I’m sorry the site never got off the ground. I went through a huge business transition earlier this year and that plus other projects sucked the wind right out of iPad Artistry. I still like the name (and I’m still an avid iPad fan!) so I’m thinking about how to re-use it for another purpose. In the meantime, check out iPad Creative which is a great blog about creative uses of the iPad.

Reading this CNN article by John D. Sutter, it reminds me that the iPad marks a singular event in the history of personal computing: a hot new product coupled a robust platform for app development that has no competition. When was the last time you saw that happen? There have been multiple hardware systems, OSes, languages, development frameworks, distributors, etc. in every market segment of the computer industry for over three decades. That is, until now.

Apple has accomplished the unthinkable and created a computing device (which has sold over 1 million in less than a month) that is simply it. If you want a next-generation touchscreen tablet, you buy an iPad. What else are you going to buy? The mythical HP Slate project is on hold while HP figures out what to do with Palm’s webOS platform they just acquired. Microsoft has canceled Courier, a vaporware demo of a dual-screen tablet featuring an advanced touch interface. What else is there?

The most logical choice for a company wanting to compete with Apple is to take Google’s Android platform and scale it up to tablet size, but the work involved in creating a usable experience and coordinating that with Android’s semi-open development strategy means that a true iPad competitor will likely not be ready to show, much less release, until this year’s holiday season. And, really, who’s going to want to wait until 2011 to buy a tablet that probably won’t even have 1/10th the breadth of applications that the iPad does right now?

What Apple needs to do to keep the momentum going is push the envelope of what the iPad hardware is capable of. The upcoming release of iPhone OS 4 this fall for the iPad will add multitasking support and some other important features that make it more usable for all-purpose computing, but the other side of the equation is what the iPad can connect with. The current dock connector is capable of doing many things, but without the right development APIs and support for third-party add-ons, the iPad will be difficult to integrate into a multi-device ecosystem. My biggest hope as a creative guy is that Apple will work with audio manufacturers to allow USB audio interfaces, MIDI connectors, mixers, etc. to integrate with the iPad. At that point, an entire community of performing artists will be glued to their iPads.

What other kinds of uses can you see for the iPad going forward?

I think pretty much everyone in the tech and design communities has read Steve Jobs’ Thoughts on Flash open letter by now. Published early this morning, it outlines a clear case for the rationale why Apple has deliberately chosen to block Flash from the iPhone/iPod/iPad ecosystem — not only as a plugin in their Safari mobile browser but as a development platform for “native” apps as well.

My position is very clear (and was prior to this letter): I believe the Web, along with Apple’s mobile platform, are better off without Flash. As a Web designer by professional, I have absolutely no interest in Flash. 80% of the interesting use cases I see on Web sites, other than video, where Flash is employed could have been developed using a native Web technology stack (HTML/CSS/Javascript/Ajax). That’s been true for at least a couple of years now. (If I see another photo slideshow with fade effect using Flash, I think I’ll scream!) And now with HTML5 video, another compelling reason to stick with Flash is pretty much rendered null and void. We don’t need Flash on the Web anymore. Good bye, and good riddance.

In terms of Flash as a development platform, that seems ridiculous to me. If I want to develop a truly great application for the iPhone or iPad, I’ll use Apple’s tools. Period. And as a consumer, I want the highest quality applications available. One of the problems with the App Store isn’t that too much stuff gets rejected — it’s that there’s still too much garbage! I think the majority of apps are consistent with Apple’s high bar of quality, but sometimes you end up with a real dog (sorry canine lovers). The idea of a bunch of Flash-generated app spam showing up on the App Store is hardly appealing to me.

