I may have “hinted” I was not going to get an iPad quite yet —and here I am: writing a review of my experience with it in the last 30 hours or so since it came out on sale. (If you don’t want to read the story leading up to the acquisition of the iPad, scroll down to “After the Purchase”)

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BEFORE THE PURCHASE A bit of context around the last-minute decision: it all came to DJing applications like Mixr, Wireframing tools like iMockups, and quite frankly, the Origami option for slideshows in the Photos app in the iPad. This is all in addition to the many application in my iPhone I knew I could also use with the iPad (mostly sequencers and music-controllers).

Sometime after Stone Temple Pilot’s free concert in Indy, I decided to prepare myself with food provisions, laptop, and a good book (on my Kindle app for the iPhone) and departed towards an undisclosed and remote Best Buy location at nearly 3 am, following the various rumours that every Best Buy store with Apple Solution Consultants would be carrying a total of 15 iPad per store.

I must say I had never, ever, camped out or attempted to queue for dreadfully long hours before for a consumer product —until now. I thought I would want to do it at least once just for the experience and “to say I’ve done it”. Period.

I arrived at Best Buy… to an empty car park and not a soul to be seen anywhere around. I started to think perhaps I was at the “wrong” Best Buy location, but I couldn’t be bothered to go to another one. Clearly, I seem to have overestimated people’s enthusiasm for the new “magical & revolutionary” device in this part of the country (perhaps they didn’t know about Best Buy carrying in them?).

I managed to sleep for a great chunk of the time I was there. It wasn’t until 4 am that a couple of Best Buy employees arrived (to set up the iPads for display, I imagine). The first Apple fan-boy car arrived shortly after, followed by just another one by 7am. At least I knew I wasn’t the only one there early for the new iPads, but nevertheless, it was nothing like I expected it to be.

Finally, around 8 am the Best Buy’s store manager came over to meet the few of us waiting and asked us which iPad version we wanted (I went with 64Gb) and gave us 1 pre-sale ticket each, good for the purchase of the iPad of our choice until 5 pm that day:

Eventually, they opened the doors at 10 am. By then, there were only a total of 7 people (including me) waiting for an iPad. I’m thinking whoever walked into that Best Buy location with lost hopes for an iPad might have had a rather pleasant surprise.

After playing with the iPad on display for about 3 minutes, it was time to go home and play with mine —no matter how tired I was from the painfully boring wait that preceded this moment.

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AFTER THE PURCHASE

After opening the box, it was all the regular procedure of plugging the device to the computer, connecting to iTunes…etc. It took longer in my case, as I still needed to update iTunes so it could actually recognize my MaxiPad (as I’ve affectionately —and officially— named it on my Mac).

Once the first sync was complete (music, info, iPhone apps that work well in the iPad) I was able to finally start making it my own, going through the App store…etc. This is practically what I’ve been doing up to this point. What I will do is then just simply mention short bits of the good the bad and theuglyweird of my experience with the iPad so far.

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THE GOOD

-First off, being able to decorate it with some the best photos I took in Lisboa this past December, both for the lock and the home screen.

-Twittelator Pad: Not only it’s one of my favourite Twitter clients on the iPhone, it’s now my Twitter client of choice when it comes to the iPad. This app redefines the way you can interact with an application made for this operating system. It takes great advantage of the screen real state and although it might take a bit of time to really get used to it, it simply leaves all the other (currently existing) Twitter applications behind. It even let’s you define your own background image, as you can see here (I’ve chosen this beautiful photo I took of a temple in Chaing Rai, Thailand).

-The Amazon Kindle application. It was one of the few that updated immediately after I ported my iPhone applications to the iPad (along with Pandora, Evernote and a few others). It is truly stunning. Not only it looks better than Apple’s own iBooks application, but thanks to WhisperSync, you can start reading a book on you iPhone, continue on you Mac and pick up where you left off on your iPad —or Kindle (if you have one). The background image even “fits” with the time of day you are using the app. For example, here the sun was setting around 7 pm —and so it was on the Kindle app. Brilliant! (I really don’t think Amazon has much to worry about with the iPad in the market: keep all these books widely available for us to read wherever we please and we will continue buying them).

