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I have noticed something. Anytime we have family in to visit, the gadgets come out and everything gets a good playing with. This Thanksgiving there are two huge hits, the iPad and Xbox 360 Kinect.

There have been at least 5 people stationed in the family room on the Kinect since we finished eating. It’s been mostly Kinect Sports, that’s obviously the hit. I feel quite amped about it tho, being a Microsoft boy, it’s pretty exciting to see something that popular with good ole’ consumers. If you read the blogs lately you would get the impression that we just don’t get consumers anymore at all.

The other bigtime gadget, although thankfully in second place, is the iPad. Angry Birds, Cut the Rope, Tumble Drop, Scrabble… the games are huge.

Ironically the response for Kinect was overwhelmingly “I am buying one of these as soon as I get home.” The iPad response was quite different, it was “it’s pretty cool, but I wouldn’t spend $500 on one.”

Wonder what this Christmas will bring, I am looking forward to some awesome sales of Kinect, Xbox 360, Windows Phone 7 and hopefully some Windows 7 Tablets.

Merry Christmas and Happy Thanksgiving!

I’ll be the first one to admit that I was more than a little excited when the iPad was announced. I am a Microsoft guy for sure, but my multimedia interests keep me in the Mac Camp part time and thus always curious about new Apple gadgets. The iPad had me at hello. I quickly pre-ordered and was there with my wife to get them in line on launch day.

I don’t think at this point you can call me an MS fanboy, or a casual Apple user, etc. Between my audio and video interests our household has 3 Mac Pros, a Macbook Pro, an iMac, two iPhones and two iPads. Don’t call me a hater.

That being said, my love affair with the iPad has been short lived and although it’s not over, it’s definitely waning. I am swayed when I see devices like the HP Slate or Dell Duo, and as soon as they have something more than an Atom Processor I’ll probably buy one, but back to the iPad.

Is It a Laptop Replacement?

I can tell you this, it’s not a laptop replacement. I think we all knew that. My iPad stays at home unless I am traveling overnight. Interestingly enough, I’ll never travel with JUST the iPad overnight. It goes in addition to my Macbook Pro. I just can’t do most of what I want to do on it. Is it fitting that I keep an Evernote scratchpad to share links for sites I can’t view because of flash? If you are into music like me, it’s almost every site that uses a flash audio player. Just about every audio hardware site shows off their wares with flash. I started keeping screenshots of all of the Flash fail messages I got on iPad for a blog and quickly scuttled it because it would have been a book. So it’s not a laptop replacement, is it a mobile device?

Is It a Mobile Device?

I know what Mark said, but I am going to second it. I don’t bring it anywhere I am going unless I am packing a bag. My iPhone really does everything it does. The screen is smaller, sure, but it fits in my pocket. The iPad is just not that portable. I’ll even go as far as to say it’s downright uncomfortable to use in many portable situations. It’s too heavy to hold with one hand for every long in a portrait format. It’s too awkward to type on with two hands while you are holding it. I find myself getting up and grabbing my laptop or going into my home office if I need to respond to an email with more than a sentence or two.

What Is It For?

It’s good for Angry Birds. It’s good for triaging email. It’s great for watching video and playing casual games. It’s a terrible web browser, don’t let anyone tell you differently. Facebook is now the largest site on the internet, and the iPad is just barely functional with Facebook.

It’s great for new types of applications. Audio creation, creative drawing and the like are fun and intuitive.

The Bottom Line

I use my iPad for a few specific things and a few specific places. Without going into TMI (Too Much Information) areas, my iPad lives in the bedroom and bathroom. I use it in bed, on the can and in the tub. I use it for email, basic web surfing, games and video content. If you are purely a consumer, it’s probably a good fit. If you generate anything, you might want to look elsewhere.

I wish it had been what was hinted at. I wish it ran a full version of OS X. I think touch is a great technology, but I think the Dell Duo is closer to the right track. I don’t think the software is there yet, hopefully we’ll figure out a great way for Touch and Keyboard/Mouse Operating Systems to coexist in a meaningful way and let you use the device in the way that suits you for the task you are trying to accomplish.

In it’s current form, the iPad is absolutely a companion device, and I would say a rather poor one at that. It doesn’t really play nice with whatever it’s paired with. Outside of what iTunes lets you share, it’s a nice set of golden handcuffs. It’s beautiful, sleek and good at a few things. I just get annoyed when I am on a web page and want to send myself a link, or IM something to a friend, or pop open a new blog post. It’s just not a computer, it’s a very cool toy.

Download Handbrake, and VLC for this tutorial.

It’s clicked over a day now. I have had this little device for 24 hours and while I still refuse to use the world magical, “cool” and “slick” have slipped out with regular frequency.

To answer the first question I know people are asking, yes, it absolutely IS just a big iPod Touch. Now whether that is a good or bad thing is up to the beholder, but in the last day I have found that many applications GREATLY benefit from more screen real estate. The news apps are absolutely stunning. Big thumbs up to old favorites to reinvent themselves for this device. (Yes, I am talking about you Yahoo! and AOL)

Form Factor

This thing is just bout the perfect size. Any smaller and it would be less differentiated from an actual iPod Touch, any bigger and it would lose it’s ultra light, super portable feeling. I bought the Apple case for it and so far I am pretty unimpressed with it. It feels pretty flimsy and definitely sucks the grace out of the appearance.

