iPad Thoughts after a Week

First of all, I purchased the iWorks apps including Keynote, Pages and Numbers which of course are Apple’s presentation, document and spreadsheet creation applications. Make sure you have iWorks 9 on your Mac if you plan to use you docs on both your Mac and iPad. I purchased the apps as I thought the device would make a great presentation platform. As soon as my VGA adapter arrives, I’ll post an article about my first presentation from the device.

Additionally I have apps for my 3-yr old to keep her busy when we’re stuck waiting somewhere including interactive books and DoodleBuddy made for the iPad. She has really taken to it; for example, she fought me this morning for the iPad, but unfortunately for her, work won out! Using the device as an eReader was a natural fit as well. While I really like the feel of a book when I read, the ability to buy a book, bookmark and search a book on the fly is too appealing. As a nice surprise, my digital magazine vendor, Zinio, came out with their iPad app as well. With WordPress and Google Analytics apps as well as Adobe’s Ideas, Twitter and IM clients, the device is great for working on Gizmos for Geeks as well.

Consuming information including news, weather, sports information (Masters leaderboard for example), TV shows, NPR segments, and much more in a quick and easy way excited me as well. Again, the app developers have done well. Finally, I wanted a device I could whip out a game and play quickly. The quality of the games I’ve seen so far have been incredible with genres ranging from strategy all the way to car racing games.