I was very impressed when I first got my hands on my WiFi + 3G model. As well as being an elegant looking device, as you’d expect from Apple, the brightness and clarity of the display was just amazing. Images look amazingly crisp and bright and even pages of text are extremely easy to read. Most of the apps that I have installed are ones that I currently have on my iPhone. The majority of these are still native iPhones apps so at their “std” resolution, appear the same size on the iPad as what they do on the iPhone. Once an app like this is started though, there is a small button at the bottom of the display that you can press to enlarge the app so as to fill the larger iPad screen. Some apps don’t look too bad when enlarged, others… not quite as good. There are heaps of apps that have been optimized for displaying on the larger iPad display though. A couple that come to mind are WordPress, Evernote, Dropbox, eWallet, Marvel Comics and AirVideo. These apps, as well as the native iPad apps, look stunning on the larger display. So far I’ve only downloaded a few native iPad apps; Adobe Ideas, Twitterific and Smule Magic Piano. As mentioned, they look amazing.

Originally, I was planning on writing this whole post on the iPad. It soon became obvious that wasn’t going to happen. There’s a couple of reasons for this. The first being that I wanted the post to be consistent with the rest of the posts on my site. This meant that it would need a header image and a thumbnail image. Not having any apps on my iPad where I could create images at specific sizes (eg. 600x150px for my header img) made it obvious that I was going to have to put the finishing touches to the post using my pc. I was also not able to assign a “Post Thumbnail” using either the WordPress app or using the WordPress Dashboard within Safari. (I think this is more of a case of lack of functionality in the WP app though) I found that using the WP Dashboard within Safari, I was also unable to type in the actual text editing field, which kinda makes it a little hard to write posts! I was able to enter text when it was in “HTML View” though. I reverted to using the WordPress app to write all this content.

Am I disappointed in the above? Not really. It was never my intention to get an iPad in the hope that it would replace my laptop. What it does, it does really well but for me, it certainly couldn’t replace the functionality you get with a laptop. So far I’ve had fun using all the apps and it’s also lots more convenient browsing the web or Tweeting using the iPad than it is using a laptop, especially whilst relaxing on the couch. I even streamed an episode of Chuck from my Media Centre PC last night using AirVideo, whilst lying in bed. Beats having a heavy laptop sitting on top of you! Much like my iPhone, I can now say I love my iPad

Have you got an iPad yet or thinking of getting one? What do you think of them? Let me know, I’d love to hear your comments

First off, it will be a mission to an asteroid and eventually manned missions to Mars. It’s no longer just enough to stay close to “home”. We need to develop new technologies to enable us to venture out further & explore unknown territory. Until then, jazz up your desktop, iPhone or iPad with these wallpapers I created.

Available resolutions:
1920 x 1200, 1920 x 1080, 1680 x 1050, 1600 x 1200, 1440 x 900, 1280 x 1024, 1280 x 960, 1280 x 800, 1024 x 1024 (iPad), 1024 x 768, 320 x 480 (iPhone) or you can download the complete set

If you’ve got a spare sec, please leave a comment and let me know if you liked them