It’s quite a gadget. It certainly seems to obviate the need for a dedicated e-book reader. It’s incredibly easy to pull out and use in a way you’d never use a notebook, just because of the whole folding action and the space it takes up. (I really wish I’d had this trick on the trip to DC.) And by using a phone OS, it’s incredibly fast to get going – button, swipe, 4 digits, Safari, and boom goes the dynamite. As opposed to: open, wait for login box, log in, wait for desktop, double-click icon, wait for app to load…it’s like an iPhone, just pull it out and go, except that the processor is so much faster and the screen so much bigger that you actually get to work and see things sooner and easier. The 4-way screen rotation is great – work from whatever angle you pulled the thing out.
It does seem excessive for things like Foursquare or Twitter, but those are so location-specific that they really do belong on the phone, not the iPad. You could take the iPad most anywhere, but you definitely will take an iPhone everywhere, so – horses for courses.
If I hadn’t bought the netbook, I would be sorely tempted. As it is, I find that I tend only to use Mail, Safari, Notepad, and the e-book readers. Other things are nice, but I don’t get the mileage out of them on a routine basis.
Long story short – does this sound familiar? Steve Jobs delivers new product. Not a completely original concept, but the first real consumer-friendly approach, easy to use and sexy as all hell. Looks like a premium product, and priced like one; right off the bat it’s too much money for not as much functionality as you might like, but from day one it becomes the new standard that everyone else is chasing.
iMac, iPod, iPhone, iPad. Lather, rinse, repeat.