The Definitive Apple iPad Hands On and First Impressions Roundup

After all the hype, after all the showmanship and yes, after the one more thing; all that’s left is to actually use the Apple iPad to see how well the device works. It’s easy to be disappointed and even dismissive of the new gadget that Apple has introduced, but it is Apple and they are a bit of a market creator so until you get your hands on an iPad it’s hard to pass judgment. Since you, and me, weren’t able to get hands on with the new Apple iPad for of your own to test for ourselves we have roundup up all of the Apple iPad hands on experiences and Apple iPad first impressions to

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Engadget: General First Impressions of the iPad Joshua Topolsky

  • It’s not light. It feels pretty weighty in your hand.
  • The screen is stunning, and it’s 1024 x 768. Feels just like a huge iPhone in your hands.
  • There’s no multitasking at all. It’s a real disappointment. All this power and very little you can do with it at once. No multitasking means no streaming Pandora when you’re working in Pages… you can figure it out. It’s a real setback for this device.
  • The keyboard is good, not great. Not quite as responsive as it looked in the demos.

All Things D: First Impressions of the iPad On the plus side, the device is handsome, feels comfortable and solid to hold, and has all that beautiful software built in. Oh, and it’s amazingly low-priced for an Apple product, with that modest $499 price tag for a base version with 16 gigabytes of memory and Wi-Fi, but no cell phone data connectivity.

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But there are minuses. First, since it’s too big to go in a pocket, people might perceive it as just another thing to carry around, despite the fact that it’s only a half inch thick and weighs just 1.5 pounds. It also lacks a common and popular laptop feature a web cam. So, it can’t be used for video chats or for the creation of web videos.” – Walt Mossberg

Fox News: Hands On with Paid Apps –

Gizmodo: On the iPad’s Speed Apple didn’t really sell this point, but it’s the single biggest benefit of the iPad: speed. It feels at least a generation faster than the iPhone 3GS. Lags and waits are gone, and the OS and apps respond just as quickly as you’d hope. Rotating between portrait and landscape modes, especially, is where this new horsepower manifests in the OS.” Mark Wilson

Slide to Play: Hands on with iPad Games – We then dived into a few hardcore games—N.O.V.A. and Need for Speed Shift. Both of these were a little unwieldy, ipadsideand neither were the iPad-optimized versions we saw in the stage demo. The default control scheme in N.O.V.A., where you look by swiping the center of the screen, was not as natural as a two-stick configuration. Clearly, developers are going to have to rethink iPad controls for shooters, since they now have much more real estate to work with.” Andrew Podolsky

The Seattle Times: Where the iPad fits in a Home After spending some time with the long-awaited Apple iPad, I see why it starts at $499.

At that price it seems like a very nice accessory for a wired home, where it would become a shared Web kiosk and media browsing device, tapping into the home’s wireless network.

Instead of waiting to use a shared computer to check e-mail, you could just grab the iPad. Especially one that’s docked with the $69 accessory keyboard, taking the place of iPods that a lot of people keep on the kitchen counter.” Brier Dudley

SlashGear: Hands on with iBooks on the Apple iPad The iBooks ebook reading application is fast and clean, and it feels a real advance on the Kindle’s monochrome.  Color alone is a nice addition, and when you start to throw in multimedia it’s a stark reminder of what the browser could be like if it only had Flash support.  We’ll have to spend a little longer with the iPad to see whether the LED-backlighting is as easy on the eyes as e-paper.”  – Vincent Nguyen

UberGizmo: Movie Playback on the iPad – “The animated movie “Up” from Pixar was available in the devices, so I was able to look at a short demo. You’ll see in the movie below that the playback quality is impeccable. Colors were vibrant, but these animated movies are super-saturated, so they are not so great to gauge color accuracy, which is probably quite good anyway. With a Dock connector, you can also output the 1024×768 video to a TV/monitor.” – Hubert Nguyen

Editor: You can view what HD movie playback looks like on the video below from UberGizmo. Overall the experience looks better than i was expecting given the movie resolution chart at TUAW.

Laptop Mag: The iPad is Not a Netbook Killer – “First off, this is not a netbook killer. It’s really a new category of device, focused more on entertainment than productivity (although iWork brings some of that to the table). The iPad does a really nice job of surfing the Web, displaying photos, and playing videos, and we like that it taps into Apple’s ever-growing library of apps. After fiddling with Need for Speed on the iPad, I can say this is a killer gaming device, making the iPad the ultimate gadget for couch potatoes. And because of its extreme mobility and up to 10 hours of battery life, you can take this tablet anywhere. But is this really a substitute for a cheap mini laptop? Nope.” – Mark Spoonauer

Popular Science: Typing on the iPad – “Typing is done via a soft keyboard, or with the added accessory keyboard you can use on a desk with the iPad docked. The soft keyboard is good, but as many suspected, typing is not 100% natural. You can enter text in several different ways: in landscape or in portrait, holding the back with one hand and pecking with the other, trying to stretch two thumbs while holding with both hands, iPhone style, or resting it on your lap (the iPad’s case, sold seperately, folds out into a nice stand). It’s clear that the natural way to type is resting the iPad in your lap–one-handed pecking is pretty slow going, and unless you have largest of hands, typing with both thumbs while holding it in portrait mode is pretty awkward.

There will be an acclimation period, for sure, but don’t expect to write long-winded messages or War and Peace with the iPad while you’re standing up.” –  John Mahoney

Video of Mobile Safari, including Pinch/Zoom and Landscape to Portrait orientation switch from PopSci:

Apple iPad Hands On from PopSci.com on Vimeo.

That’s all for now, we expect to see much more about the Apple iPad over the next 60 days and personally, I won’t make up my mind until I get to play with one myself.

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