So what should Adobe do? Frankly, I think they’ve painted themselves into a corner for reasons I don’t fully understand. I like what Michael Slater of Webvanta says on the matter (as a former Adobe employee himself). He has a great solution for how Adobe could utilize the Flash development environment in a way that benefits Apple and everyone else: simply transcode Flash projects to open HTML5-powered code. Sure, there are some things a Flash runtime can do that HTML5 can’t, but if Adobe created a way to render out HTML5, Javascript utilizing Canvas, SVG, and H.264 video, Flash developers would simply learn the latest paradigm and use Adobe’s tools to create great multimedia experiences for mobile devices and the Web in general. Adobe makes money, developers can target Apple’s platform, and the Web becomes more open. Everyone wins.

In the meantime, newsflash to Adobe: Apple won. Flash (the runtime) lost. Get over it. The end.

When I was very young (6? 7?), my dad bought me a Casio SK-1. Twenty years later, I’m still a synth geek (obligatory link here). I absolutely love synthesizers and electronic music, and I can trace it all back to that first Casio SK-1 where I could press a button, sample whatever was making noise in the room (usually me), and then play it back to my heart’s content.

Now, on the iPad, I am able to relive my glory days as a budding synth aficionado. Retronyms’ Synth app for iPad lets you sample several seconds of audio from the built-in microphone and play away. It also sports a number of built-in sound presets along with some cool delay and distortion effects. I was quite impressed by how playable this is — you really can play melodies and even chords directly on the screen. My only complaint is that the sound quality of some of the sounds leaves something to be desired. But really — at 99 cents, I’m not going to complain.

This is a must-have app for anyone who loves synths. If nothing else, you’ll waste spend several hours having the time of your life. So grab a copy, press the yellow button, sing into the mic, and make some noise!

When the iTunes Music Store came to market in April 2003, there wasn’t anything else like it. The simplicity and elegance of buying songs and syncing them to your iPod, combined with attractive and industry-sanctioned pricing, was a revolution.

Today, Apple has embarked on a similar journey in the publishing world with the iBooks Store, and, while it’s a great service on a fantastic device (the iPad), there are some major reasons why this time Apple will be competing in a very different climate.

E-books are already popular. Let’s give credit where credit is due: Amazon really gave a huge boost to the e-book market when they launched the Kindle platform in November 2007. Previous e-readers never caught on in the mainstream, but the Kindle was easy to use and easy to obtain content for. What’s most attractive about the Kindle platform however isn’t its hardware, it’s the broad selection of titles and integration with Amazon’s already formidable e-commerce business. And Amazon knows this, which is why the Kindle reader and store is available on a variety of computer and mobile devices, including…the iPhone, iPod Touch, and now iPad. Barnes & Noble also has a solid e-book business (though its hardware device, Nook, hasn’t gotten the best of reviews), and they have an iPhone/iPod Touch reader available with an iPad version on the way. So, unlike with the original iPod/iTunes combo, Apple isn’t providing a service all that much more compelling than the competition. In the end, the “winning” store will emerge based on simple economics and quality of user experience.

Apple isn’t big on books. I still believe previous comments from Steve Jobs such as “people don’t read anymore” indicate a prevailing philosophy at Apple that the future of education, literary art, and communication isn’t in books. It’s in interactive, multimedia experiences. Apple cares more about the App Store and the iTunes Store than the iBooks Store. iBooks exists because the iPad form factor simply begs for it, and Apple might as well have a foot in the door than cede the territory to Amazon. But it really is a me-too effort. Apple didn’t “reinvent” the book, nor did they change the rules of the game in the book publishing industry other than to exert a bit of pricing control on the competition by allowing publishers to set prices.

Books are different than music. While it’s tempting to think that a book is no different than an album (just a collection of words/just a collection of waveforms), there are fundamental differences in the business models. The idea of a book as the way to consume the written word is rather tenuous in this day and age. We read books, yes, but we also read newspapers & magazines which are far more likely to show up as interactive experiences in the App Store (which, surprise surprise, they already have). We read articles & blogs online. We read e-mails. We read tweets. A book is just one of a vast number of channels in which the written word plays a strong role.

