[MrBriz]

Hey everyone,

It's been a while since I've posted... so I thought lets do a little post :D

I was wondering, how many of you are going to be, or have already pre-ordered the iPad, and how many of you will forgo pre-ordering for the fun of a lunch day in the apple store?

I was very very tempted to pre-order, but after I realised that I couldn't get my higher education discoint yet (god bless working at the OU!), and seeing that I couldn't alocate the pre-order to a store and that I'd have to get it delivered to my house I dicided I'd go into the store to pick one up instead.

I don't trust the postie/delivery company to get to my house anytime before about 12, by that time I could have already been in the city and gotten home with my new toy!

So... what will you all be doing?

[miffed]

I was going to be a "day one" , but I have to be honest , I am not really bothered about getting one at all now !

Had they been available a bit sooner I would have snapped one up , but I am a bit bored with the concept now after waiting 4 months !

Who knows ? I may end up with one , but I won't be breaking my neck to get it.

[MrBriz]

The thing is I already have that day off work, so it's a no brainer for me.

Plus it's my 30th this year, and I've been racking my brains what I should ask for, and I've decided this will be my present from my family :D (even though I'll be getting it 6 months 2 days early!)

[paulbds]

I was tempted and tried the HE discount but they are not budging on the price just yet. However, I was offered a 3 year parts and labour warranty of if purchased through the educational store.
I have my 3 MiFi unit so won't bother with a 3g version.
Summary, I will wait and see how they sell. I have seen one and was impressed

[Hands0n]

Welcome back MrBriz, it has been a while :)

I was going to pre-order, then I wasn't, then I was .... and so it went on. So far I have managed to resist.

I really do feel that I need to have one in my hands before I make my mind up one way or the other. The temptation is like an irritating itch, it just won't go away :) But I think I will hold off till they are in the store and I can then waltz in with my trusty Chip n Pin plastic :D

[Ben]

I heard the pre-orders sold out the other day, though it looks like they've opened them back up now. Given the unprecedented demand for this device that nobody really knows how they'll use yet I think pre-ordering is the only way you'll guarantee getting your hands on one at launch.

It'd be fun to get involved with the hype in the Apple Store, though.

[MrBriz]

Well I didn't pre-order and now the date has moved to 7th June, so it looks like day one store trip for me! I'm just hoping that there aren't massive queues. I'm not sure if I should get up at stupid o'clock on the 28th and get my arse down to the city center. If anyone else is going to be in MK for launch give me a shout!

[Ben]

Hoping mine comes on the 28th... got a whole bank holiday weekend of geek fun lined up ;)

[MrBriz]

w00t, it's the big day tomorrow!

I will be sitting outside the apple store from about 5am just to secure an iPad ;D I've even convinced one of my collegues to join me!

Sods law states that no one is going to be there untill 7am, but then if I turned up at 6 or 7 I know I'd be out of luck and end up not getting one!

[chaslam]

Ive already got mine about 2 weeks ago :)

Is there a DSGi Store around you (Pc World or Currys)? You might have better luck getting one from there, as no doubt the apple store will be mobbed! Well I guess if you get there at 5am you should be fine haha.

[Hands0n]

I am going to the Bluewater Apple store at the normal opening time. If they have any thats fine, if not thats fine also. I just want to lay hands on one to make a final decision. I am not entirely convinced ...

[chaslam]

Yeah thats fair enough, apart from when you do lay your hands on one and see it in action youll be walking out with one :)

[Hands0n]

Yea, I know ... I am actually taking the means to pay for one. So what could possibly be the odds I don't walk out with one unless they're sold out :)

[Ben]

Nice touch that they came early. Am on mine at the mo and I have to say that it's surpisingly easy to type on in landscape mode.

A more pressing concern is how useful or, as was the case with the iPhone, invaluable the iPad can become. I've synced it and set up all my bits now, so it's all here. The test will be whether it's this I pick up for Facebook/Twitter/BBC News or my MacBook Air.

But so far, so cool.

[DBMandrake]

What percentage of your existing apps support the iPad directly ? (Rather than scaled up iPhone apps)

From what I can see, scaled up iPhone apps while they function, really don't work well UI wise, (fisher price UI :) ) and I think support for iPhone apps was really just Apple hedging their bets in case developer support for iPad optimized apps wasn't as fast as they hoped for.

I notice that about 12 of the iPhone apps in my iTunes library (out of two hundred or so) have already been updated as hybrid iPhone/iPad apps, but a worrying number of apps, especially games, expect you to buy an iPad only version of the app...perhaps developers see the iPad as a second gold rush, and are willing to milk it for all they can before (hopefully) settling on hybrid apps in the future...

[MrBriz]

It seems that there aren't really any killer must have iPad apps yet... There are some good ones, Cogs HD being one.

The iPad if fantastic for web browsing and email, which is what i will use it for about 90% of the time anyway.

So far so good.

