It happened that the day I arrived in the United States on a business trip was the iPad’s launch day, so I went to the Apple Store San Francisco. There was still a line outside, and since I dislike waiting in line more than most people, I hesitated. But when I asked, they said the wait was 30 minutes, so I joined the line and happily managed to get the 16GB model. There were about 10 units left. I bought a cover as well. Incidentally, about 2 hours later, Allen Tom, also a director of the OpenID Foundation, apparently showed up at the same place.
The store was packed with people crowding around the iPads on display.
After that, rather uncharacteristically, I attended something like a training session being held in the theater. Going to one of these for the first time in a while was worthwhile because I learned about features I had not known about.
After doing some other shopping, mainly for medicine, I returned to the hotel and began setting it up. When I turned it on, it told me to connect it to iTunes.
I normally use my personal MacBook as the host computer, but I had not brought it on this business trip, so I connected the iPad to Windows. I had to begin by updating iTunes to the latest version. The hotel’s slow connection made it take a while, but I eventually finished.
I promptly tried to install iBooks and connect to the App Store, but was told, “The App Store is not available in this country.” Of course—because it had not yet been released in Japan, an account for the Japanese App Store would not work. So, referring to pages such as this one and this one, I created another account.
Completed successfully.
When an iPhone app is displayed full screen, the text becomes jagged and there are other issues, but it is usable. I tried the Sankei Shimbun app, and it was far easier to read than on the iPhone and quite good. However, it is surprisingly heavy, so the hand supporting it gradually gets tired.
Also, with apps that require text entry, the inability to use flick input may be a little disappointing. Still, it feels as though, with practice, I may be able to type quite quickly on the full keyboard too.