At first glance, the iPad looked like a heavy, overgrown iPod Touch. After just a few months of use, however, this iPad skeptic realized that it’s so much more — it’s one of those devices I’ve always needed. Those don’t come around very often.
Most things get less interesting the more examples you see of them. If you’ve never seen a computer before, the first one is a revelation, but each successive model gets less and less remarkable.
Apple Inc.’s iPad is the other way around. It looks more impressive in light of what’s come before it. I’ve seen many tablet computers of different stripes since 2002, when Microsoft introduced Windows XP Tablet Edition. The quality has varied, but they’ve all been failures, even the recent ones. They’re a Stonehenge’s worth of near-useless slabs.
The iPad finally fulfills the promise of the tablet computer when it came out in April.
It cuts the mouse and keyboard out of the equation, giving us a straight, tactile connection. While the iPad builds on the iPhone, it feels like a bigger achievement. The first iPhone was a great phone, driven by far-thinking new ideas. But other people had made good phones before. Before the iPad, no one had made a good tablet computer. Even Apple failed with its first attempt, the Newton, back in the 90s.
When I first got my hands on an iPad for a review, I played games on it for about a month. My favorite strategy game, “Battle for Wesnoth,” was written for the PC, but actually works better on the iPad, thanks to the immediacy of the touch interface. Several other games conspired to suck away my productivity, so it took me a while to realize that the iPad actually fulfills a long-time tablet vision as well: It’s like a sheet of paper,…