Like many things Apple, the iPad launch has galvanized those who believe it’s the “next big thing” from those who believe it’s the “latest stink” — but what about those who, you know, have actually spent time using the thing, and now had a chance to ponder it a bit?

Sure, some are no doubt Apple enthusiasts easily impressed, while others are jaded journalists almost impossible to impress. For a mix of both, follow on after the break.

Daring Fireball’s John Gruber has two long posts up about the iPad, and wins the cleverest analogy award hands-down, comparing the Mac to manual and the iPad to automatic transmissions.

Car enthusiasts (and genuine experts like race car drivers) still drive cars with manual transmissions. They offer more control; they're more efficient. But the vast majority of cars sold today are automatics. So too it'll be with computers. Eventually, the vast majority will be like the iPad in terms of the degree to which the underlying computer is abstracted away. Manual computers, like the Mac and Windows PCs, will slowly shift from the standard to the niche, something of interest only to experts and enthusiasts and developers.

British actor and tech enthusiast Steven Fry also spent time with the iPad and came away positively giddy because of its simplicity and Apple’s perfectionist tendencies towards product development. He also called the iPhone a “100,000 volt taser shot up the jacksie” (whatever that is) to the Nokia, Samsung, Palm, and Blackberrys of the world, so we’re predisposed to heart him:

There are many issues you could have with the iPad. No multitasking, still no Flash. No camera, no GPS. They all fall away the minute you use it. I cannot emphasise enough this point: "Hold your judgment until you've spent five minutes with it". No YouTube film, no promotional video, no keynote address, no list of features can even hint at the extraordinary feeling you get from actually using and interacting with one of these magical objects. You know how everyone who has ever done Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? always says, "It's not the same when you're actually here. So different from when you're sitting at home watching."? You know how often you've heard that? Well, you'll hear the same from anyone who's handled an iPad. The moment you experience it in your hands you know this is class. This is a different order of experience. The speed, the responsiveness, the smooth glide of it, the richness and detail of the display, the heft in your hand, the rightness of the actions and gestures that you employ, untutored and instinctively, it's not just a scaled up iPhone or a scaled-down multitouch enhanced laptop – it is a whole new kind of device. And it will change so much. Newspapers, magazines, literature, academic text books, brochures, fliers and pamphlets are going to be transformed (poor Kindle). Specific dedicated apps and enhancements will amaze us.

Engadget editor-in-chief, Josh Topolsky, however, thinks Apple hasn’t told a compelling, must-buy story for the iPad (yet?):

There’s no question that much of what the iPhone and iPod touch do translates nicely here, and there’s no question that some of the tweaks made to native iPad apps are impressive, but nothing I saw made me sit up and think, “Wow, I need this.” It’s telling that the most intriguing user experiences shown off today were the iPad versions of the iWork suite. iWork? If Steve Jobs hoped to answer the question about why we need this third device, or how it’s better than a netbook, he didn’t make a compelling case. Where is video chat? Where is multitasking (honestly, only one app at a time for a device of this size and speed)? Why is the lock screen so embarrassingly empty? Why are there no active widgets to fill that huge homescreen space? Where is the expansion of the multitouch user experience? And seriously, where are the media partnerships?

iLounge’s Jeremy Horowitz thinks many of us missed the “Minority Report” moment:

Apple didn't bring flashy demos. It dropped the ball on a few arguably trivial parts of the UI and didn't bring any really showy software to the event; rather, it focused almost entirely on updates to old apps. The biggest hint of what the iPad will enable was a two-second reference in the N.O.V.A. demo to opening airlocks by putting your fingers on the screen and turning the door handle. It was shown, and if you knew what it was—basically, Metroid Prime using your fingers rather than a Wii controller—you realized what this meant for games, and for other apps on the iPad. This is just not possible on the little iPhone screen unless you have baby fingers.

Mobile analyst Michael Gartenberg, writing for SlashGear, thinks the iPad is neither an iPod touch nor a MacBook:

The form factor is excellent. It's not too light to feel fragile and, at 1.5 lbs, it's also not something that's going to tire you holding it long term. The screen is amazing with a full XGA resolution. I could easily imagine reading for hours on end on this screen and far prefer this idea to e-ink. For one, there's no annoying refresh that happens with every page turn and, as a backlit display, it's perfect for reading in dark places, like airplane seats or in bed without disturbing anyone else. The performance of Apple's silicon is wicked fast. I was pretty skeptical about running existing apps in a pixel-doubled full screen mode. Action games, I figured, would be pretty much out of the question and Apple came fully prepared to answer that question. Existing games ran ridiculously fast and titles optimized for the device make this the ultimate mobile game device. Personally, I'd buy it just for gaming alone.

So it’s sounding like, if some aren’t convinced about the utility or place of an iPad in the greater computing ecosystem, most who’ve actually used the hardware have come away impressed. Again, these aren’t mainstream opinions — strictly inside baseball here — so it will be interested to see how people take to it when they can start walking into their local Apple store and trying it out.

