Some observations on using my favourite new toy (16G Wifi iPad) over the past 3 weeks:

• The battery life is awesome. Couple this with a light form-factor and it’s a device I carry around pretty much everywhere.
• The screen in gorgeous. It’s the first thing that strikes people when they see the device.
• The iPad Mail app is pretty great. I check and reply to 99% of my emails on the iPad.
• In fact, I am trying to migrate as much of my communications applications (twitter, mail, social web) to the iPad and leave my computer for actual, productive work.
• People love the screen. They also love direct manipulation. Using the iPad is to believe it. Get this thing into people’s hands and they love it.
• Digital comics on this are awesome. I think the medium is going to change for devices like this - the idea of a page feels like an artificial constraint when reading digital comics on a larger screen device.
• Similar comments to the above apply to digital newspapers and magazines.
• iPhone apps suck on the iPad. Not because the iPhone simulation is bad, or the apps are bad, but because the moment you run an iPhone app on an iPad screen you realise exactly why the iPad is not just a “big iPhone”. App design is very different for each of these devices * .
• Syncing and transferring documents is a pain. At the moment the best bet is to email documents around. Apple should buy Dropbox, or come up with a (better) solution for cloud storage. This is probably the clumsiest part of the iPad user experience.
• App updates could be problematic. One app in particular, The Elements, wants to drop a 1 Gig update on me. I’m probably going to just delete the app.
• Speed. It’s fast and responsive. It also doesn’t appear to give off any heat whatsoever.
• Integration between different apps needs more work. Example: I pretty much want to be able to send any webpage in any app to Instapaper. At the moment I can’t do this.
• It really is a lean back device. I was using it in a cafe, sitting back in a comfy chair, using Keynote and Notes. At a nearby table I could see people leaning forward, hunching over their laptops.
• It’s a much more social device than a laptop. Pull out the iPad, launch the Photos app to show off your holiday snaps and people gather around you to take a look, in the same kind of way people would gather around you if you were holding a photo album. A much nicer way to share pictures with friends than looking at photos on a laptop or emailing links to a photo website.
• I want more, higher quality iPad apps. It’s early days yet, but I think we are going to see some really amazing software on this device.
• The iBooks store needs more books. I want to be able to have digital copies of every book I own, so I can just carry the iPad around and still catch up on my reading.
• There needs to be a mechanism to directly and wirelessly transfer pictures and video from my iPhone to the iPad. Having to sync everything up via a computer is annoying.
• Even though I am not satisfied with any of the note taking apps on the iPad, I have stopped using a paper notebook. All my notes, designs and doodles get captured on the device. This is a big deal for me, and I suspect lots of other people.

All in all, I love the iPad. It has its limitations, some of which will be overcome in due course, whilst others are clearly part and parcel of its design and market positioning (a replacement for a netbook, not a laptop).

I’m also really interested to see what future competing devices will be like. There is plenty of scope for competitors to make a tablet device that significantly differs from the iPad’s approach whilst still providing a great user experience. Needless to say I have my own ideas about this. If the best the competition can muster is web tablets, PCs masquerading as tablet computers and uninspired me-too devices (Android anyone?) then I will be very, very disappointed indeed.

Of course, disappointment from Apple’s competition is what I am getting used to.

*Don’t hold your breath for a version of Choice by Choice on the iPad. It’s just not a sensible fit for the device. I’ll have more to write about this in a future post.