Hands on with an Apple iPad

So I finally got a chance to have a go on an iPad. The Apple display had it's own small crowd all gathered round to catch their first glimse of the much-hyped iPad. The 4 iPad's were showcasing games with iPad specific versions and all the standard apps. I took the iPad specific London Underground app for a whirl:



The multitouch display is incredible on the larger device. All of the UI is so obvious and familar. The speed of responses was spot on, although I hardly put the iPad through it's paces. The device seemed well made and strong. The iBooks app was impresive. The Amazon Kindle is very clever at replicating ink on a page but you can't show off photos on it with a high resolution full depth colour screen, or browse the web with such ease.

Also I've just seen an iPad in 'the wild' - very swish. All the promise of a portable computing device with glorious multitouch display all on hand at a moments notice. The lucky owner was able to use the display only seconds after removing it from their bag. They made good use of the Apple case and were happilly typing away on at a slight angle, similar to a standard keyboard.

I wonder how a netbook running Google Chrome OS will fare in a test of portable computing? Google's boot time of 7 seconds is extremely fast for a netbook, but can it compete with the 'standby' nature of the iPad (and iPhone)? With the powerful A4 chip and plently of apps for any concievable task could the iPad attack the netbook market? Unless you are doing a serious amount of typing do you really need a hardware keyboard? This blog post is being typed on an iPhone using the landscape virtual keyboard and plenty of autocorrection!

The display is plenty big enough and it's so convienienty to just pocket your computer. With iOS 4 coming soon Bluetooth keyboards will be supported by the iPhone. Any iPhone or iPad owner will soon run out of reasons to buy a netbook for mobile computing.