Ertblog: Falling in love with my iPad - but no thanks to Typepad

My iPad arrived today, 24 hours before Apple's tablet officially launched in Britain. This boy was very pleased with his new toy. I confess that I was sceptical about the iPad when Steve Jobs announced it in January, as I blogged on the iPad at the time. But I soon realised that a supersize iPhone would be something special. And the tablet is so much more than that.

A tense moment

But I had a scare. I spotted what looked like a series of small scratches on the screen of my brand new iPad. I fell into a deep depression. I tweeted my horror. But @academyblog rode to my rescue, pointing out that the scratches were actually meteors on the iPad home image. But I wasn't alone in fearing damage, as the meteors didn't appear in the marketing images for the iPad. [Update: they're not meteors, but stars moving across the sky, captured by a time exposure by photographer Richard Misrach. The shot was taken at a lake in Nevada, USA.]

So far, so very good

I've been very impressed playing with the iPad today. Typing on it is a dream - that virtual keyboard works beautifully. The device is far quicker than my iPhone 3G. It is a gorgeous canvas for photos. And my favourite newspaper's Guardian Eyewitness app is breathtaking. And free!

You've got Mail

A constant frustration of the iPhone - at least on O2 - is its failure to send email via wifi. The iPad has no such weakness. Just as well as I chose the wifi only version!

... and photos

I bought the iPad camera connection kit with my device. It's a bit much to have to spend £25 making up for the device's lack of a USB port. But it works well, importing photos quickly and easily.

Some gripes

The iPad makes (some) apps less compelling, as regular browsing works far better on Apple's tablet than the iPhone. And many apps have yet to be redesigned for the iPad. Take the Typepad app I'm typing this on. It can only be used in portrait format, which means I miss the best orientation of the keyboard. Yet the web version of Typepad doesn't seem to recognise photos on the iPad. And after posting this, I found that all formatting - even something as basic as paragraph breaks - disappeared. And photos weren't inserted correctly, which meant the image at the top of this post was originally published with the iPad out of shot. Even more frustratingly, I could not then delete the image from the published post! I can't believe that a tech company could be so badly prepared for the iPad, well over a month after it went on sale in America.

In time, I'm sure these issues will disappear. But it's a niggle for early adopters. I also hope that we'll be able to switch between portrait and landscape format when using apps - such as Tweetie, soon to be renamed Twitter for iPhone. That's one of the frustrations of the iPhone.

But these are mere gripes. This is a gorgeous computer. It's battery life is extraordinary. It's still showing 77% battery life left after hours of play. That's outstanding. I'll post a more detailed review after I've had rather longer in its company.