OK, you can implicitly change my answer to “already bought one.” Although technically mine’s on order, it was my wife that bought one. Got it at 9:15 last night by walking into the Apple store and buying it; the entire transaction took about two minutes. The store was literally packed with people playing with them, purchasers were directed to a different route. (Note my location – due to a certain large business in the area, sales may not be typical).
Southern Yankee so far as I know, you can only browse from within iBooks, but I suspect this functionality will move to iTunes soon. Or you can use the free Kindle iPad app, which is what I do, since you can browse Amazon’s stock, share your books to Mac/PC/iPad/iPhone/Kindle/etc, and I’ve already got a kindle-format library. The reading experience of both seem pretty similar; there’s not much to differentiate the two at the moment.
Most apps store their location when I shut down, and start up at the same place when I launch. It’s not true multi-tasking, but accomplishes the same goal for most things. Music plays in the background, and most other things you’d want (chat and the like) can use the push notification if they want to fake it. I’m just not seeing the outrage, but then, I buy things for what they can do for me, not for what they can’t.
I haven’t actually launched the web browser on it yet, oddly.
Pages is an “OK” Word processor, much like Pages on the Mac. (Again, note my location: Microsoft Word is in the water supply here). They keyboard will take some getting used to – I don’t have problems writing notes on it, but I’d want a physical one for long documents. I rather doubt that many folks will use this for long document creation anyway; but it’s an idea editing/proofreading environment.
KeyNote, on the other hand, is practically the poster child for this thing; it’s far more intuitive than the desktop version (or PowerPoint, although the latter is much more powerful). At $10 each, it’s pretty hard to argue with either of them. I don’t use spreadsheets much in my daily life, so I haven’t bought Numbers.
Games are going to be unbelievable on this. I’ve run a few of my iPhone ones at 2x, and control is vastly easier (although the screen is blockier).
The killer apps for me at the moment are Kindle (if you’ve got the books) and Netflix – much better than the implementation on Tivo/XBox, etc, it’s much more like the computer implementation – you can view the entire streaming collection (rather than just the ones you’ve put onto an Instant Queue), and stream them immediately. It’s much better for reading/Movie viewing in bed than a laptop – lighter, doesn’t get warm, longer battery life, doesn’t interfere with a cat lying on you. It’s not as nice for reading as an actual Kindle, but doesn’t require the external light, either.
Fingerprints: Oleaphobic screen or not, this collects fingerprints like nobody’s business, even if I make a point to wash my hands before using it. This doesn’t matter when the screen is on – it’s plenty bright enough to make them invisible, but as soon as you turn it off you’ll feel a compulsion to clean it off (which is easy because of the screen coating).
It’s not just an oversized iPod Touch: the faster processor makes it more responsive, and the larger keyboard allows even us without teen thumb to write short-to-middle length documents comfortably (hint: lock the screen rotation before setting it down to type if you’re going to put it on a completely flat surface, so you don’t get betrayed by the accelerometer. It’s not a problem on your lap.) Nor is it a tablet PC – it’s instant-on for one thing, and Apple’s encouraging new intuitive UI metaphors for multi-touch that aren’t just translating a stylus location to a mouse click. It’s going to take a while for this to gel, though, and right now UI’s are a bit of a no-man’s land except for Apple’s apps and the baseline standards (tap, pinch, flick, rotate, scroll) they’ve set for everybody.
This won’t replace my desktop computer for anything, nor the laptop computer for real work, but for travelling, e-mail, media consumption, games, and reading, those full-size devices are toast. It’ll probably also replace my iPhone; the small screen seems astoundingly limiting after just a few minutes of using the iPad, so I’ll probably go to a cheap PPM cell and the 3G iPad (when it arrives) for the browsing stuff.
Last Notes: the built-in speakers on the iPad are surprisingly good, though not stereo. Charging over USB can be a challenge if your computer maker skimped on the power to the USB ports; even some of my powered hubs can’t charge it while it’s on (and slowly while it’s off). If you don’t have a Mac with built-in ports available, you may need to use the supplied charger if you need it charged in a hurry (it comes with a full charge).
