I was at Best Buy today for an iPad case. Another iPad owner was doing the same. He had waited in line and eagerly bought one on April 3rd like the rest of us. But he hadn’t used his yet. He couldn’t. His MacBook was 10.4 (Tiger) and couldn’t run the required version of iTunes for the iPad.

See, you can’t unlock and begin using an iPad until you’ve sync’d with iTunes (I mentioned this disappointment and warning in my first impressions). It is a brick until that moment.

He was picking up a copy of Snow Leopard, hoping to upgrade… And found out he couldn’t upgrade his non-Intel MacBook to 10.6. Ultimately in order to use the new iPad, that poor dude will need a new laptop. That was one pissed off customer.

This is my only significant gripe with the iPad. Not really because of it pissing off a bunch of people and requiring computer/software upgrades – admittedly this ends up being a non-issue to most buyers. It’s simply a pet peeve of mine. Good hardware and software should be usable from the get-go.

The iPad is easily capable of standing on its own out of the box. Instead it was packaged up and launched in an unusable state.

Note: This is really my only significant gripe about the iPad at this point.

I set up my Google nexus one (T-Mobile) a couple weeks ago for wifi tethering. One tap of a button and it shares its 3G. The iPad connects through it seamlessly.

If you have a tethering ability with your phone, try using it before opting for the 3G iPad. You can save some skrilla and have a little longer battery life (on the iPad – mileage on your phone may vary).

Apps
There isn’t a lot out there yet that is iPad optimized. I only found about a dozen apps I wanted to download and use… Amongst those:

• The requisite iWork suite (Pages, Numbers, and Keynote). I haven’t really used these much. They’ll probably get a lot more use this week.
• WordPress. They did a great job getting this app together. I’m writing this blog post with it.
• Netflix. I’ve had too much fun things in real life happening to care about watching movies, but the tests of the netflix app are amazing. The video is clean and crisp. I can usually find a good movie to load within seconds and streaming begins immediately.
• Tweetdeck. This is the best Twitter client I’ve found. The default view is one’s mentions and timeline. It’s very well done.
• FlightTracker. Wonderful flight tracking app. Complete weather radar of the entire country and realtime monitoring of flights. Pretty slick.
• The Weather Channel (TWC Max+). Best weather app.
• ABC. Quality and speed were extremely impressive.
• iBooks. It’s the best ebook experience on the iPad. It comes with a free Winnie the pooh book. I didn’t read it yet… It was more fun to play with and scroll the virtual pages.
• Kindle. The UI isn’t quite as good as iBooks, but this doesn’t matter… My kindle purchases sync’d right up and the book I was reading in my iPhone even synced to the last page I was on. Really slick.
• Newspaper apps (nytimes, wsj, USA today, blah blah…). I wasn’t impressed. I found their web pages to be as good, or better, and without subscription requirements.

A lot of the popular apps on the iPhone are preferred over their mobile web counterpart simply because their web app counterpart sucks on a small screen (like Facebook). I don’t think a facebook app would be exciting on an iPad… The facebook web pages load flawlessly on the iPad. No need for an app. I think the same will be true for a lot of the other native web apps out there.

Keyboard
I mentioned yesterday that it was odd trying to touch type. The landscape keyboard is getting much easier to deal with. It’s actually getting pretty amazing. Where I preferred the portrait mode on my iPhone and nexusone, I can touch type in landscape on the iPad. Portrait mode works, but ends up just being a bunch of thumb pressing.

The virtual keypad compensates for mistypes most of the time. I can type at about 50-60 words per minute and not look at the keypad while typing. Not bad for day two! My native hardware speed is around 80-90.

Summary
Nothing major for new discoveries. Typing is rather nice and I hope I can reach my hardware typing speeds in another day or two. The apps released thus far, considering most developers never got to test on the iPad, are mostly impressive. Running iPhone apps on the iPad is mostly lame.

Purchase
I got in line at 8:30 and was out the door with my iPad by 9:15 (actual arrival time at the Apple store was 7:45 in case it was mobbed, but only 50 people were there and it was cold. Lounging in Starbucks was a hell of a lot better).

In the Apple Store they had moved all of their computers and iPods out. Every station had an iPad. Nothing else. It was interesting… The sensation of, “This is the future of computing… This is all you’ll see in the future” was the message I got.

Activate
The iPad required syncing to my laptop before I could unlock it. This was disappointing. I brought my laptop, but keep in mind you can’t use an iPad until connecting it with iTunes.

First use
The battery comes pre-charged to 100% and the sync was taking a while so I ditched the tether to the laptop and bounced around on various sites and downloaded apps. The experience is great. Even on an inundated public access point it was a smooth and a great web experience. If you want to call the iPad a “______ killer”, call it a mouse killer.

