My 1st annoyance was the keyboard. Its a great keyboard but I found that if you didn’t have the Apple case/kick-stand, it was really hard to type on it. When  holding it in portrait mode, it was awkward to type long messages with both my thumbs as I held it in my hands, and landscape mode just was a pain as it challenged my thumbs reach.

It was very pleasant to sit on the balcony in the mornings and go through all my news in Google Reader. The touch navigation was a dream and it really made reading the news an immersive experience. Viewing and sharing pictures was also very immersive. Navigating photos and showing them to friends was definitely a more enjoyable experience than showcasing them on a laptop, as I could pass it around and they can interact with it, as if a real set of photos.

Prolonged use of the iPad, though, was a bit of a mixed bag. Trying to hold it for long periods of time, while watching a movie or tv show put a lot of strain on the hands and arms. Laying in bed and kicking back to watch a 1hour TV show proved a lil frustrating as leaning it on my thighs left it at an awkward viewing angle, and holding it was just not fun. Again, this out have been a different experience if I had the $40 Apple iPad case. I think that the case should have come standard with the iPad as it would have solved a lot of physical usability issues, but I guess Apple knew this and decided to sell it separately because of its necessity.

I was quite disappointed that a lot of the apps I used on a regular basis from large companies was not updated for the iPad (Facebook, LinkedIn, Flickr, MobileMe Gallery, Skype) and a few required me to buy a whole new version of the app at full price (Things). I understand that if they did develop an iPad app, it would have an updated UI and a very different experience, but a lot of apps have been ported over very easily and quickly by other developers and they’ve done a great job at iPad specific versions (Evernote, Dropbox,WordPress). I guess the wait is for the iPad version of iOS4.

I had the wifi only version, and only being able to use it at home or the office, I thought that its usefulness is tied to a data connection. Most apps are tied to the net and if you dont have connectivity, the iPad really isn’t much use.

All in all, the iPad is a great device. Its performance was impressive, the UI was solid and the feel and sturdiness of the device was great. At the moment though, until a few of my favourite apps are ported over, and iOS4 comes out giving it multi-tasking and a few other features, it feels more like a fun toy and not something I will use on a regular basis. I found my self reverting to my Macbook Pro to do a lot of tasks, as I am a heaving multi-tasker. iOS4′s new features are going to be a welcome upgrade and I will look in to it as soon as it comes out, probably a 3G version.

Do you have an iPad, and how long did it take you to get used to it? Do you have the Apple Case? How does the keyboard feel for you?

I’m actually quite impressed with the product, and think its a great piece of technology. It seems to me that this device is not a netbook, and it’s not a laptop, and it’s not a smartphone, and it’s not a full fledged tablet PC. It’s a tablet device for the consumption, and light content creation, a portable media player (PMP) that has a platform for developers.

There is controversy over the lack of multi-tasking, and I agree, a device of this size and capabilities should by all means be able to do more than one thing at a time, but when the purpose of the device is to focus on the current media at hand eg: reading a book, watching a movie, or surfing the web, then it seems to me a valid point. If you were to want to do more than that, you would use a laptop or a desktop with a larger screen, more comfortable keyboard and specialized apps.

I am not impressed with the fact that it doesn’t have a front facing camera, and that for some reason, Apple seems to have forgotten about iChat recently. It used to be touted as one of its flagship software products, available on all macs, but sorely missed in its portable products. The iPad would have a good place for it, what with the capable cpu and larger screen, but really, when it comes down to it, it would be a pain to hold that thing up while you go for a 20 min video chat session with someone.

Then there is the lack of Flash, and though its a deal breaker for most, I’m not really fussed with it. Sure, it would be nice to watch all the videos on websites that stream in flash. But then there are sites that use Silverlight, and then all the other plugins. I hope with the advancement of HTML 5 and its adoption now by the biggest video content deliverer, Youtube, followed by Vimeo, soon, we will not need Flash for something as ubiquitous as video. And for those websites that are developed in Flash, for a “Enhanced User Experience”, I never liked you. You annoy me! Big time!!

