Let's make one thing clear right off the bat: I am Mac's ideal demographic. I own one of everything: a laptop and desktop, several iPods and an iPhone. So it wasn't a matter of if I was going to get an iPad, but when. Aside from the relentless abuse I was taking from PC friends about the name of the product, as soon as Steve Jobs made the announcement, everyone wanted to know, "What are you going to do with it?"

I've had the iPad for five days now and what I'm doing with it is reading. Reading a lot. I've actually stopped watching television, apart from what I can watch on the iPad, because the news I might have left on as background noise I can now bring up quickly via several different apps. I've been reading with it at night before going to sleep too. I especially like that, unlike email and e-books on my iPhone, the screen aspect locks because I can read on my side more easily than with a real book. And even Kindle has an app for the iPad, which means the library that had previously been in my iPhone is available in full-page size. The iBook app has a gorgeous display, but the library offered is still pretty small, so the Kindle app has the benefit of offering a lot more of what I want to read…900-page sci-fi epics. It's certainly easier to haul Anathem—or the entire Neal Stephenson oeuvre—around in this format. Continue Reading »