Am I pleased I got one: absolutely.

Initial thoughts: When using my iPhone I’m constantly darting to the Twitter or RSS app to see what has changed, normally I will push links to Instapaper for later consumption. With the iPad, I have no such urge. I very much have enjoyed browsing sites, reading RSS and catching up on Instapaper. The iPhone is for quick bursts of consumption, the iPad for more considered and deliberate ingestion.

Below are a set of thoughts that I would usually bombard Twitter with but I am not going to as I don’t wish to bore/piss people off.

• The screen is pretty much the right size. Anything smaller and it’d invade the iPhone, anything larger and you’d start to think a laptop is the right tool.
• The screen does end up with finger prints all over it. This isn’t a surprise and the same happens to every other touch device I’ve used. The only reason it feels jarring is because the iPad screen is lovely to look at and putting a finger print on it feels somehow wrong. I expect this to change as it becomes less new.
• iPhone apps look horrid on the iPad. They either look stupidly small, or pixelated at the 2x resolution. The only things that don’t look retarded are fast moving – non delicate – games. I’ve managed to replace most applications with iPad counter parts, but not all. Stares at Remote, TuneIn Radio, Skype, OmniFocus and last.fm.
• Mail on the iPad is much more usable, I can actually use my email rather than just triage as I do on the iPhone.
• Twitter clients that have iPad counter-parts mostly suck.
• Apple claim that the browsing experience on the iPad is magical. As I’m neither five years old, a camp old gentleman nor in marketing, I wouldn’t use the word magical. I would say it is very nice. You have screen real estate with great touch feedback and pages render quickly.
• The iPad is much faster than my iPhone.
• My iPhone now feels cramped, slow and claustrophobic.
• Maps on the iPhone is useful, maps on the iPad is excellent.
• Signing up for 3G data worked very easily – plug in details and sign up. No need for credit check, sitting on hold or talking to other human beings.
• I like having 6 icons across the bottom on the dock – my common applications now all live there.
• Choosing to go for the 64Gb seemed like the expensive choice. It was the right choice. After sync’ing my music library and about 10 full films and various applications, I’m still left with about 15Gb of space.
• Typing in portrait is pecking at the keyboard iPhone style. Landscape, after a little practice, can be done at speed comparable to a normal keyboard.
• The weight of the iPad is surprising. It is heavier than you’d expect but the device feels solid so it doesn’t feel unnecessarily heavy. Using it with one hand comfortably requires cradling it from the back. Holding it with two hands you’d hold it like a book.
• The iPod app is good and makes use of the screen real estate, it would be nice however to have a list – as well as an icon – view for albums.
• For universal applications – those written to run both on the iPhone and the iPad – generally feel a lot nicer on the iPad over the iPhone.
• The battery is excellent – after using it for about 4 hours solid, the battery had only gone down by ~15%. This seems to genuinely be a device you can charge, use all day and not worry about running out of juice.
• Bluetooth support for keyboards is excellent and finally gives me a reason to keep my Apple bluetooth keyboard for travelling where extensive typing might be needed – for example a trip to Sweden for a few days. (I use a Microsoft Natural Pro keyboard for my desktop).
• It is absolutely not a laptop replacement for myself. It will do 90% of the things I do on my laptop in a faster, more enjoyable fashion, but this will unlikely to become a code machine. (That being said, IronMonger might come out to play again – my Cocoa Touch port of ferite – for a bit of hacking fun.)
• Instapaper is absolutely spot on. Excellent app.

All in all I’m really pleased.

Now I just need to sort out a car charger for it and my iPhone (the current iPhone one doesn’t work for the iPad due to the power demands of the iPad), and a case (I had ordered a neoprene case from amazon.co.uk who emailed me the day after it was due to ship to say it has been delayed).