When I tweeted last Friday (April 30th) that my iPad would be arriving imminently via Fedex, a number of people responded, “Well, I hope you’ll blog about it!”It didn’t make sense to do so before the device had even arrived; and even after a week, I think it may be too soon. For example, someone just tweeted a moment ago that the iPad’s real competition may be the television, not the Kindle — and I realized that I haven’t yet watched a single movie on my iPad. Not even a single YouTube video. But now I’m thinking: maybe I should download Avatar? The mind boggles!But a week is enough to get at least a little experience, and to form at least a few initial impressions. These impressions will probably be irrelevant if you’re one of the million people who already have one of your own; and they may or may not be persuasive if you haven’t yet decided to get one. But for whatever it’s worth, here are my impressions:

1. Perhaps most important: it has not yet, after a mere one week, become a “game-changer.” I have not yet found a mind-boggling, innovative app that makes me think, “How on earth did I ever survive before the iPad came along?” That’s okay; I also don’t recall being struck by a bolt of lightning a week after purchasing my first iPod or my first iPhone. I’ve got an open mind, and I’m willing to be patient…
2. A minor variation on the above point: because it doesn’t fit in my pocket, I can’t guarantee that I’ll always have it with me when I leave my house. I also don’t carry my laptop (not even my ultra-light Mac Air) with me whenever I leave the house; but I do carry my iPhone in my pocket, and there’s a 99% chance that I’ll have at least a compact point-and-shoot digital camera with me (not counting the mediocre camera built into the iPhone). Because the iPad does have a lot of commonplace uses (e.g., reading a book or newspaper), it’s more likely — but not guaranteed — that I’ll leave the house with a backpack, and the iPad will be in one of the compartments. (Note: women have purses, so it’s less of a problem for them. I’ll be curious to see if men’s fashion/styles change, with larger pockets in future sportcoats and even pants, so that we can stuff the iPad into our clothes.)
3.  I’m oh-so-glad that I waited an extra month, and got the 3g version; while I’ve got a good WiFi connection in my home/office, at least half of my usage of the iPad so far has been outside, wandering around Manhattan, in places where there was no WiFi. Ironically, things will be different when I’m in Rome next week, because ATT’s international data-roaming charges would bankrupt me … but here in the U.S., I want to be sure that I can connect my iPad to the Internet regardless of where I am.
4. Initial setup and synching of “stuff” from my iPhone to iPad was simple, straightforward, and fast. Of course. I expected nothing less. But I will admit that I was pleasantly surprised at how seamless the synching has been after the initial launch: my calendar, contact list, browser bookmarks, and email are all synched automatically, all the time, on my desktop, laptop(s), iPhone, and iPad. That’s cool.
5. I’ve also synched several photo albums with my desktop computer, which I never bothered to do on the iPhone. The larger iPad screen makes color photos dazzling to look at; and it’s a great thing to show off when strangers see my iPad and ask, “What can it do?”
6. I was surprised to see how few “native” iPad apps exist at this point — I read somewhere that there are only about 5,000 iPad apps, compared to 150,000 iPhone apps. Yes, you can run those iPhone apps in their original iPhone-size fashion, and then use a “2x” zoom button to make them fill up the screen … but it looks pretty crude.
7. On the other hand, the apps that have been redesigned for the iPad’s larger screen are slick and dazzling. I’m not an apps fanatic, so my situation might not be the same as yours — but for whatever it’s worth, I’ve got a total of about 60 apps, of which 20 are “native” iPad apps. That’s okay with me.
8. I installed Apple’s version of Microsoft Office — i.e., Pages, Numbers, and Keynote — even though they cost $10 each. It’s perhaps somewhat telling that I have not had a single occasion to use Pages (word-processing) or Numbers (spreadsheet) yet; but I have used Keynote, since I wanted to see how some upcoming presentations would look…
9. While typing on the iPad is generally easier than on the iPhone, I certainly wouldn’t want to write a three-page memo, let alone the Great American Novel, or even this blog posting, on an iPad. I got the docking keyboard with a bunch of other gadgets and add-ons, and confirmed that it works; but I haven’t had a good opportunity to use it yet.
10. I think the most important reason that typing has been a non-issue for me (despite the fact that I touch-type at 80-90 words a minute on my desktop computer) is simple: the iPad seems more useful as a means of consuming content, not creating content.
11. To the dismay of Kindle and the New York Times, I’ve abandoned my daily exercise of reading the paper on my Kindle; and I’ve cancelled my monthly subscription to the NYT. Instead, I read a (free) “summarized” version of the New York Times on the iPad; and I’ll be happy to pay the monthly subscription fee whenever the Times has it ready for me. I can also read USA Today (free) or the Wall Street Journal (not free); and if I had any interest in weekly magazines, I could also read Time.
12. What has been most impressive about reading the newspaper is that it’s no longer a single-task activity: if I think a friend or family member might enjoy seeing an article, I simply click a button at the top of the page, and an outgoing email message pops up, ready to send off the URL of that article. If something about the article intrigues me, I can pop right over to my Web browser and track it down. Indeed, I fully expect that the full-blown version of the iPad New York Times will have all of the embedded hyperlinks that I already enjoy in the Web-based version of the newspaper that I read on my desktop computer.
13. Since I mentioned the Kindle, I should comment on what most people would assume is the real area of competition for iPads versus Kindles: the ease or convenience of reading a book. This is an area that I’ll have to defer commenting about, because I’ve only downloaded two books onto my iPad and have not yet begun reading either one of them. For the moment, the biggest difference (in my humble opinion) is simply the number of books available; I don’t know how long it will be — if ever — before Apple catches up with Amazon (Kindle’s owner) in this area, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s a year or two. On the other hand, once Apple has a few hundred thousand titles in its inventory, and a “pipeline” that ensures 99.9% access to all new releases, it may not matter very much.

As for Avatar: I obviously haven’t been paying attention to the details, so it was a bit of a shock to see that while you can buy the movie (for $14.99) for downloading and permanent accessing on your desktop/laptop computer, you can only rent it for a 24-hour period  (for $4.99) on your iPad. Phooey! For me, the whole point of downloading a movie would be to watch it (or portions of it) over and over again, whenever I was in the mood … or to stretch a one-time viewing over a period of days, weeks, or months. So Avatar won’t be showing up on my iPad any time soon…So that’s my impression of the iPad, after a week…