets the bar. An open source tablet will be a good push to Apple to let go of the reins a little.
