The first gadget reviewers have had a chance to spend time with the iPad. There does not yet appear to be a consensus on whether it is the greatest thing ever or just an OK thing.
The Journal‘s Walter Mossberg calls the iPad a “beautiful new touch-screen device” that “has the potential to change portable computing profoundly, and to challenge the primacy of the laptop.” Perhaps most importantly, he notes that it is “far more than just a big iPhone.”
The Times‘ David Pogue is less enthusiastic. Sort of. He offers two viewpoints, one for “techies” and one for “everyone else.”
To the normals he says, “The iPad is so fast and light, the multitouch screen so bright and responsive, the software so easy to navigate, that it really does qualify as a new category of gadget.” Are you old, or a baby? Never fear: “Some have suggested that it might make a good goof-proof computer for technophobes, the aged and the young; they’re absolutely right.”
Oh boy!
To the techies, he says that the iPad is “basically a gigantic Touch.”
(More reviews: USA Today calls it “a winner“; PC Magazine rates it “very good.” And David Carr finds it “sexy,” to a maybe discomfiting degree.)
