Not immune to the appeal of the iPad, I wandered down to my local Best Buy yesterday to take a look. (I was actually there to check on pay-as-you-go cellphone prices, but since the iPads were right there…)
There were four demonstrator iPads set up on a table in front of a projection screen showing a series of ads for them. At least, I think that’s what it was. I didn’t pay much attention to the screen once an iPad opened up for playing with.
I didn’t really have a lot of time to check it out. I mostly surfed the web with it—reading my usual daily comics, xkcd, Sluggy Freelance, and Girl Genius; checking my Gmail; and of course, seeing how TeleRead looked on the screen. I think iAmInLove.
Of course, getting one will have to wait a while, but someday one will be mine.
I didn’t think to look for or check out iBooks (maybe next time), but I did notice there was a version of Rock Band installed and tried that. But for some reason, when it started playing a song, the song (and accompanying instrument track) was sped up to about 78 RPM, and I couldn’t figure out how to normalize it again.
All things considered, it was a lot like using a bigger version of my iPod Touch, only better. I can’t wait to have the chance for a longer try-out.
It’s scary how fun it is to play with in Best Buy. I bet half the people playing with it did not intend to buy the iPad when they first picked it up.