iPad

Well, no big surprise really. I would never have bought a Kindle but the quasi-A4 format of the iPad makes it interesting as a book reader. I find that I use the iPhone a lot for reading books on the Stanza application. It's main drawback in this mode is the uselessness for reading technical books that may have illustrations or code. iPad will be good for that.

I would hope that the screen is more robust than it looks. My iPhone has pixels missing and the chances of flexing an iPhone screen are far less than one of nine inches diagonal.

I guess that, aside from my attraction to all things geek, my main interest will be to develop applications for it. My wife said this morning that it opens up a lot of possibilities for new uses. I think that devices like this would benefit from having other sensors too. Ok, a compass and GPS are cool but imagine it with an infra red camera, ultrasound emitter and detector and a ruggedized version. You're talking tricorder here.

Pity that the thing uses an apple processor. An intel one would have made more sense. It'd be a great platform for Windows 7 multitouch. Ahh well. Maybe the fom factor will become sexy enough for Acer to do a copycat device with a PC architecture. For now I'll have to content myself with MonoTouch on iPad.

I like the idea that th 3G capable model will not be locked. I guess that it breaks the bounds of the mobile phone model enough that they don't have to cowtow to the phone operators or make exclusive contract deals.

I'm sitting on a train right now and I can see many other passengers who have iPhones. I wonder how they will look in a year?