It was never an easy catch! A pre-order that started a month before its launch date, a case which arrived 3 weeks before the actual product, almost prompting me to judge the “book by its cover”; add on yet another week of delay on the launch on the 3G version of it, when “ships by late April” seemed like the daily “proverb” that kick started my day alongside a dose of caffeine and it finally arrived on 30th April 2010, keeping the promise on “late april” – iPad (wifi + 3G) , yet another member in my Apple Family!

While it did take me a month to completely free myself from the habitual tapping on a laptop that had almost become a part of my system (I must admit, I did experience some serious withdrawal symptoms, at the early stages of quitting), the iPad did manage to replace a vast spectrum of the work that I did on it – from browsing to blogging, from spreadsheets to presentations and even a shell (although not locally, yet) to a shelf (book shelf at that)! Being completely unbiased was never an option for me. But I must say a well written critique would perhaps sound biased anyway! So while I can go on and on praising this gadget for the way it has changed my lifestyle so far – both at work (with this being my notetaker at the meetings and a paperless replacement for the sticky notes that took a liking to my monitors at the office) and at home (being my diary, Internet, blog, book shelf and a partial technology playground through “VNCs and SSHs” of course) – for once let me try and see if I can be on the other side of the fence.

One of the applications that I was most certainly looking forward to, did disappoint me – iBooks. While the application as such gave an experience that was amazingly close to holding a real book (sans the smell of course), the store has been a huge disappointment so far, with the selection of books restricted mainly to NY Times bestsellers, which never was a choice for me. Having said that, the free Amazon Kindle application did turn out to be a life saver. Amazon did manage to make a smart move to let itself free on a gadget that was bound to kill its hardware. And this would keep the Kindle market place thriving even more!

Wise men from the mountains say, a revolution is a forcible overthrow of an existing system. So while iPad is yet to prove itself to be magical, it certainly is revolutionary, threatening to kill the existing establishment where a combination of laptops and smartphones ruled! Now turning it around again, with Apple’s traditional characteristic of bringing down its own market on its existing products through the introduction of a new product (an example being iPods through iPhones), I do see a potential for iPads to have a go at the iPhones; what with the unlimited data plan on it plus a cheaper voice only option as a phone, working out to be way more cost efficient than an iPhone plan.

BUT then came yet another ios (read iOS, that “surprisingly” rhymed with IOS). With ATT making me eligible for an early upgrade, I guess the family is getting ready to welcome yet another member! And yeah, there is a Nexus One soon to find its way in as a black sheep too!

Technology never ceases to amaze me!

Disclaimer: This was a post that I made on my personal blog sometime back. Thought this could be a good starter for a technology blog, which I hope to update frequently.