 -The BBC NEWS iPad app is breathtaking. Just get it: it’s free. -Google Reader: I’ve downloaded Feeddler for free, but simply going on Google Reader using Safari looks and behaves very well (even though it looks the exact same way as it does on the iPhone). I haven’t tried Google Reader’s Play yet, but I’m sure it will make for a very engaging experience. I’m thinking about a couple of paid RSS applications I’ve seen around the App store, but Google + Safari have made it difficult to pay *any* money for a dedicated application so far.

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THE BAD

-It is definitely heavier that I thought it would be. After a while (and specially whilst holding it with just one hand) you start feeling like putting it down on a table, a bed or on your lap if you are lying down. -Smudges-galore! The image speaks for itself:

 -Somehow, when I try to turn down the volume (by pressing & holding the “volume down” button) it goes all the way down automatically (as in mute). It doesn’t happen if I press & hold the “volume up” button or if I continuously press “volume down” button to achieve the desired sound volume. Is this happening to you? Is it just me? if your iPad does not behave this way, please let me know so I can go exchange it as soon as possible! Update: Some people have told me it is in fact, true. I was rather hoping this was a defect on my iPad. I don’t see the point —was it too difficult to include a “mute” button like on, say, the iPhone? -Screen shots taken in landscape mode are saved in to the iPad in portrait mode —sideways. I’ve tried several times and I always end up with a landscape photo “stading on it’s left side”. For example, that Twittelator Pad photo above was rotated using the Photoshop app for iPhone, on the iPad.

-NO FRONT-FACING CAMERA! (we all know it’s coming… but I’m still shocked about the decision not include it “to reduce costs”). This became even more apparent after downloading the WebEx iPad app… or just think about Skype… Pity. -Facebook. I’m sure it’s a matter of time, but I’m quite surprised to not have seen a dedicated iPad app on launch day. At least the full site looks great on Safari —as do most other sites. -iPhone Apps: I’ve come to find very few of my iPhone apps look decent in 2x. I can see now why there will be an iPhone “HD” with twice the resolution. Now that I’ve seen how pixelated most of these apps look on the iPad, it will be interesting to see how the adapt to both environments. This is quite loss just thinking about not being able to properly use my absolute most-favourite RSS Reader application on the iPhone.

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THE WEIRD

-I’ve come to find my favourite position (so far) to play with the iPad is to leave it flat on top of my bed, with me lying sideways, holding my head with one hand and touching the iPad with the other.

-“Not Charging” — When I plug it in to my MacBook Pro, I can sync it, use it as intended…etc. But on the top right of the screen where it should have the percentage of battery left or an indicator showing the battery is being charged, it simply says “Not Charging”. The same has happened with some of my portable chargers. This is strange, because it so happens that this is in fact not entirely true. The iPad is indeed being charge but at a rather slower rate than usual and most likely only if it’s on “sleep mode”. I came to discover this by draining one of my portable chargers with it, with a small increase in battery life in return.Others have indeed noticed that this is the case. I hope this gets fixed soon, because it is simply unsettling to even “think” that your iPad is not being charged (and think about it? how many of us charge our iPhone plugged in via-USB to a computer?). It only seems to “charge properly” when plugged in to an electrical outlet. It is then evident the iPad simple needs some more volts to charge as intended.

-Typing. I can type using my thumbs on portrait mode somewhat comfortably. Any other way, it is a awkward as many people had predicted.

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Finally, I’m still trying to see how this device fits into my life. So far, I see as one of the coolest, most innovative yet most unnecessary toys I’ve ever purchased. I don’t think I would even really take it out of the house.

This doesn’t come as a shock to me, but it must be said: The iPad is certainly NOT a laptop-replacement. Those looking for an iPad as way to replace (or get out of buying) a good laptop or even a netbook will be greatly disappointed.

I’d like to know your experiences with the iPad. Do you share some of this opinions or first impressions so far? If you haven’t purchased one yet, will you now?

These are only some of the few first impressions I’ve gathered over the weekend. I am certain this is only the first iPad-related post of many to come. Good or bad, this “magical & revolutionary” device will give me (and many others) plenty to talk about.