Like many technology enthusiasts (aka geeks) I watched the iPad announcement with excitement and was both thrilled and frustrated when the announcement was made. I was thrilled because it looked like it could do so much and yet I asked myself why would Apple design a product that really did not seem to fit in with any traditional market segment. It is a product that to most seems to be a net book or is it a tablet? This product just does not fall neatly into a specific product category. Maybe that is best.
I was struck with the potentials of this device from day one and even wrote about it here. On Friday I broke down and decided to slip into the reality distortion field and see just what can be done from a media geeks standpoint. Well... A lot. Before I delve to deeply into my findings I am writing this in Pages on the iPad, and will attempt to see how many things in the next week I can do without using my laptop.
Now onto the findings....
As you could see by the unboxing video I couldn't wait to open it till I got home. I could say that my daughter wanted to hold it, but really I just wanted to take a look at it. I will have to admit it is a bit frustrating to have to activate the iPad with iTunes. Fortunately I had seen a tip early in the week that talked about activating it and not syncing all of your apps if you have an iPhone or an iPod Touch. When asked choose to not sync your apps and the on the app screen while holding down command click on one of the apps and the whole list will uncheck. This is important because it will take forever to sync all of your apps. Once activated the fun begins though.
The iPad is a media consumption dream come true. As you can see by this picture of my home first page of apps I have availed myself of many of the available sources so far including ABC, Netflix, TWiTPad, and an amazing find called AirVideo. ABC has really polished their app with some great user interface features and good quality video. Definitely a front runner right now in delivery of video to the iPad. According to The Wall Street Journal which took a look at ABC's application for the iPad ten days after the device's launch, revealing that users have streamed at least part of 650,000 television episodes in what the network deems a very successful launch.
The network said that in the 10 days since the iPad's debut, its TV-show watching app has been downloaded 205,000 times, giving the Walt Disney Co. unit a presence on nearly half the 450,000 devices that Apple says it has sold. Moreover, users have watched at least part of 650,000 television episodes using the app, generating "several million" ad impressions, according to an ABC spokesman, although the precise number is still being calculated.
Very impressive numbers and I can see why after attaching some video from it.
The Netflix app needs some work from my experience. The app once loaded is really Netflix's website. It is responsive, but some of the links seem to lag and it is really difficult to push some of the links, but the video looks really good. So the struggle of the links is well worth the final outcome. Would I watch a feature length movie, well probably not, unless I had the 3G version and I was traveling somewhere. Hmmmmm maybe I will have to upgrade in a few months or get a mifi, but I digress.
The final crown jewel in this media geek's mind is a paid app called AirVideo that allows you to install a media server on your Mac or PC and stream it to your iPad. Here you can see Alex Lindsey getting ready for the iPad unveiling with Andy Ihnatko from a MacBreak weekly I downloaded on our home media server. This has some great potentials I think even in museums that would like to have historical videos. This really opens up some fascinating ideas.
This has been an amazing weekend of incredible discoveries when it comes to media consumption. Tomorrow a few apps that you must have!
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