The iPad after the first 24 hours

The bloom is not off the rose. In fact, I may be spending a lot more than I had thought on vases simply because the rose is so damn cool! OK, enough metaphors. After picking up the iPad yesterday from a Best Buy in Clarksville, Indiana it has been in nearly constant use. By me or my kids, but not yet the wife – only because I think she hasn’t been able to get it away from us. As I tweeted yesterday the only real disappointment is no iPad native facebook app (the one for the iPhone is like using a 640×480 DOS app when you first got your 1280×1024 monitor and were running Windows 3.1). Everything else has been just pure awesomeness.

The part about buying more vases: I have already spent an infinitely greater amount on apps than I ever did with my iPhone. I have lots of apps on my iPhone (5 screens worth – which is a lot to me since I only have an 8 GB model), but not one of them was a pay for app. All of them are either free or the trial versions of pay for apps (games mostly in that category). I have already purchased the Elements app for iPad (completely agree with the comments that this is what ebooks were supposed to be!) and am looking at a few others:

  • Drawing pad – looks perfect to keep the kids busy
  • iMockups – this looks to be killer for those quick conversations about what a web page should look like.  Imagine whipping out your iPad, throwing a few elements around on screen while you are talking with the client and finalizing a prototype then and there.
  • Omnigraffle – on the fence about this one because I really want to see when / if Mind Jet comes out with a mind manager app for iPad.  But if they don’t soon this one will be in my shopping cart on the app store.
  • iWorks for iPad – yep, even though I don’t have iWorks on my MBP I am considering it for the iPad.  Only reason I haven’t bought it yet because again, I want to wait a bit to see how Microsoft will handle the iPad – distraction or platform?

That being said, I also have a ton of free apps that I realy am enjoying:

  • Netflix – my daughter streamed a movie in the car on the way home from the VB tournament yesterday over my sprint mifi.  I felt like I was in the Jetsons.
  • NPR – if you can handle the biased reporting, the app is really cool – the way news ought to be presented.
  • WSJ / NYT – put these together because they are basically the same app, one with reporting from the right and one from the left.  Again, this is how newspapers will be.
  • Evernote – been playing around with evernote on my MBP and iPhone, but with an iPad optimized version on day 1 they have really won me over.  Once I get the keyboard attachment, I may never take notes on my PC again.
  • Twitterific – great 1st day implementation that makes incredible use of the screen real estate.  They didn;t just stretch this app out – they rethought it.  Job well done!
  • Marvel comics – got this one on there for the boy (ok, me too!).  Really well done.  not sure if it will lead me to purchase comics or not, but can’t say its out of the realm of possibility.

Don’t get me wrong the device is cool and I know without a cool device non of the software apps would be possible.  But I think the real revolution that Apple unleashed yesterday will be the market for apps that sell for real money.  The iPhone paved the way for the app store, but the iPad may be the way that developers can finally cash in.


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2 responses to “The iPad after the first 24 hours”

  1. Lisa Avatar
    Lisa

    I am so jealous . I have nothing more to say.

  2. dochereford Avatar

    I have the 3G version on order. I'm looking forward to it more now. Thanks.

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