Thoughts on the iPad

The iPad was released yesterday. I've had a day to play with one and I have a few thoughts.

What is the iPad and what do you do with it?

iPhone owners, iPod Touch owners, and perhaps other smartphone owners will understand quite quickly what the iPad is. It is a large iPod Touch.

But more importantly, what does one do with an iPad? If you are one of the group of people I just mentioned, this will be pretty obvious. You use the iPad for all of the things that you use a smartphone for when you are home and your computer is on the other side of the room. The activities fall into two categories; quickly done and cheaply done.

Quickly done
- You are sitting on the couch watching a movie and you wonder what other movies an actor is in? There is an IMDB app for that.
- You wonder what movies are playing at the local theater. I like the Flixster app for that.
- You want to post something quickly to Facebook. There is a Facebook app.
- You want to check the score for the latest game. There is an ESPN scorecenter app.
- You want to check how the stock market did today. There are many apps for that.
- You want to see if the weather will be nice tomorrow. There are apps for that.
- You want to check if you have received that email you were expecting. The Mail app can do that.
- You have a feeling that there is a 9am meeting tomorrow and want to check your calendar. There is a Calendar app for that.
- You remember something that needs to be done tomorrow and want to put it on your to do list. There are many ToDo apps for that.

All of these things are quickly and easily done on an iPad. What, you don't have an app for that yet? No problem. The app store app lets you find a good app in just a couple of minutes. And this leads me to my next point.

Easily done

Let's say that I want to play a quick game as a diversion. Nothing so time consuming as the latest entry in the Halo or Super Mario Brothers franchise, but something simple and fun. Think Tetris, Solitare, or just about any arcade game from the 80's. The App Store delivers that.

I can virtually browse the isles and find something fun to do for just a few dollars. Not a game person? The iPad has books. Lots of them. Some of them for free. Want to spend some time getting the news? There are a lot of good apps for that in a format that is even better than the iPhone.

This is what the iPad is all about. Quickly and easily done.