The iPad Adventure

Did I tell you I got a Kindle for Christmas? Yeah, its great, but it means I could not justify a new iPad. You know the Kindle is almost new, and does most of what iPad does.

Happily, my wife Jenny, who has no Kindle has no such problems, so I promised her one for her birthday.

The iPad came yesterday, and we configured it to work with her stuff. Her email account and her playlists -- well I did sneak a few of my playlists.

The iPad works well as a web browser which you knew it would, since the iPad Touch works so naturally. The larger size makes it much better.

I mostly want to read the newspaper on it. I currently get the Detroit Free Press on the Kindle and I am looking forward to a version that has graphics -- even color graphics. A text only newspaper is a step backwards, but still better than the paper one. I never want to go outside to get the paper from the driveway again.

The iPad like other Apple products comes in the fanciest packaging in the industry. As someone who works with packaging, you have to be impressed by it.   The iPad's box is mostly air, and it sits on a polystyrene tray. The tray smells like styrene, I wonder who else noticed that.

The iPad comes in a small box held by two molded paper holders, like egg cartons but less rough.

Naturally, I had to cut one of the holders open since it was so light and unusual. It is glued together from two molded paper sheets into a 3D shape.

Like other Apple products since the Mac 2, it comes with two Apple stickers. I am not sure what you are supposed to do with them. I never throw them away, but I never put them up either.

Anyone want an Apple sticker?



Anyway the promise of the iPad is that it is a new way of reading in a post-paper world. With my Kindle I am shifting away from paper books, and with the iPad -- which is much less locked down, will enable a whole change in the society. You heard it here first.