gadgets and technology devices: Apple iPad first hands-on! (update: video!)

Apple iPad first hands-on! (update: video!)

Here it is folks, the Apple iPad. The screen is gorgeous, tilting is responsive, and the thing is super thin. Still, if you’ve used the iPhone before — and you can see the two devices side-by-side here — there’s not a lot of surprises here so far. Here are some initial thoughts on the iPad:

It’s not light. It feels pretty weighty in your hand.
The screen is stunning, and it’s 1024 x 768. Feels just like a huge iPhone in your hands.
The speed of the CPU is something to be marveled at. It is blazingly fast from what we can tell. Webpages loaded up super fast, and scrolling was without a hiccup. Moving into and out of apps was a breeze. Everything flew.
There’s no multitasking at all. It’s a real disappointment. All this power and very little you can do with it at once. No multitasking means no streaming Pandora when you’re working in Pages… you can figure it out. It’s a real setback for this device.
The ebook implementation is about as close as you can get to reading without a stack of bound paper in your hand. The visual stuff really helps flesh out the experience. It may be just for show, but it counts here.
No camera. None, nada. Zip. No video conferencing here folks. Hell, it doesn’t have an SMS app!
It’s running iPhone OS 3.2.
The keyboard is good, not great. Not quite as responsive as it looked in the demos.
No Flash confirmed. So Hulu is out for you, folks!

Stay tuned for a lot more — including a full video walkthrough!

Gallery: Apple iPad hands-on