The speakers are super tinny sounding as you might expect. They are fine for watching some video with but I wouldn’t dare use them to listen to music. That is nothing some good headphones won’t cure of course.

Usability

This thing is surprisingly typable. I have tried several times to touch type with any speed and while it works ok, I find that my other fingers barely touch the screen causing a massive 10 car pileup of letters. I was surprised to find that holding it with one hand and typing with the other is surprisingly quick and comfortable.

The touch as you would expect is incredibly accurate and responsive. This device benefits from speed to spare it feels. Any time I do something it’s immediate, it doesn’t seem to lag a bit like the iPhone and iPod Touch do when launching apps, etc.

The screen lock switch is already my best friend. Like the iPhone and iPod Touch, the sensors get a bit confused when you lay it down, which I found myself doing when using it to read in bed. The lock keeps it stuck in one position and works great.

Apps

It’s felt kind of like Christmas the last few days. There are new apps appearing all of the time. So far I have installed about 30, only a couple of which were paid (Pages and Numbers for example) Some of the highlight apps have been the Yahoo! Entertainment I mentioned earlier, USA Today, Netflix, IMDB, Epicurious, Adobe Ideas, Wikipanion, Craigsphone, Weatherbug, National Geographic World Atlas and Weatherbug. There are obviously tons more to download, but those are the ones I have really dug so far.

Kindle Killer?

On this one I have to say absolutely no. The Kindle app is one of the first I installed, and while I am probably going to take the iPad when I travel and read on it for the sake of carrying one less device, when I have access to my Kindle, I will read on the Kindle. The backlit bright screen doesn’t feel as good to read on. Reversing the text makes it better, but it’s not even close to the Kindle screen.

Netbook Killer?

The jury is still out on this one, but I will tell you an insight I did have about this topic yesterday. The iPad has one really strong thing in it’s corner. The iPad has total control of it’s ecosystem. It’s impermeable to feature creep, and it has a vice grip on what it can be used for. These restrictions actually become strengths as it keeps the device’s intent in focus and ensures you always have a pleasurable experience with it. In other words, it sets your expectations so you don’t try to do more than it’s intended to do.

A netbook on the other hand, looks and feels like a laptop. It acts like a laptop, it can even run all the software a laptop can run. The only problem is that the performance is anemic, the keyboard is uncomfortable, and the screen is just way too small. That means you might (and I did) often try to run software that it just wasn’t designed to run, and that will result in a poor user experience. That leaves you with a bad taste in your mouth, even though it’s not really the device’s fault.

The limitations actually become strengths in this battle. That being said, the iPad is by all means a media consumption device. Even with Pages, Numbers and Keynote, you aren’t going to want to do anything that requires much typing or complexity, it’s just designed to view stuff, not make stuff.

A netbook on the other hand is decent at writing long emails, blogs, etc. It’s smaller, less comfortable and somewhat weak, but you can still use it for those things.

Final Thoughts

Obviously I love the thing. I haven’t been able to keep my hands off of the thing. My wife got one yesterday also and has had the same impression. It’s a gorgeous device, it’s super fast and very fun to use. My final word, there are alot of things you could spend $500 on that you wouldn’t like near as much. If you are a gadget lover, a real internet media connoisseur or want a laptop or netbook just to watch/read/listen to content, you might want to reconsider, that’s what this device was born to do.

When you take a look at the best-seller list, there are some interesting things to be seen as we are on the brink of an all out e-book price war. Let’s take the 5 top sellers and compare the price of the physical book and the price of the Kindle edition.

*Book Price from Barnes and Noble before Member Discount

So the $25,000 question, and the one I do not have the answer to, is how do you quantify the cost for the publisher to print the book, artwork, etc. AND turn a profit for both the publisher and the book seller.

The difference in purchase price for digital books seems to be somewhere under $4 for paperback books, and $8-10 for hardcover books. That’s with Amazon’s prices. If you go by the $10-15 that Apple is negotiating with publishers, it would $-3 to $.75 for paperbacks and $1.20 to $3.66.

I can totally understand wanting to make as much profit as possible, that’s how business runs, but the common sense logic would be that since the publisher no longer has to print, store and transport a physical copy of the book, then we are literally talking about just the profit for the publisher and the reseller.

That makes me feel a little uncomfortable with the pricing Apple is contending. I’ll be potentially paying MORE for a book than the physical paperback costs if they are $10-15, and I’ll be literally saving $1-3 by purchasing the electronic version of a hardcover book.

When you look at the benefits a physical book has, namely the ability to loan it or potentially sell it back to a book buyer, this starts to get really murky.

That leaves us with the final question. Is e-Book delivery a natural progression of reading, or a convenience we should expect to pay a “convenience fee” for?

It’s a slippery slope and one that has already been set with digital downloads of Movies and Music. It’s not at all uncommon for the digital, protected and MUCH less flexible version of music and movies to sell for just a little bit less than the physical copy.

I don’t like it, I don’t like it one bit.