iPad: Should I Bother?

In Santa Monica I bought myself an iPad. No real reason other than I wanted one and I wanted one first. I have never owned an Apple anything, other than a rather old 80GB iPod Classic (as they are now called). So. in a sense this was a leap for me. Especially since they only had the 64GB model in stock which came at a whopping $699 ($775 with tax). They will probably sell for that same number (775) in € in NL, so I still consider it a bargain.

Is it worth it? Hell yes!

The tablet itself is absolutely useless as a computer. It isn't a tablet computer, it is a huge iPod Touch. And that is marvelous, since it does a limited number of things but it does it very well. The quality of the screen is marvelous. Pictures and movies look a thousand times better than on any screen I have ever seen (apart from other Apple products). The app store has hundreds of useful and useless applications on it. Games you would pay €59 for on a PC sell for peanuts (€3). Apple already has me in its tight consumer grip and I bought some applications through their store. And I am cheap.



The best part about the iPad is its touchscreen and the way you interact with it. Same as the iPhone (I am so getting one when I get back!) and it is pretty addictive. Remarkably it also works well as an ebook reader, even in direct sunlight. That surprised me more than ever. And with Amazon releasing a Kindle App, you have instant access to all their Kindle books.

What I find silly is that it does not come with a stand so watching movies in bed means you need to hold it all the time or built a little stand for it using pillows. There is one case for it that solves that problem, but it is sold out almost anywhere.



Few problems for us Dutchies. You really need an American credit card, since most of the content is not available for us. There are some workarounds but most of them cumbersome.

Since the iPad only plays the .m4v files you need to convert every video file before loading it on your iPad. Also it has no support for external hard-drives and you need to load everything using iTunes. That basically means (on longer trips) I will have to take my laptop to be able to really use my iPad. I don't mind however. It is a beautiful gadget and I love it!