Conclusion: we will always have books, and in many cases, it makes sense these days to go digital with books just like we have for most other media. As long as the iPad is popular and Apple is running the iBooks Store, it will be successful. But for those who are wondering if iBooks will be to the publishing world what iTunes was to the music world, I offer this opinion: it simply won’t. They’re two different animals entirely.

Now if you want to speculate that Apple might come out with a innovative “Book 2.0″ solution at some point that combines pages of words with interactive content to form a whole new way of publishing, you might be on to something…

l was typing up a white paper for my company on the iPad the other day while sitting outside of a local market. It was a very interesting experience. A couple of school kids walked by, and I overheard them chattering all of a sudden: “wow, there’s an iPad! Cool! It’s like a big iPod!” I noticed other people walking by now and then glancing over their shoulder like “wait, is that a…?” The final surprise was an older gentleman who, on his way into the market, stopped dead in his tracks, walked over to me, and introduced himself. “Is that an iPad?” “Yep.” We chatted for a bit, and he informed me that he was waiting to buy the next version or so after all the bugs are worked out.

I don’t live in Silicon Valley. This was just a grocery store in suburban Santa Rosa. I think I can safely say that Apple has enormous mindshare these days with the success of the iPod, iPhone, and to a lesser extent, OS X-era Mac product lines. If the iPad is not an huge success, it will be because this type of product is simply unwanted, not because Apple doesn’t have the marketing muscle to push it into the mainstream. I hope for the sake of the entire computer industry that it does succeed.

According to some estimates cleaned from data captured by Distimo, games are clearly the most popular category of application for the iPad (in terms of developer focus that is), accounting for over a third of apps in the App Store. Educational titles came in at less than 9%. I hope that number increases significantly in the coming months.

Distimo tracked 2,385 unique iPad applications in the marketplace as of 6 April[...]

Out of those 2.385 iPad-specific apps, Distimo found that the ‘Games’ category is by far the largest with 833 titles (35%), followed by ‘Entertainment’ with 260 apps (11%) and ‘Education’ with 205 titles (8.6%), respectively. The – relatively – smaller categories include ‘Weather’ (17 apps), ‘Navigation’ (18 apps) and, perhaps surprisingly, ‘Finance’ (with 21 apps).

I remember the killer app for the CDROM and multimedia PCs back in the early 90’s was educational titles like Animals!, Microsoft Art Gallery, and the Dorling-Kindersley programs such as History of the World, Stowaway!, and Eyewitness Birds. I grew up on such experiences. I know the Web ended up killing that kind of software for the most part, but to be honest, the Web has a ways to go before that sort of immersive experience is really possible. Meanwhile, we now have the iPad. It’s fast, graphical, and has a decent amount of local storage. I could easily imagine downloading a 250MB app and traveling into the world of the San Diego Zoo once again. So what are you waiting for, developers? Bring on the educational apps!

I’m pretty happy with the overall experience of the Calendar app on the iPad, but, strangely, it’s missing some crucial features compared to the Mac version of iCal that makes it difficult to use for wide-ranging scheduling sessions.

These limitations show the iPad’s heritage of the iPhone in terms of software, which is perhaps less annoying in a small pocket device but rather inexcusable in a broader context. My main beefs are:

1. Can’t change event calendars after an event is created. This has been a problem on the iPhone and now it’s a bigger problem. When I am creating an event, I can choose which calendar (Home, Work, etc.) the event should use, but afterwards, there’s no way to move the event to another calendar if I made a mistake. iCal can do it easily, so why can’t Calendar?
2. Can’t duplicate events. What if I am mapping out some blocks of time on different days and thus want to duplicate an event? It’s a no go on the iPad.
3. Subscribed calendars in iCal synced over MobileMe don’t refresh quickly. OK, this one’s a little esoteric, but my wife publishes her calendars and I subscribe to them in iCal so we can stay in sync. In iCal, I can choose “Refresh” to update the calendars immediately. However, when I’m actually using my iPad, there’s no way to refresh the calendars. I have to wait for a few minutes. Lame.