Look and feel
It feels good in the hands. It’s a little awkward for me to use the keypad because I’m used to the smaller sized iPhone keypad. It feels a little like a small child using an oversized adult keyboard. I’m sure this will change as one gets used to it.

Something odd… Remember when the iPhone first came out? If I you were in public and had it out people stared and asked, “Is that an iPhone?” While sitting in the Corner Bakery people mostly thought I was making strange gestures to a digital picture frame.

A real pain in the (photo) sync
After browsing around and downloading a bunch of iPad specific apps I went to sync music and photos. The sync of my photo library has been going for almost 2-hours now, and is about 60% complete. Each of the 10,000 images in my library has to be optimized. The good news is that the optimization for the iPad screen is stellar. The bad news is I’ll finish this post before the sync completes.

Reading
The screen quality is fantastic. I’m looking forward to using this as my go-to book reading device. This is a total eBook (device) killer. The Kindle for iPad app and iBooks are sure to be amazing.

Writing
Typing has been awkward. I have a feeling this is just a learning curve for a new keyboard style. It feels very similar to getting used to various ergonomic keyboards. Thumb typing in portrait mode is decent and intuitive. Touch typing in landscape will take some getting used to, but seems feasible.

Summary
A very good experience and device. I’ve expected I’d prefer using the iPad over a laptop for most tasks (email, news, misc. web, spreadsheets, docs, movies). So far that expectation seems to fit. If this is the future of computing, it’s looking to be a good future.

Here are the two best reviews I’ve found thus far:

• PCMag video review (short and sweet 5-minutes by Tim Gideon): http://vimeo.com/10595371
• AllThingsD/WallStreetJournal (Walt Mossberg): http://ptech.allthingsd.com/20100331/apple-ipad-review/

The most elegant feature of the iPad is that it gets you to the stuff you want more quickly than any other device. Time reduction between a dark screen and destination is the game changing attribute that makes me want one. I want efficiency.

A laptop or netbook may have more features or a faster processor. But you can’t open it, resume from sleep, enter your password, and launch a desired app, browser, or site in under 10 seconds. You can do this with an iPhone. With its new processor and 802.11n the iPad is even faster.

I don’t think people realize what instant-on will do for computing. Immediate access will enable situations where you could whip out an iPad impromptu in an elevator and give a presentation or report, read news, or whatever, before reaching your selected floor. It shaves seconds or minutes off of tasks.

The iPad combines that speed with a non-mobile 1024×768 10-inch screen. You get immediate access to relevant information, with the richness of a laptop/desktop interface in a form factor conducive to mobility. And multi-touch.

Multi-touch adds to the speed. One can more quickly navigate and perform tasks with it than via a mouse or standard touchscreen. One can rotate, zoom, and crop images more quickly. One can edit and move data in a document more quickly.

It’s all about speed. It’s the speed to information and more efficient interface that make the iPad kick ass.

Would you like them with Scott or Phil?

I would not like them with Scott or Phil.
I would not like them without vids or stills.

Would you like them in Jobs’ house?
Would you like them, they have no mouse?

I do not like them in Jobs’ house.
I do not like them with no mouse.
I do not like them with Scott or Phil.
I do not like them, there’s no vids or stills.

I do not like iPads without cams.
I do not like them, Fanboi-I-am.

Would you like them in Apple box?
Would you like them with a fox?

Not in the box.
Not with a fox.

They do not have a video frame, so
I will not like one on a train.
Not in the dark! Not in a tree!
Not in a car! You let me be!
I do not like their Apple box.
I do not like them with a fox.
I will not like one in Jobs’ house.
I do not like them with no mouse.
I do not like them with Scott or Phil.
I do not like them! NO VIDS OR STILLS!
I do not like iPads without cams!
I do not like them, Fanboi-I-am.

You do not like them. So you say.
Try them! Try them! And you may.
Try them and you may, I say.

If you will let me be,
I will try them. You will see.

…

Say! I like this iPad with no cam!
I do! I will buy them, Fanboi-I-am!
And I would like them on a boat.
And I would like them with a goat.

And I will buy without video frame.
And in the dark. And on a train.
And in a car. And on a plane.
They are so good, so good, you see!

So I can’t wait to get an Apple box.
And I will share mine with a fox.
And I will Twitter from Jobs’ house.
And I will buy a Magic Mouse.
And I will take them here and there.
Say! I will take them ANYWHERE!
I do so like iPads without cams!
Thank you!
Thank you, Fanboi-I-am!