Not sure why it wasn't installed on the iPad out of the box, but iBooks was the very first app i downloaded. Why? I put off a Kindle purchase for the iPad so i wanted to see if the wait had been worth it.

In short - it was. The UI is great; real book page turning interface is fun to play with and show off; selection and pricing is good; eyestrain hasn't been a problem so far. On the downside, I do think that finding interesting books is something that needs work. This of course is where Amazon + Kindle should shine.

The Kindle app is perfectly functional and offers the same overall features as iBook.  What it doesn't have are the little "oooh" and "aaah" features.  I think they should do a lot more work on bringing in the store into the app instead of launching safari to the regular Amazon Kindle website.  Combine that with the recommendation engine and i think Amazon will do very well with eBooks on the iPad.

One of the coolest transformations of paper content to iPad has got to be the Marvel Comics app. The screen shows off the art work beautifully and panel to panel guided/animated reading is sweet. They did a great job with building a store into the app as well. I did notice that a couple of panels were a little blurry when maximized for guided view and hope that gets corrected over time.

Another killer reading app is Zinio.  I'd never even heard of them before downloading the app, but apparently they've been around for a while proving digital copies of popular magazines. For the iPad, it's perfect. I subscribe to a number of magazines (HBR, Nat Geo, Wired, Inc, ...) and would trade the physicals copies for Zinio versions in a heartbeat. I'm still looking into the possibility of a conversion and will share what I hear back on that topic. Today, i just read them and recycle them with a few rare exceptions.  The option of retaining them, along with future (hopefully) ability to tag and annotate would make magazine content a lot more attractive to me.

Abbas Haider Ali

These news apps were among the first I downloaded and I was pleasantly surprised by the experience. For someone who hasn't read a physical newspaper in many years, I found it nice to have the content available. In particular, I updated all of them before jumping on a plane from SFO to IAD and found myself reading them cover to cover during the flight.

I liked the familiarity of the newspaper UI that the NYT, WSJ, and USA Today use with interactive content embedded in the traditional layout. That being said, NPR and BBC news have great design and content that takes better advantage of the iPad experience.

The big question of course is would i pay a subscription fee for the content? The short answer is yes with the caveat that it would most likely be just one of them. And no, I haven't decided which one yet but i will post about it once I've made the decision. I suspect that it will come to a question of content, presentation, and overall experience combined vs. just one thing.

I would definitely recommend maintaining a free or trial version of all these apps in the store to make sure that new users get to explore their options freely before making any subscription commitments.

Abbas Haider Ali

Here's what I sprung for at the Apple Store: 64GB iPad with Apple case

Thoughts on what it felt like holding and interacting with it:

• Feels heavier than you would expect the first few times you pick it up
• Nerve wracking holding a big touchscreen. Tread lightly, like holding a baby.
• Case seems almost mandatory before feeling comfortable carrying it around.
• Screen is big and beautiful. Can't complain about the picture at all.
• Keyboard takes some getting used to. Cant quite touch type, two fingers seems slow, so I use between 4-6 fingers in an odd hunt-peck-touch-type combo.  Have a tendency to hit random keys as they float over the keyboard. Lack of tactile feedback is the issue here.
• Screen is definitely a finger print magnet. They're the most distracting when you only have a few on top a mostly clean screen. Once you've used it for a while though, you start to ignore them.
• Case is a magnet for everything ranging from dust to pet hair. Everything sticks to it which means it always looks dirty, not something I care for. Also, totally unstable in the picture frame position. Angled viewing is fine. Also noticed that the more I used it with the flap folded back, the less snugly it closes over time.

Summary: Loving it so far. Definitely attracts attention :-)

Abbas Haider Ali

It started as a joke about how I was going to wind up buying an iPad even before we knew what it was going to be called or that an Apple tablet was even confirmed by Steve Jobs. Then it was all about pre-ordering so that it would appear at my doorstep on April 3rd. What actually happened was that I decided to wait until I could touch, feel, and interact with it before making my decision. I even said that for the small price difference, I'd wait for another month and get the 3G version.

In the end, it was walking by the Apple Store in Emeryville, CA on a trip out west over Easter weekend and going in with a friend that resulted in my owning one. It took all of 5min foe touching the system and I was sold. So now I have yet another toy to play with and It is definitely the current fav at home.

I'll share our usage patterns and functions as they develop, but here's a summary of my experiences over the first 48 hours of ipad ownership:
- unboxing experience was exciting as with all Apple products
- setup was simple, although activation & synch were needed to get it fully going
- first apps I downloaded were iBook and various newspaper publishers' branded apps
- i talked to a lot of interested strangers every time I broke it out on our trip back home to DC
- it took a lot of self control not to talk all about it on Facebook and with everyone I wound up on the phone with

I'll put up some specialized posts on specific apps (or categories of apps) as well as details on various use cases as we discover them at home and work.

Stay tuned.

Abbas Haider Ali

P.S. This post was written entirely on the iPad