Apple iPad Review

Intro
I was one of the few lucky ones who was able to pre-order an iPad from my US apple account as the iPad is not yet available in Canada. Thanks to the Merwalds for allowing UPS to deliver it to your house. Secondly I am writing this review from my ipad just to put the virtual keyboard to the test.

Hardware
The iPad feels pretty solid in your hands and it does have some weight to it which may or may not be a factor in long book reading sessions. The screen is is very crisp and clear. Other than volume control, on/off button and the home button, there's not much else to the physical device. Iam looking forward to getting the case, which will help in carrying the device around. As other reviewers have testified, the battery life is amazing. Apple's boast of 10 hours is low. I am getting 11 to 12 hours. Very easy to get through a whole day without worrying about a dead battery.

Software
The iPad comes standard with safari, mail, calendar, address book, YouTube, video, music function. Like the iPod and iPhone, everything is done through iTunes. Touch response and scrolling is very responsive and I love the screen rotation. Every app has a different view depending on the screen orientation. Pretty cool. What makes the device is the apps and what will continue to make this device is the apps and what developers can do with a larger screen. Already I can see the ipad being my main media consumption device for reading blogs, magazines, newspapers and books. Along with the iBook app, amazon also got the ipad version of the kindle reader app allowing to read all my kindle books on the iPad. I can really see myself getting use to the touch screen and reading all my media on this. It really doesn't feel like a computer but another device that is made for this kind of activity. So far I have not missed not having flash in the browser. Already it seems like many sites are making the addition or replacement of flash video with html5. I am sure there will be other tablet devices with different or additional functions and the ipad will continue to evolve. With more applications being apps for a specific device (like mobile phones) and more computing happening within the web, I am sure we will see more activity being done on devices like this compared to the laptop.

Canada
Rumors are still strong that we will SSS the ipad come to Canada by the end of this month. If you are media and app junkie then I would definitely recommend the 64GB and 3G.  Is this device necessary? Absolutely not, but it sure makes media consumption much more interesting and fun.
-Grant