For my wife’s birthday, the first iPad came to the Pascual Family household, and with that a way to interact first hand with the experience that great device brings. I don’t think I was able to spend much time on the first day, besides setting it up. When you purchase the iPad, you can register it at the shop or at home, I decided to do it at home, as we have one computer with iTunes for all our Apple devices.

I am a PC person, I use it for work and home, I would never change that experience, yet I’m also on the opinion that Apple created a great story for the digital personal and family life; music, pictures, books, videos, calendars and files. In my family, we are trying to move everything to Apple to manage the digital life without having to spent time doing it. With having a computer with iTunes where all the applications, music, pictures and devices backups are stored, everything is centralized to  consume new purchased music or grab the latest picture that one of us took. Of course that computer is backed up to the cloud automatically.

Even when the devices Apple creates are just for one person, they intended for a household to share, the music my wife purchased on her iPhone can be synchronize on mine or my oldest daughter iPod without much ado. As well as all books now downloaded with iBooks or the Kindle app for the iPhone and iPad, they can be read in any of our Apple devices, as we use only one account at iTunes for all consumable items. All those can be consume with 5 different devices, that’s why my wife and I made the decision to only have 3 kids :-)

Registering the iPad is pretty simple, connect it to the only computer with iTunes at the house, enter your only iTunes account and let the wizard take you all the way. All the applications you had on the iPhone will be synchronized as well as all the music and pictures, we have more than 5,000 pictures, so we decided not to get them all. I recommend next to go to the iPad and select the App Store and go to updates, there you can select to download for free the iPad version of the applications you already own, select all to ease your selection. To update the applications you already own is free. That step really make a big difference, there is nothing worse than a iPhone app running in the iPad to kill the experience of the device itself. Here a few samples of the new applications:

iBooks is a great sample of why to purchased just a eBook reader when you can get the best of both worlds, I have tried the Kindle device with the INK and I don’t really see what other people see. I’m used to look at monitor all day, I want to see the white background and the great resolution letters that iPad iBook and Kidle app provides, I don’t see myself using Ink devices any time soon.

I downloaded the Dora the Explorer coloring application as when I went to the Apple store my 4 years old, found that app and she couldn’t be happier with it, there are lots of games and applications for kids, I found a few math and spelling ones that I’ll be downloading and showing to my kids, AFTER my wife starts sharing more the device.

An application that I didn’t like on the iPhone, yet I love on the iPad is TweetDeck, the way all the columns keep scrolling and how can you go from right to left and up and down to find the information is just amazing. Is now my twitter client of choice, the optimum Twitter machine. I personally love how it displays the pictures and of course the full keyboard is great to have.

Yet I do believe, Apple had the browser in mind when they created the iPad, this is an experience that until you don’t cuddle up with the device and see for yourself is very difficult to explain. I really enjoy now reading the morning paper, even if always is about the oil spill. The biggest complain is the missing Flash and Silverlight plugins, means that some websites cannot be used.

The iPad now is running around the house, everybody from my family, besides the 2 year old, found something interesting on it, and they all love the experience, is more than just a big iTouch. For what I can see so far, the Wife loves reading her books, replying the email and the perfect Facebook machine, while the almost 7 years old, love the word puzzles and games. I personally love the browser and TweetDeck and finally the 4 year old just like coloring and trying to play games without knowing how to read. It is so easy to use, than even a 4 years old can do it.

Yet the iPad was created as every Apple device to be own by one person only, instead of a family, so everything is set up for my wife and the rest of the family is just guest on her machine, I can see Apple moving the iPad to be multiuser soon and have a different slider per person to start with a different profile depending how you slide the main screen bar to set up your wallpaper, email, apps and music, that option will take lots of storage, something that Apple is telling the consumer that is very expensive for some reason.

In any case, the family adopted another great device for our digital life, I believe that our kids as they keep growing up, they’ll find better uses for those devices around the house, to be able to purchase their books, as I keep saying over and over again, is now time to move away from paper, there are not more excuses to keep printing books, magazines and newspapers. The Apple App Store is also getting lots of new learning iPad applications that I need to download and show to my kids. The Netflix application to stream movies will be very helpful to bring the movies they love on vacation with us, you can always purchase movies from Apple to download for the airplane.

If you wondered I purchased a 32 GB Wi-Fi only device, last thing  I want is to pay more money to AT&T, and is not like the device needs to go on the road, when the family goes on vacation with the kids, we normally spent it in a beach resort with Wi-Fi.

As every device from Apple, the price is high, yet, there ain’t any other device like it to compare on the price.

Cheers

Al