9:30 AM
My honey, Robert, and I arrived at the Best Buy in Pleasant Hill. There were approximately 10 men already waiting in front of the store. After about 5 minutes, a Best Buy representative came out to hand out tickets. Their iPad inventory had just arrived at 9:00am without accessories -- cuttin’ it close! We took the 16GB ticket. I’d decided we would get the base model because we only plan to use it at home for internet browsing, YouTube watching, and reading the news (we let our NY Times and Oprah subscriptions lapse in anticipation of using the iPad to read them).
For the first 15-20 minutes standing in line I was the only female…but soon there were a few more of us. For one older woman who kept her head lowered the entire time, it was the first time she has ever gotten up early to buy a new toy on launch day. She was so excited, but she wouldn’t look up because it was also the first time she had ever in her life left the house without make up on. LOL!!
10:00 AM
Just before the doors opened there were 20-25 people in the iPad line. A few of us noticed their were about 10 other people waiting for the store to open that were not in the iPad line. Why? What would you get up early to buy first thing in the morning from Best Buy that wasn’t an iPad ;) Things that make Apple fans go hmmmm……
The Best Buy representatives sent us directly to customer service line to purchase our iPad. They told us they had plenty of inventory for everyone one to get one so a few hesitators went to the display to play with it before handing over their credit card; not us we went straight to the cashier. The best part was we saved our Best Buy coupons and got our iPad at a significant discount! Yeah!
10:30 AM
In the car we opened up the package, turned it on and the connect to iTunes icon was displayed on the screen L Hungry, we went to breakfast first and showed off the box. It was great even little kids who spotted the box started yelling “iPad, iPad!”
11:45 AM
I ran upstairs to the my iMac, connected the iPad, and went through the setup. The best part “An iPad has been previously synced to this computer” message. Not! I did a quick google and found TheAppleBlog had already documented the entire setup process with screen shots (Thanks!) and they had gotten the same screen. So, I selected "Setup new iPad." and moved on to naming it. Robert suggested "MaxiPad", I said, "No.", yet it is probably the only pad I want people to know I'm wearing...ewww!! LOL!! We settled on "GoGadgetGurl's iPad".
Setup took ~20 minutes. It probably would have taken only 5-10 minutes if I had chosen not to put 191 photos the iPad had to optimize for viewing. Also all my apps were automatically sync’d all to the iPad. When I saw all my apps on the iPad it struck me how personal my iPhone is to me. There are apps like iPeriod that I removed because I don’t want that info on a coffee table device (TMI!!!)!
The rest of the setup, network connection, email, and MobileMe was as easy as it is on the iPhone.
12:15 PM
iPhone apps run on the iPad but they launch in iPhone display size. There’s a convenient “2x” button in the lower right corner that increases the size of the app to fit the iPad screen. The resolution is pretty good and the pixelation is minimal, and it doesn’t it look stretched. We discovered this looking for the highly publicized NY Times iPad app. It isn’t called "nytimes". I don’t understand why yet (if you know, let me know?), but the NY Times iPad app is called “NYT Editor’s Choice” I had to do a couple of searches on iTunes Store before it showed up. I also wasn’t able to find the hyped Zinio for iPad app, but my iPhone version works fine.
1:30 PM
I finally let my honey play with it. He goes directly to the NY Times app and declares “Print is truly dead now. The iPad in landscape is the same size as the paper folded in half!” He reads 3-4 newspapers a day!
I leave him be to read his email, and then he decides he should finally accept the 3 Facebook invitations (including mine) that I swear are at least 6 months old. So, he post the photo I took of him at Best Buy to his 3 Facebook friends…he’s getting there slowly.
I leave him to do his thing…send emails, watch You Tube videos, house hunt, etc. All the things he used to do on his iPhone.
3:30 PM
I find the iPad laying on the coffee table so I take it back and download “Pages” for $9.99. I want to write a quick document and my laptop is too cumbersome to lugged around the house ;)
Pages is completely differently than the desktop version which makes it a slight challenge to use. My review of Pages for the iPad is probably a blog post all it’s own. After I figured out how to get a blank document, typing with the onscreen keyboard was easier than I expected it to be. I was pecking the soft keys more than typing, but I wrote two quick documents. There isn't a “Save” menu option, but an “Export” menu option with three format choices “Pages”, “.doc”, and “PDF”. I can also email the document in one of these three formats.
5:00 PM
Robert plays with it some more and downloads the BBC news app. Nice news app, it has video for every news article.
6:00-10:00 PM
We stop to have dinner and watch a movie, not on the iPad. It isn’t going to replace our 52-inch flat screen.
10:00 PM
Robert does his night time reading on it before going to sleep. We charge it next to the bed.
6:00 AM
I wake up, feed the dog, and Robert reminded me to call our neighbor to see if he was going to Easter service with us. This is when I realized I had no idea where my iPhone was! No worries, I grabbed the cordless phone and the iPad to get the phone number. After the phone call, I peruse the BBC news apps, install the NPR news app and stream KQED radio while I get dressed for Easter service. Robert and I considered taking it to church with us, but decided not to J
Happy iPadding to everyone,
GoGadgetGurl!