[The Mullet of G]

Hoping mine comes on the 28th... got a whole bank holiday weekend of geek fun lined up ;)

I suspected you would fold as release day got closer, I've been close a couple of times myself, so I knew you'd definitely be getting one. :)

[DBMandrake]

So I managed to get into the local Apple store today and have a play with an iPad for about 15 minutes. (After going away and coming back later as there were too many people there the first time mobbing the iPad tables)

Perhaps I've just been saturated by reading too much about every minute detail of the iPad for weeks before it was released, but I left feeling oddly unsatisfied. It would be an exaggeration to say that I was underwhelmed or disappointed, more that the iPad user experience was almost exactly as I expected it to be, and therefore it didn't really grab me or make me say wow.

Physically it was a little bit smaller and heavier than I was expecting, and the display didn't impress me quite as much as I thought it would - perhaps because it was plastered with finger prints and in a brightly lit room. (The reflections from the glossy screen weren't actually as bad as reviewers suggested though, I didn't really find a problem with reflections)

Everything worked well and for most things it was nice and snappy. I did notice a strange issue with some apps though - the apps "bounce" slightly as they launch, with a slight zoom in effect after they launch causing the very edge of some apps to be zoomed off the edge of the screen ? This was affecting the photos app, safari, ipod app, and a few others, and I think it was causing scaling of the image, perhaps why I didn't find the screen as sharp as I expected...

Although I could see myself using one about the house on the sofa and I will eventually get one (although perhaps next years model) I didn't feel any pressing need to walk out of the store with one, no doubt helped by the fact that I don't really have any disposable income for gadgets at the moment, and need to save up for a new laptop first... ;)

[Hands0n]

I suspected you would fold as release day got closer, I've been close a couple of times myself, so I knew you'd definitely be getting one. :)

I fell at the first hurdle :D The Apple Store staff handed out a few iPads to pass around the queue while we waited - along with Coffee, Hot Chocolate, Cookies, Cake and a lot of "whoop whoop whooping" going on. By the time I got to the threshold of the store I was already sold :o

One thing it most certainly is not and that is a oversized iPod Touch. It is quite a bit more, mostly because of its larger size. The screen makes the new iPad apps completely valid. I had tried eReaders on the iPhone and they were completely impractical. However, I now have three eReaders installed and am currently assessing which I prefer. These are iBooks (Apple), Kobo and Kindle. Each has its own particular UI and I am finding them equally sufficient to read the written word. But it really is down to the larger screen real estate that makes eReading at all practical.

I have also purchased a few apps - something I have never done before, always going for the free apps for the iPhone. In particular I was interested in Numbers which is Apple's spreadsheet app. I use it on my Mac interchangeably with Excel at work. Document exchange with the iPad is somewhat different - it will export PDF and Numbers format files only, the latter of which you can read in to Numbers on a Mac. However, you cannot directly import Numbers files into Excel - a bit of an omission for iPad's Numbers app to not have an .XLS export like its big brother on the Mac can.

I'm quite liking the device and don't see it replacing any of my laptops/netbooks any time real soon now :)

[The Mullet of G]

I fell at the first hurdle :D The Apple Store staff handed out a few iPads to pass around the queue while we waited - along with Coffee, Hot Chocolate, Cookies, Cake and a lot of "whoop whoop whooping" going on. By the time I got to the threshold of the store I was already sold :o

One thing it most certainly is not and that is a oversized iPod Touch. It is quite a bit more, mostly because of its larger size. The screen makes the new iPad apps completely valid. I had tried eReaders on the iPhone and they were completely impractical. However, I now have three eReaders installed and am currently assessing which I prefer. These are iBooks (Apple), Kobo and Kindle. Each has its own particular UI and I am finding them equally sufficient to read the written word. But it really is down to the larger screen real estate that makes eReading at all practical.

I have also purchased a few apps - something I have never done before, always going for the free apps for the iPhone. In particular I was interested in Numbers which is Apple's spreadsheet app. I use it on my Mac interchangeably with Excel at work. Document exchange with the iPad is somewhat different - it will export PDF and Numbers format files only, the latter of which you can read in to Numbers on a Mac. However, you cannot directly import Numbers files into Excel - a bit of an omission for iPad's Numbers app to not have an .XLS export like its big brother on the Mac can.

I'm quite liking the device and don't see it replacing any of my laptops/netbooks any time real soon now :)

To be fair I too would have folded after Coffee, Hot Chocolate, Cookies, Cake and whoop whooping, never mind the actual iPad itself.

Good to hear your having a great experience, I think the scope for apps given the hardware and screen size is extremely interesting, and with the user base expanding quickly its only a matter of time before more iPad specific apps appear.

[Ben]

Yeah, it's those iPad specific apps that are going to be the key. I can see why they allowed it to run iPhone apps, but if I'm honest the experience is truly underwhelming and they don't scale up in 2x mode nearly as well as I imagined they would.

But then Rosetta for running PowerPC apps on Intel Macs was similarly underwhelming. I'm so pleased that pretty much everything is available for Intel these days!

As continues to be the case with the iPhone OS, it's what third party developers can achieve within Apple's extremely limited development environment that will dictate the success or failure of the iPad going forward. Personally, with the quality of the screen and device in general, I can't imagine the iPad not finding its market just like the iPod Touch did.