So, here it is. The iPad review.

When the iPhone came out it wasn’t that the concept of a touchscreen phone makes lots of sense, indeed many companies had already done one, I even had an LG Prada. Given the ever growing number of tasks we have been using them for it was clear a changing interface was obviously needed otherwise we’d end up in a sea of button and complex menus. It was Apple who used their amazing design abilities to craft a new user interface language, based in touch, and showed the whole world how it was done.

I remember the first time I experienced it, on an iPod touch. It was true amazing considering how bad touch had been up to the point. The small additions like momentum in menus, the accelerometer and sticking to a single home button meaning pretty much everything had to be done through touch, revolutionised how developers think about and how they design their programs.

But even after I hopped on-board the iPhone wagon with the 3G 2 years ago, it was not the perfect experience. One of my main niggles was the size of the screen, I loved how browsing was implemented with touch, but all the zooming in ruined it. As apps came available that let you read comics or books, I imagined how nice it would be to view more than a single panel or 2 paragraphs at a time. So once I heard rumours the fabled Apple tablet was actually to become a reality I knew it’d a be product I would be very interested in.

Again, the Tablet has been one of those devices that has always been around but never perfected. The most famous attempt being Microsoft’s Tablet OS’s, but the problem was they just tried to port the full Windows experience over to a touch screen laptop, this doesn’t work for touch devices as they need to be simpler. As soon as the iPhone and it’s interface became a reality the iPad was just a matter of time.

So here it is. The iPad. I have the 32GB 3G model, but all the models are identical to the eye (bar the 3G having a small plastic area at the back for the 3G aerial. Basically, it’s a giant iPhone. It’s curved slighty at the back which is a single piece of aluminium which feels very solid. I find myself drumming my fingers on the back quite hard without any fear of incident, it’s a little heavier than you think it’d be, but now after some use I don’t notice the weight. You have a few buttons and speaker holes around the side but it’s the huge single piece of glass covering the screen that’s what this device is all about.

Once you turn it on, the screen is beautiful, the colours are great and the resolution is perfect. Unlock and you’re at the home screen, you already know how to use it and that’s about all you need to know. I’ve tried writing about how great browsing is, and how you can get lost in the content but at the end of the day, the only way to explain to someone what the iPad is like is to pass it over them and within a few minutes they get it. Like a book or a film or a piece of music you can rave on about it but you know someone else won’t truly know how you feel until they have read it or watched it or heard it.

No, you don’t need the iPad. It isn’t a device you can’t live without. I wouldn’t want to use it to program something or even write a long blog like this. Yes, Apple are being very restrictive on the App store. Yes, there is no flash player.

The iPad isn’t about what it can or can’t do. It’s about how it does what it does.

Ashley.

P.S. I feel like that was a bit of a cop-out review, I wanted to go into how I’ve become addicted to Angry Birds and how with the ‘Comics’ app I’ve re-found my love for them. But I wanted to keep the review about the actual device. In blog posts to come I’ll cover the apps more and also Apple’s stance on the App store and Flash, but for me those things don’t get in the way of what I think about the device. If you’ve got an opinion about this review I’d love to hear it.

Picture Credit: Apple.com