When that happens, will the iPod touch have to duke it out for buyer attention?

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

iPad Impressions from People Who’ve Actually Used It

Sebastiaan de With of Cocoia has posted another of his UI roundups, this time focusing on Apple’s evolution of the iPhone interface in the form of the brand new iPad.

He notes the expanded icon size of 72×72, and as-yet-unused 64 and 320 versions, along with more “earthy” metaphors, and since he designed the one for Classics, weighs in on the very similar looking iBooks.

Conversely, he’s not a fan of the new “popover” UI element, calling it kludgy. And feels the repugnant, inconsistent look of the iPad iTunes application takes no advantage of innovations from either the iPhone or Mac, and is a visual punch-in-the-face. He’s also worried that the lack of encouragement for resolution-independance in iPhone app development (though TiPb’s heard Apple does indeed stress that) will make the iPad’s 2x mode a blurry mess.

For our part, TiPb’s wondering how much of these UI changes, good, bad, and ugly will hit the iPhone with either iPhone 3.2, or iPhone 4.0?

What do you think Apple should move over to the iPhone, and what do you hope they keep far, far away?

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Apple iPad UI — The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Stop us if you’ve heard this one before — Apple rolls out a new form of media, like say iBooks e-books, for their iTunes/iPod/iPhone/now iPad ecosystem, and it’s initially only available in the US.

No doubt the global-village defying mess that is international media licensing rights is at play here, as different publishers can own different parts of the same books in different territories, so TiPb is not at all surprised. Like iTunes Movies and TV, which took a long time to reach Canada, the UK, Australia, etc., we’re not going to hold our breath for iBooks any time soon.

But that’s hardly unique. Amazon took a while to get the Kindle international, and they’ve failed miserably at rolling Amazon MP3 out. If there is a company that can push through the quagmire, however, it’s Apple and its iTunes juggernaut.

Meanwhile, we’re still waiting to hear if US-based iPhone and iPod touch users will get a version of Apple’s newest app as well. Or is everyone outside the US and not on an iPad just going to have to make do with the Kindle app…?

[via Engadget]

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Apple iBooks App to be US-only at Launch? What About iPhone-also?

According to Bright Side of the News, it turns out that newly spun Apple A4 system-on-a-chip that debuted alongside the iPad does indeed pack more punch than the Sammy in the iPhone 3GS:

A4 is a System-on-a-Chip, or SOC, that integrates the main processor [ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore i.e. Multi-Processing Core, identical to ones used in nVidia Tegra and Qualcomm Snapdragon] with graphics silicon [ARM Mali 50-Series GPU], and other functions like the memory controller on one piece of silicon – not unlike what Intel is trying to achieve with its future “Moorestown” Atom processor that debuted inside LG’s Smartphone

Cortex A9 indeed? But no PowerVR SGX like the iPhone. Engadget says this is also similar to the Tegra2 platform. So, it’s more of an Apple assemblage of ARM components rather than anything PA Semi unique, but is it a first step towards more customized silicon? Either way, we’d still love to see this baby powering the 4th gen iPhone and iPod touch.

Still no word on RAM though…

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Apple A4 iPad Chipset = ARM Multicore Cortex A9 + Mali 50 GPU

The battle of TV attack ads between AT&T and Verizon continues on as AT&T has just released two more commercials taking aim at Big Red.

In the first commercial, named “Secret Switch”, Luke Wilson is at a dinner party and he secretly switches the attendee’s AT&T smartphones for Verizon devices. Once they realize they’ve been bamboozled by tricky Luke and are using “dumb phones” all hell seems to break lose. Notice the Motorola Droid highlighted when they mention “dumb phones”?

There’s no mention of the iPhone specifically (Apple doesn’t share screen time), but one diner does complain that all her apps are gone…

The other commercial is titled “Share AT&T” and this time Luke concentrates on educating the viewers about how AT&T provides a better overall 3G experience than Verizon. Some of the key points he touches on are the faster speeds for downloading songs and videos, and the ability to talk and surf at the same time, etc…

Check out the videos after the break, and let us know what you think about them!

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

AT&T Releases Two More Anti-Verizon Ads — Secret Switch and Share AT&T

VoIP over 3G apps for iPhone are now beginning to show up in the iTunes App Store. After AT&T said they would allow VoIP over 3G, all that remained was for Apple to follow through with an amended SDK, and that happened with iPhone 3.2 SDK for iPad.

So far iCall Free VoIP [Free - iTunes link] and Fring [Free - iTunes link]

We’re not seeing the monster in the space, Skype over 3G yet, but we’re willing to bet that’s incoming.

We’re also happy to see that the iPad is indeed pushing things along for the iPhone as well, and we’re wondering if this means we’ll have VoIP over 3G to go along with those new AT&T iPad data plans they announced yesterday?