Also, when using the Calendar in landscape mode, there’s a very strange UI resize dance that happens when the keyboard disappears while selecting an event date and then when the keyboard reappears. Such a clunky interface in this particular context is very surprising for Apple.

On the plus side, iCal on the Mac seems positively utilitarian and boring now. I’d much rather use the iPad Calendar if these issues got resolved. I’m hoping Apple will make some improvements for the next OS update and turn Calendar into a killer app.

I’m typing this in the WordPress app on the iPad. I’ve been using it since 10am. I’ve synced it up with iTunes, checked out all the native apps, and played around with some downloads from the App Store. I even took it outside. Here are some initial thoughts.

The size is perfect. Any bigger and it wouldn’t feel portable, any smaller and it wouldn’t have as strong a sense of immersion. I could understand the temptation to wish for a 5×7 type of mini-slate, or a “larger is better” widescreen tablet. But, really, this is ideal. It feels right in the hand, and while it does have a bit of heft to it, it doesn’t feel heavy. It feels…solid. Apple’s fit and finish continues to be unmatched.

I’ve encountered a few minor glitches, both in Apple’s software and third-party apps. I’m not surprised — after all, everything is 1.0. But, so far, the iPad has been very stable — no crashes or missing data. Give this platform a couple of months, and I believe it will operate like a well-oiled machine.

The virtual keyboard in portrait mode feels like a big iPhone. In landscape mode, it’s a rather odd experience. I’m actually touch-typing pretty fast, almost as fast as a real keyboard. The reason it’s odd is because to use most punctuation, or numbers, I have to switch contexts (like on the iPhone), and at that point, I’m doing the hunt-and-peck routine. Still, I suspect that after a while, I’ll get used to it. Bottom-line: you won’t miss a real keyboard much.

You’ll want to keep this in a case. Trust me — while you might enjoy holding it bare in your hand, you’re going to start feeling paranoid. Unlike with laptops, the iPad is basically just a screen that you hold like a book or a newspaper, and I don’t want to be throwing this thing around and getting it all bunged up and scratched. I got the Apple case, which is functional but surprisingly clunky-looking. I’ll probably get a more artistic case at some point, maybe a brown leather one.

Display: gorgeous. Speed: “wicked fast” as Walt Mossberg would say.

The iPad is not as usable outside as I would like. Unless you turn the brightness up to max and stay in the shadows, it’s going to be very difficult to read. There’s also the issue of glare, although most laptops don’t fare any better. Just don’t expect to chuck your paper edition of the Wall Street Journal and read it in iPad form in the bright sunlight.

Speaking of the WSJ, I downloaded their app and read some articles in the free limited edition. I only have one thing to say: I have never subscribed to a newspaper in my whole life (3 years to 30). The iPad may change my mind.

Web site browsing on the iPad is an interesting experience. I’ll post more insight on this as I do further testing.

In summary, there are many products that receive tremendous hype but when you actually use them, it’s a big letdown. The iPad is not one of them. I’ve been waiting ten years for someone to come out with a genuine tablet computer built from the ground up to offer a compelling user experience. Apple has delivered the goods. PC makers: you have a lot of ’splainin to do.

Update: more photos here along with unboxing pictures!

I’m here at the Apple Store in the Santa Rosa Plaza mall. It’s 8:51 in the morning, so we don’t have long to go until the store opens. The lines have formed on both sides of the store, so it looks a little less hectic than it might be otherwise. There is a whole mix of different people here, from young dudes to older ladies.

I talked with one gentleman who has been in line for an hour. He’s here with his son who’s saved up money to pay for half of a shiny new iPad. I ask “so, why are you getting this?” “Movies, and also I’ll probably be getting Pages too. It’s on the App Store for $9.99.” Well well.