"What's so great about the iPad?"

Apple iPad

(Image from Newsweek)

With intense interest, I read Daniel Lyons's article "Think Really Different" in this week's issue of Newsweek (March 26, 2010). Lyons captures almost precisely how I feel about the iPad without my having even seen one:

[M]y first thought, as I watched Jobs run through his demo, was that it seemed like no big deal. It's a bigger version of the iPod Touch, right? Then I got a chance to use an iPad, and it hit me: I want one. Like the best Apple products, the user interface is so natural it disappears. The iPad runs on the iPhone operating system, so it's even easier to use than a Mac. Like the iPhone, the iPad is a sleek, slim device. It has a nice 9.7-inch screen, weighs only one and a half pounds, and can play movies for 10 hours on a single battery charge. Right away I could see how I would use it. I'd keep it in the living room to check e-mail and browse the Web. I'd take it to the kitchen and read The New York Times while I eat breakfast. I'd bring it with me on a plane to watch movies and read books.

As I said, almost precisely. I have to imagine my reaction to holding the iPad in my hands, but I already know how I'd use it -- read the New York Times, check my email, browse the internet, post a blog entry -- and I'd do it while sitting on a subway train or after exercise while sitting on my sofa enjoying a beer. It's the first technological device that I've felt some excitement about since the 80s, back when I first got a computer . . . which was a Mac, by the way.

I was always a Mac-Man after that -- even while living in Germany -- until I came to stay in Korea, a place that has made using a Mac difficult, but the popularity of the iPhone has begun to change things, and when prices for the iPad drop, I will consider asking my wife to get me one.

Most of all, I won't have to fold and re-fold the great big pages of the New York Times while I'm riding the rails . . .