Rubenerd

I promise this will be my last iPad post, at least for a long time. In fact with this problem, it might not even be a self-imposed restriction :P.

From reading the reviews flooding in so far, the response has been almost universally positive. I think dante@sisna.com on the MacRumours forums put it the most eloquently:

You have to leave the desk with one — sit on the sofa with it — to really grasp how it will begin to change lifestyles.

So much more enjoyable than a laptop/netbook.

It just changes the whole experience. I am hooked.

Going to have a hard time producing client content today — I want to CONSUME it.

The YouTube iPad interface is beautiful

I'll reserve my own judgement until I use one for myself, but if this is true it shows once for all technical specifications have little to no bearing on usability after all. Waah, the iPad doesn't have feature X and a netbook does! Yes, and what's your point?

Unfortunately my own worst fear about it has been confirmed. From the first post in the aformentioned MacRumors forum thread:

The screen is bright and crisp with wide viewing angles. Despite the oleophobic coating, it collects and shows fingerprints more than expected.

Well bother

Not only do I inherit my dad's inability to devise and deliver good jokes, I also suffer from constantly sweaty hands, the medical term is palmer hyperhidrosis. It's perhaps my biggest handicap as a software developer and blogger, if I don't have a keyboard cover and replace it every couple of months I destroy computer hardware. It also means I don't shake people's hands and I can't walk along holding hands with a girl, which makes me even more socially awkward and shy than I would otherwise be. Anyway, you get the idea :(.

Surprisingly, having a touch screen phone has been a godsend because a flat surface is much easier to wipe clean than a tiny, complicated keyboard, but given I'd be reading books on an iPad I worry having my greasy pawprints over the screen would get really irritating. A small iPhone screen (or a Nexus One screen, or a Palm Pre screen…) is easy to wipe clean, but would it scale to something as big as an iPad?

I suppose for now I'll have to keep using smaller sub-notebooks with keyboard covers, until Apple develops a super high tech self cleaning screen that's even better than what they currently have.

There's a joke about absorbency and the product's name, but that's below the tone and standards of this blog. Heh, iPad.