If you try out VoIP over 3G on your iPhone let us know how it works for you!

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

iCall, Fring — VoIP over 3G Apps Begin to Arrive for iPhone!

Hot on the heels of Apple’s explosive Q1 2010 results come AT&T’s Q4 2009 financials, and once again the iPhone helped its exclusive US carrier paint a rosy picture that includes 3.1 million new activations.

AT&T’s fourth-quarter integrated-device growth included 3.1 million iPhone activations, the second highest quarterly total to date, with more than a third of the activations for customers who were new to AT&T. The average ARPU for integrated devices on AT&T’s network continues to be 1.8 times that of the company’s nonintegrated-device base.

ARPU (average revenue per user), as Dieter keeps telling us, is the magic number for AT&T, and despite complaints about service in cities like New York and San Francisco, iPhone users continue to use — and pay for — a lot of data.

And with Apple still in their corner, and the iPad plans so far exclusively on AT&T as well, that may not be changing soon…

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

3.1 Million iPhone’s Activated — AT&T Q4 2009 Results

Yesterday we were flooded with Apple’s iPad news so today we have a special edition of From the Forums that is jam packed with good discussions about the iPad. To get in on the action all you need to do is register, it’s free and will only take a moment of your time!

• First up for today we have a poll for you: Will you be getting the iPad? So far from the looks of it, it seems like many of our forum members seem to like it but will not be making the purchase.
• Since the iPad is run off of the iPhone OS the question remains, can it and when will it be jailbroken?
• Some of you were shocked to find out that Verizon has been left out of the mix leaving AT&T to be the only US carrier you can get data from for the iPad. Will this create much stress on the network or will AT&T be better prepared this time around?
• If you own a iPhone is there much need for an iPad? We understand that we will get various answers depending on the persons needs and wants but what do you think? Chime in and let us know!

See you on the forums!

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

From the Forums: To Buy or Not to Buy, iPad Jailbreak, Network Stress for AT&T, iPhone or iPad?

With the iPad, Apple introduced its fourth business, TiPb welcomed its newest, biggest sibling to the iPhone family, and we worked our apps off to cover it right. To make sure you didn’t miss anything in the deluges of news, views, and posts, here’s a handy reference to the story so far:

Big Picture

• TiPb Presents: iPhone Live! #85 — Enter the iPad!
• What Do You Think of the iPad? TiPb Wants Your Take on Apple’s Latest Creation
• Apple iPad Tablet — the Complete Specs and TiPb's Take on Them
• iPad — What We Didn't Get: Multitasking, Notifications, TV Subscriptions, Camera, Tethering, Textbooks, iTunes.com
• iPhone 3.2 SDK for iPad – VoIP, External Displays, Shared File Directory
• Apple: We're #1 Mobile Devices Company in World, Bigger than Sony, Samsung, Nokia
• Apple Introduces iPad Tablet!
• Now Streaming and in iTunes — Apple Posts "Come see our latest creation" Keynote Video
• iPad Hands-on Round Up — Who's touched where and what they think!
• Live Meta-Blog! "Come see our latest creation" Apple iTablet Event

What iPad means for iPhone

• No iPhone at Apple iPad Event. Start Rumors for iPhone 4.0, Verizon in March?
• Did the iPad Look Unfinished Because Apple is Hiding iPhone 4.0 Features?
• What iPhone 3.2 for iPad has, and TiPb wants for iPhone Actual ASAP!
• iPad Compatible with "Almost All" iPhone Apps
• Google Makes it onto iPad, Everything "Stable" for iPhone too?

Drilling into the Details

• iPad Pricing — Wifi Only $499, $599, $699, 3G $629, $729, $829
• iPad 3G, GSM Unlocked, No Contract AT&T Pricing $15 for 256MB, $30 Unlimited
• iPad 4:3 Screen – Bad for Movies, Good for Books and Web?
• iPad Also Debuts Apple A4 Custom-built System-on-a-Chip
• Apple iPad Accessories and Pricing: Keyboard Dock, BT Keyboard, Camera Kit, Standard Dock, Case, Projector Cable
• Apple Introduces iBooks Apps — Stands on Amazon's Shoulders!
• Apple Introduces All-New iWork for iPad

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

iPad Coverage Round-up — Everything You Need to Know About Apple’s New Tablet!

• Our podcast feed
• Download Directly
• Subscribe via iTunes

Join Rene, Dieter, The Cell Phone Junkie Mickey, and Chad for complete coverage of Apple’s iPad introduction, the highlights, what we didn’t get, and what it all means for the iPhone. Listen in!

Credits

Thanks to the the iPhone Blog Store for sponsoring the podcast, and to everyone who showed up for the live chat!

Our music comes from the following sources:

• I Called You — iPhone Remix by Pete Leidy
via Sneakmove iPhone Ringtone Challenge

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb Presents: iPhone Live! #85 — Enter the iPad!