iPad 2: You Only Have One Chance to Make A First Impression

Tweet

My 7 year old son is sitting next to me. He just woke up and came downstairs to grab my iPad 2 from my hands. His first words..."Oh cool, you got iMovie"

That's OK, he can play with it for now. I have been up for 2 hours and can take a break to write up my first impressions. I'm typing on my laptop because writing a blog post on the touch screen keyboard is just too slow for this seasoned touch typest. But that's OK. The iPad is not designed to replace a laptop. It's another animal all together. As Steve Jobs said it is part of the Post PC class of devices.

I unboxed my new 32GB White wifi unit last night at 6pm. Here's how it went.

• It came fully charged
• I plugged it into to iTunes and was automatically asked if I wanted to restore from my iPad 1 (16GB wifi) backup.  The restore took about 15 minutes, but no apps came down.
• I had to manually select all the apps and do another sync.  This time it took about 20 minutes.  I went to eat dinner and came back about 6:45.
• All passwords needed to be re-entered (mail accounts, app store, etc.)
• By 7, I was up and running.  Most frustrating was that my app icons were all over the place.  I needed to manually set them back where I wanted them.  There was no real rhyme or reason to the app location on my iPad 1, but over the last 11 months, I had built up about 6 pages of apps and just become accustomed to where they were.  I guess the discipline of cleaning this up was really necessary.  So no big deal.
• I tried to call a few friends with FaceTime.  I got through to my iPad buddy Nate who was setting up his too (read his post).  In about 5 seconds I saw him with his 3 year old son and we had a nice chat.  We had nothing really to talk about so we hung up.  I called two more, but got no answer.  Later that evening my iPhone buddy RB called me back...that is really cool.  I like FaceTime.
• The camera is nice, but remarkably coarse and low quality, especially in low light.  It works, but I expect this will be one of the upgrades when the iPad 3 comes out.  For now, coarse front camera is better than no camera...kind of like the early camera phones.  The back camera is better, but you need good light, not the ambient light at my house after dinner.
• Yes, it is fast.  I'm not sure if it is 2x as fast or 9x the graphics, but if Steve says so, it must be true.
• I really miss my standard Apple iPad case.  The store did not have any accessories, so I'm using the iPad "au natural" with no case.  I'm not sure I will go with the standard "smart cover".  (See the review here.)  I really like to cover the back, it prevents slips when I set it down and also makes it easier to hold.  There is a reason they put a textured cover on a book.  I would never read a metal slippery magazine.  I really don't get where Apple thinks we will all do that.  Back to the case, I put my iPad 2 in the standard Apple iPad 1 case and it looked like a skinny kid in his father's suit.  Even with the baggy fit, I may use that case until I can buy one with the same function that fits the slimmer offspring.
• Speaking of kids, my 7 year old is all over this iPad.  He is making some incredible music with Garage Band and already working some videos with iMovie.  Both are incredibly powerful applications, perform well on the iPad 2 and bring pleasure immediately in their simplicity and ability to create a slick media product.  That's $9.98 I don't mind spending.
• It's not about the device, but about the media and the content.  I reloaded Murdoch's "The Daily" and caught up on the news...There is plenty of it today with the horrible devastation in Japan.  All my content feeds work well....web browsing with safari (I didn't even notice any of the improvements), tweeting with twitterrific, gmail, and a new app called Zite.  It creates a custom magazine based on my tweet reading habits (kind of creepy, but it looks promising)

Well, that's what comes to mind right away.  I'm an experienced iPad user who is eager to stay on top of the technology as it evolves.  It's a good experience that just got a little bit better.  In time, I'm sure I'll have plenty more to say, but this is one happy Early Adopter. 

Now if I can only get it back from my son.