So thats my two cents. The iPad wasn’t a totally jaw dropping announcement, with a few missing features, but a very promising future I believe.

What do you think?

Whats even worse is getting your head back in to gear, and in to work mode. For me, this means logging in to a bunch of email and social networks accounts, as well as administration control panels. You think it’s all good, until you’ve locked yourself out of a whole bunch of sites, coz your mind is still in its zen and peaceful state, looking at blue waters and azure skies.

This is when I decided I might need a password manager.

I need something that :

1. has good encryption
2. can be used on multiple macs
3. possibly iPhone synchronization
4. can be used for more than just passwords eg: membership numbers, application serial numbers
5. easy and intuitive user interface (and I’ve very critical )

A quick search on Google, Versiontracker and a few review sites, I settled on trying out  1Password by Agile Web Solutions and Wallet by Acrylic.

Both applications are very similar animals, but have very different spots. They both have excellent encryption and allow you to store and retrieve login/passwords, serial, credit card and membership numbers and iPhone synchronization. Their similarity ends there though.

Wallet

Wallet has the simpler interface that looks very similar to Apple Addressbook’s 3 column interface. It starts you off with 3 folders/categories of information (Serial Numbers, Web Passwords, Credit Cards), but you can create your own custom categories as you please.

Creating a new entry under a category is as simple as clicking the plus sign under the selected category. Creating an entry under Web Passwords gives you standard fields of Name, Username and Password. You can add additional fields if you needed, but its pretty straight forward.

When it comes to retrieving web login information, Wallet makes it easy to automatically enter your saved credentials to a site by way of a menu bar applet. Go to a site you saved the login/password for in Wallet, and click the menu bar icon. Enter the master password you setup for Wallet, and it will insert the credentials in to the web form. I haven’t had extensive use with Wallet yet to talk much about it, but since I have multiple accounts on some sites, I’m not sure how it handles that.

When it comes to synchronization, Wallet uses MobileMe or a WebDAV server to sync iPhones and multiple computers. This means thats iPhone users have cloud access to their Wallet database, and don’t need to do much to sync their information.

Wallet looks like a great app, and for the $20 price tag, is pretty reasonable. Its got good features, multiple mac and iphone sync, excellent encryption and an easy to use interface.

1Password

1Password is a pretty feature rich application. By default, it starts you off with 6 categories (Logins, Accounts, Identities, Secure Notes, Software, Wallet), and has a plethora of predefined templates for storing information including email and instant messenger setups, text notes and identity persons.

My favourite feature is the browser plugin, that saves passwords as you type them in to web logins. This makes it a lot easier to save them, as its quite cumbersome to remember all your accounts and passwords at setup time. As you go through your daily routine and come to a web login form, fill it in, and the browser plugin will as you if you want to save it to 1Password. The plugin doesn’t stop there, enter your credit card information and create a identity profile in to 1Password and you can fill in registration forms or purchase forms with a couple of clicks.

Synchronizing multiple macs and an iPhone with one database isn’t as straight forwards as entering your MobileMe credentials in Wallet. The Agile website recommends you use DropBox to keep one database synced with multiple machines. DropBox is an amazing web service, but if you don’t have one, your gonna have to get one. iPhone syncing is through wifi, which means you have to manually sync your mac with your iPhone for the latest info.

1Password looks like the more power application, with great browser integration but I wish it could sync using MobileMe giving my iPhone cloud syncing. At $39.95, its price tag is pretty steep.

Final Verdict

So far both of them seem to be very capable and excellent applications. I will be using the trial versions for the next month to really make up my mind, and will write an in depth review of both soon.

Have you used or tried any of these applications? What are your thoughts, preferences? Are there better applications out there I might have missed? Leave me your comments!