Our new iPad arrived on Tuesday morning and I’ve got a huge list of likes, dislikes, loves and concerns. It was, I have to say, almost scary to plug it in and turn it on and there was a chill of reverence in the air.

Yes, it’s like a big iPod Touch.

Now, some specifics:

The device is, as we would expect, beautifully packaged, comes with a great cover and the screen is a delight. It sync’ed natively with iTunes, which, as I have an iPhone, would be have surprising if it hadn’t. As I am signed up to the Australian iTunes Store I am, until the device is released here, unable to access the Apps Store on the iPad so I did all my loading via my (Windows) desktop.

The most obviously missing things are: Clock and a native iPad Facebookapp and the omission of these is surprising. Clock is handy for reminders, alarms and world time and could have been a great ‘dock’ app for the device. Facebook as we used both the iPhone app for Facebook and Safari with differing but unsatisfactory results.  The iPhone app looked stretch and out of content in this large screen and really offered nothing over the app on iPhone. Under Safari, issues of screen management came to the fore - when we pulled up the chat window, we discovered this was not independently scrollable from the rest of the screen - basically it was docked and locked in position and size - meaning friends with names lower in the alphabet were inaccessible.

There was also a real disappointment  on the touch screen itself. It worked absolutely fine - but it left big smears over the large glossy screen. And yes, I did wash my hands. The compromise between regular polishing and a screen guard is going to be a serious consideration.

In terms of functionality, I found I missed the ‘always connected’ nature of my iPhone. When I went to show the device off in public (to much exclamation), with no wifi, it was basically a very pretty, but pretty dumb device. That said, when I showed off a view videos and animations, there were definite ohh’s and ahh’s.  I should point out that one really impressive iPhone app that just looks glorious even at (2x) was Firemint’s Real Racing GTI. They have an iPad version of the paid game (at twice the price of the iPhone one - not certain of the value equation here) but the good ol’ iPhone free games looks glorious.

There was a bit of a dose of reality at the hands of Lulu, our in-home GenC critic. She looked at it, exclaimed over the ‘big iPhone’, played with a few things then looked up and said ‘But what would I use it for?’. It’s too big for her handbag, no good for public transport, kinda fun for uni but not so functional without a keyboard, limited in terms of connectivity (to be address, I know), can’t be expanded and really, as far as she could tell, just didn’t fit into a gap in her life.

In the end, we agreed that it was a ‘kitchen’ or ‘couch’ device. The appeal of TV watching while wifi surfing on this screen is immense (even Lu thought so). the screen on your lap would be likely to be more compelling than the one on the other side of the room. Given that more than 87% of us already use internet connected devices while we watch TV, I can only suggest that we’ll be doing it even more - and more of us doing it!

In terms of native applications, what is clear is that some get it and some don’t. Clearly some developers have shipped out HD version of apps and not thought about the impact of a different environment, while others have serious looked at what and how they develop.

Now Playing is an example of the former:

While Epicurious is a good example of a real rethink about navigation, docking a Control Panel into the top bar and using tabs both right and bottom as appropriate. (Ok, that’s about five types of nav in one app and not brilliant, but it is an attempt.

As a kitchen or couch device - the iPad is perfect. A central hub for quick internet, great (lifestyle) dedicated apps such as the example above, music hub and video store; linking other iDevices and being a great lean forward companion to the sit backTV screen.

And it is this last element that I will explore more - I think the iPad is a throw-back to a ’sit back’ age, and that’s why publishers and advertisers like it so much. And that gives me pause for thought. More on this next, but in the meantime, I am going to love watching and reading and listening on this glorious visually beautiful screen.

(PS: we’ve developed our first app for this device, so I’ll also talk about that in a later post)